Carnal Hermeneutics [Hardcover]

Building on a hermeneutic tradition in which accounts of carnal embodiment are overlooked, misunderstood, or underdeveloped, this work initiates a new field of study and concern.

Carnal Hermeneutics provides a philosophical approach to the body as interpretation. Transcending the traditional dualism of rational understanding and embodied sensibility, the volume argues that our most carnal sensations are already interpretations. Because interpretation truly goes all the way down, carnal hermeneutics rejects the opposition of language to sensibility, word to flesh, text to body.

In this volume, an impressive array of todays preeminent philosophers seek to interpret the surplus of meaning that arises from our carnal embodiment, its role in our experience and understanding, and its engagement with the wider world.

Carnal Hermeneutics offers a philosophical approach to the body as interpretation. It engages our finite, spatio-temporal being-in-the-world through an account of meanings involving corporeal sensation, orientation, and linguistic articulation, and transcends the traditional dualism of rational understanding and embodied sensibility, arguing that our most carnal sensations are already interpretations.Certain dualities, spirit vs. body, idea vs. sensation, self vs. the world, etc., have long dominated, often injuriously, much Western thinking. In this remarkable volume, the editors, along with some of the most important voices in the Continental tradition, allow hermeneutics to go 'all the way down' and in so doing move beyond these dualities by taking more seriously the 'surplus of meaning arising from our carnal embodiment.' What emerges is a reenergized and radically embodied or 'incarnational' hermeneutics that opens new vistas for religious, environmental, and artistic thinking. This is an important and consequential collection.Richard Kearney and Brian Treanor have assembled a remarkable collection of essays by important recent philoslc@