Dr. Diane Perpich of Clemson University will give a lecture on Merleau-Ponty and his feminist readers addressing the question, what if we could not conceive selfhood and subjectivity without an account of the body?

Dr. Diane Perpich
Tues March 19, 2023
Time: 12:30-2:00 pm PDT
Open to the Public 

Location:
DRBU Southwing Upstairs Lounge
1991 Virtue Way, Ukiah 

Or on Zoom: Register for the Link 

Title: “What if the Self Were a Body?”

Abstract: Western philosophy since Descartes has struggled to explain how the mind, or subjectivity, is connected to the body. Even contemporary philosophy mostly sees the body as a kind of accidental property rather than as essential to an account of subjectivity and selfhood. But what if we could not conceive selfhood and subjectivity without an account of the body? This paper looks to the work of Merleau-Ponty and his feminist readers to explore what changes in our sense of subjectivity and the philosophical puzzles surrounding it when the mind is rooted back in the body and in the world.

Speaker Bio: Diane Perpich is the Callahan Distinguished Professor at Clemson University in South Carolina. Her areas of expertise include phenomenology, existentialism, social and political philosophy. Her books and co-edited collections include The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas (Stanford 2008), Taking French Feminism to the Streets (Illinois 2011), and Totality and Infinity at 50 (Duquesne 2012). She is currently Director of Clemson’s program in Women’s Leadership.