Experience Embodied: Early Modern Accounts of the Human Place in Nature

Anik Waldow develops an account of embodied experience that extends from Descartes' conception of the human body as firmly integrated into the causal play of nature, to Kant's understanding of anthropology as a discipline that provides us with guidance in our lives as embodied creatures. Waldow defends the claim that during the early modern period, the debate on experience not only focused on questions arising from the subjectivity of our thinking and feeling, it also foregrounded the essentially embodied dimension of our lives as humans. By taking this approach, Waldow departs from the traditional epistemological route dominant in treatments of early-modern conceptions of experience. She makes the case that reflections on experience took center stage in a debate that was moral in nature, because it raised questions about the developmental potential of human beings and their capacity to instantiate the principles of self-determined agency in their lives. These questions emerged for many early modern authors since they understood that the fact that humans are embodied entailed that they are similarly responsive and causally-determined like other non-human animals. While this perspective made it possible to acknowledge that humans are part of the causal dynamics of nature, it called into question their ability to act in accordance with the principles of free, rational agency. Experience Embodied reveals how early modern authors responded to this challenge, offering a new perspective on the centrality of the concept of experience in comprehending the uniquely human place in nature.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction Part I: The Moral Importance of Experience Chapter 1: Experience and Cartesian Agency 1.1 Experiencing and Knowing the Self 1.2 Confused Notions of Body and Mind 1.3 Agency in the Conduct of Life 1.4 Conclusion Chapter 2: Locke's Experiential Persons 2.1 On the Mental and Bodily Dimension of Reward and Punishment 2.2 Habit Training versus Conditioning 2.3 Persons as Agents 2.4 Reason, Reflection and Correction 2.5 Conclusion Part II: On the Continuity between Sensibility and Reason Chapter 3: Moral Reflection as Perception: A Humean Account 3.1 What is Natural about Human Nature? 3.2 Sympathy, Perception and Reflection 3.3 History and the Refinement of Moral Capacities 3.4 Conclusion Chapter 4: Manipulated Sensibilities: Rousseau on Human Nature 4.1 The Theatre, Moral Education and Affective Susceptibility 4.2 Rousseau's Attack 4.3 Natural Goodness and the Construction of Morality 4.4 Normativity and Nature 4.5 Conclusion Chapter 5: Affect and Imagination in Processes of Cognition: Herder 5.1 The Sensing Body and the Emergence of Language 5.2 Reason as an Organisational Principle 5.3 Discovering the World through Imagination and Affect 5.4 Conclusion Part III: How to Study the Human Being? Philosophy and the Empirical Method Chapter 6: Natural History and the Formation of the Human Being: Kant and Herder 6.1 The Human Place in Nature 6.2 The Organic Growth of History 6.3 Historical Explanations 6.4 Conclusion Chapter 7: Diversifying Method: Kant's Janus-Faced Conception of the Human Being 7.1 Environmental Determinism 7.2 Kant's Dual-Aspect Account of Character 7.3 Anthropology as a Pragmatic Endeavour 7.4 Philosophy and the Sciences 7.5 Conclusion Coda: Experience Embodied Bibliography Index