Sartre on the Body

Abstract

Summary: Sartre scholars and others engage with Jean-Paul Sartre's descriptions of the human body, bringing him into dialogue with feminists, sociologists, psychologists and historians and asking: What is pain? Do men and women experience their bodies differently? How do society and culture shape our bodies? Can we re-shape them? The human body is not simply a physical, anatomical, or physiological object; in an important sense we are our bodies. In this collection, Sartre scholars and others engage with the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's brilliant but neglected descriptions of our experience of human bodies. The authors bring a wide variety of perspectives to bear on Sartre's thinking about the body, and, alongside in-depth scholarly historical and critical investigations, bring him into dialogue with feminists, sociologists, psychologists and historians, addressing such questions as: Why have philosophers found it so difficult to conceptualize the relationship between consciousness and the body? Do men and women experience their own bodies in fundamentally different ways? What is pain? What is sexual desire? What is it like to live as a racially marked body in a racist society? How do society and culture shape our bodies, and can we re-shape them?.