The publisher, Basic Books ,
Two Leading Thinkers Offer Blueprint for a New Philosophy
PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH: The Embodied Mind and Its
Challenge to Western Thought by George Lakoff and Mark
Johnson is a pathbreaking volume that radically challenges
the tenets of Western philosophy. Grounded in the empirical
research of cognitive science, PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH
refutes the long-held view that reason is independent of the
body, directly accessible to conscious reflection, and
uniquely human.
According to Lakoff and Johnson, the Cartesian person,
with a mind wholly separate from the body, does not exist.
The Kantian person, capable of moral action according to the
dictates of a universal reason, does not exist. The
phenomenological person, capable of knowing his or her mind
entirely through introspection alone, does not exist. The
utilitarian person, the Chomskian person, the
poststructuralist person, the computational person, and the
person defined by analytic philosophy all do not exist.
Based on recent findings of cognitive science that have
shattered long-held assumptions about man’s ability to
reason and contemplate, PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH clarifies
three major discoveries that reveal a radically new and
detailed understanding of what a person is: the workings of
the mind cannot be separated from the anatomy and physiology
of the brain; thought is mostly unconscious; abstract
concepts are largely metaphorical.
After first describing the philosophical stance that must
follow from taking cognitive science seriously, Lakoff and
Johnson re-examine the basic concepts of the mind, time,
causation, morality, and the self; then they rethink a host
of philosophical traditions. Finally, they take on two major
issues of twentieth-century philosophy: how we conceive
rationality and how we conceive language. Nothing short of
revolutionary, this instant classic will become a seminal
treatise on philosophy for the new millenium.
