Body and Reality

Is materialism right to claim that the world of everyday-life experience - the phenomenal world - is nothing but an illusion produced in physical reality, notably in the brain? Or is Merleau-Ponty right when he defends the fundamental character of the phenomenal world while rejecting physical realism? Jasper van Buuren addresses these questions by exploring the nature of the body proper in Merleau-Ponty and Plessner, arguing that physical and phenomenal realism are not mutually exclusive but complementary. The argument includes a close examination of the relationships between scientific and pre-scientific perspectives, between living and non-living things, and between humans and animals.

Jasper van Buuren, born in 1974, is an independent philosopher based in Berlin with publications in the fields of phenomenology, philosophical anthropology, and the philosophy of the good life. He obtained his master's degree in philosophy in Amsterdam and Leuven. After several visiting studentships in the United States he received his PhD in Potsdam.