Immortal Curiosity

The Bodily Dimension in Thinking, by Daniela Vallega-Neu. SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy, 2005.

While reading the introduction to the above work (specifically page xiv, in the description of the Cartesian distinction between body as extended substance and mind as thinking substance), I was struck by the following idea: Much of the Western philosophy post-Descartes that I have read seems to be often unable to overcome the dichotomy that he introduced in describing the mind and the body. This inability comes in a number of varieties. Some philosophical systems contain the same division explicitly, some distantly critique it (either because of some sympathy for it or out of a sense of modern philosophical duty). But what is it about his division that makes it so difficult to remove from one’s thinking about mind and body as soon as one has been exposed to the former? Perhaps it is not that “man” is not able to think certain things because of his physical nature, or even his mental nature, but because of the “adhesive” nature of certain thoughts which, by virtue of their coming to be are influential in the course of historical or philosophical thought. Once certain ideas arise, they are very hard to remove from man’s collective epistemological consciousness, and thus make the thinking of certain other thoughts difficult.