Body of Wisdom
The Embodied Dimensions of Life
Will be published approx. on 30. November 2026
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-1-009-66659-6 (ISBN)
Description
What does it mean to know, act, and be in the world? This book explores the embodied nature of human knowledge. Drawing on phenomenology and cognitive science, it shows how bodily experience shapes the self, social understanding, and practical knowledge. Philosopher and psychologist Shogo Tanaka examines motor learning, body schema, and lived experience to shed light on this subject with chapters exploring intercorporeal sociality, social cognition, narrative identity, and cultural meaning. By reflecting on the methods and limits of studying embodied knowledge, the text reveals how habits, skilled action, and even contemplative practices disclose the body as a medium of insight. This book is also available Open Access on Cambridge Core.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
approx. 11/2026
Cambridge University Press
€52.50
Not yet published
Person
Shogo Tanaka is Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Tokai University, Japan. His work explores interdisciplinary dialogue on selfhood, perception, and intersubjectivity across phenomenology, embodiment, and cognitive science. He is co-editor of Body Schema and Body Image: New Directions (Oxford University Press, 2021) and author of Self and Other: An Embodied Perspective (University of Tokyo Press, 2022, in Japanese).
Content
Introduction; 1. Body schema and body image in motor learning; 2. Investigating the possibility of disembodiment; 3. Beyond the 'body-in-the-brain': bodily constitution of the self; 4. The circularity of body image, self-consciousness, and the otherness; 5. From intercorporeality to aida; 6. Embodied dimension of the narrative self and its sociocultural embeddedness; 7. The body as the subject of knowing; 8. The body of wisdom: embodied knowing and its existential limits; Epilogue: the event of the real.