my.ryerson.ca

Philosophy

Ryerson Philosophy Student gives talk at
Oxford University.

Jehangir Saleh, an ACS student with a special interest in philosophy, gave a talk at a peer-reviewed inter-disciplinary conference Making Sense of Health, Illness and Disease, at Oxford University in July 2008. Mr. Saleh’s talk was entitled: Toward and Alternative Way of Encountering Illness.

First, I outline a conception of a knowing, remembering body, a habit body, which is an idea that I take from French phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty. The habit-body, I suggest, shields me from experiencing the ill body as my own. Thus, at least initially, I don’t experience illness in a full fledged way, instead, I experience it as something outside me. Second, I suggest that my sense of self is essentially established through projects; insofar as illness threatens my projects, it threatens myself. Third, I examine how the ill body can further frustrate me in chronic illness by examining the experience of repairing or regulating the ill body. Fourth, I show how the experience of the ill body as a threat realizes something crucial about the nature of embodiment, which is usually covered up by the habit body. I finally conclude with a few remarks about what reconciling the self and the ill body might entail.