Relevance of Embodied Practice to Philosophical Understanding
Stance An International Undergraduate Philosophy Journal April 6, 2024 Hieronymus Wold
Meditation can help philosophers step back from the habitual structure of subjectivity that constrains reason. The paper combines recent neurobiological hypotheses with hermeneutic phenomenology to argue that interpretations at the neurobiological level shape our experience of being a subject and the explicit rational understanding that emerges from it. This suggests that embodied practices, which operate before discursive thought, are important for freeing philosophical understanding from hidden assumptions.