movement material. Informed by Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach 18 prioritising the lived-body as the primary source of engaging with the world, these tasks were facilitated through a process of phenomenological reduction. Described by Mickunas and Stewart as ‘a narrowing of attention to what is essential in the problem while disregarding the superfluous and accidental’, this approach ...

Reflexivity lies at the heart of this thesis: I seek to understand to have knowledge of a particular way of knowing. There are echoes of this reflexivity in my literature review of embodied cognition, where I discussed attempts to think about how we think. This reflexive circle need not be 'vicious', in the sense of tying me into a knot of self-reference, if I apply the tools of phenomenology a...

The things of the world are not simply neutral objects which stand before us for our contemplation. Each one of them symbolises or recalls a particular way of behaving, provoking in us reactions which are either favourable or unfavourable. This is why people’s tastes, character, and the attitude they adopt to the world and to particular things can be deciphered from the objects with which they ...

Louise Westling, University of Oregon Maurice Merleau-Ponty's late work locates humans within a wild or brute being that sustains a synergy among life forms. His Nature lectures explored the philosophical implications of evolutionary biology and animal studies, and with The Visible and the Invisible describe a horizontal kinship between humans and other animals. This work offers a striking alte...