Words from the Holy People

Abstract

Embodiment, in the sense I am using it, is a methodological standpoint in which bodily experience is understood to be the existential ground of culture and self, and therefore a valuable starting point for their analysis. In this chapter I will focus on two issues that must be clarified in advancing a cultural phenomenology that begins with embodiment, or if you will, two issues that, unclarified, could become limbs in the embodiment of a straw man. One is the relation between embodiment and biology, and the other is the identification of this phenomenological starting point in preobjective or prereflective experience. I will present each in terms of a problematic quote.