MACMILLAN The Mind-Body Politic

Building on contemporary research in embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind, this book explores how social institutions in contemporary neoliberal nation-states systematically affect our thoughts, feelings, and agency. Human beings are, necessarily, social animals who create and belong to social institutions. But social institutions take on a life of their own, and literally shape the minds of all those who belong to them, for better or worse, usually without their being self-consciously aware of it. Indeed, in contemporary neoliberal societies, it is generally for the worse. In The Mind-Body Politic, Michelle Maiese and Robert Hanna work out a new critique of contemporary social institutions by deploying the special standpoint of the philosophy of mind―in particular, the special standpoint of the philosophy of what they call essentially embodied minds―and make a set of concrete, positive proposals for radically changing both these social institutions and also our essentially embodied lives for the better. Review “The book is not only an exposition of political discourse but concurrently an analysis of form, a rich and ambitious undertaking.” (Isobel Armstrong, Modern Philology, Vol. 117 (1), May, 2019) From the Back Cover Building on contemporary research in embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind, this book explores how social institutions in contemporary neoliberal nation-states systematically affect our thoughts, feelings, and agency. Human beings are, necessarily, social animals who create and belong to social institutions. But social institutions take on a life of their own, and literally shape the minds of all those who belong to them, for better or worse, usually without their being self-consciously aware of it. Indeed, in contemporary neoliberal societies, it is generally for the worse. In  The Mind-Body Politic, Michelle Maiese and Robert Hanna work out a new critique of contemporary social institutions by deploying the special standpoint of the philosophy of mind―in particular, the special standpoint of the philosophy of what they call  essentially embodied  minds―and make a set of concrete, positive proposals for radically changing both these social institutions and also our essentially embodied lives for the better. About the Author Michelle Maiese is Professor of Philosophy at Emmanuel College in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. She is the author of Embodiment, Emotion, and Cognition (2011), Embodied Selves and Embodied Minds (2015), and many articles on topics in philosophy of mind and psychiatry. Robert Hanna is an independent philosopher who has held research or teaching positions at universities in Brazil, Canada, Luxembourg, the UK, and the USA. He is a philosophical generalist and the author or co-author of eleven books, including Rationality and Logic (2006),  Embodied Minds in Action (co-authored with Michelle Maiese, 2009) and the five-volume book series, The Rational Human Condition (2015-2018).