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The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding Paperback – Illustrated, November 15, 2008

by Mark Johnson (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 48 ratings
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In The Meaning of the Body, Mark Johnson continues his pioneering work on the exciting connections between cognitive science, language, and meaning first begun in the classic Metaphors We Live By. Johnson uses recent research into infant psychology to show how the body generates meaning even before self-consciousness has fully developed. From there he turns to cognitive neuroscience to further explore the bodily origins of meaning, thought, and language and examines the many dimensions of meaning—including images, qualities, emotions, and metaphors—that are all rooted in the body’s physical encounters with the world. Drawing on the psychology of art and pragmatist philosophy, Johnson argues that all of these aspects of meaning-making are fundamentally aesthetic. He concludes that the arts are the culmination of human attempts to find meaning and that studying the aesthetic dimensions of our experience is crucial to unlocking meaning's bodily sources.

Throughout, Johnson puts forth a bold new conception of the mind rooted in the understanding that philosophy will matter to nonphilosophers only if it is built on a visceral connection to the world.

“Mark Johnson demonstrates that the aesthetic and emotional aspects of meaning are fundamental—central to conceptual meaning and reason, and that the arts show meaning-making in its fullest realization. If you were raised with the idea that art and emotion were external to ideas and reason, you must read this book. It grounds philosophy in our most visceral experience.”—George Lakoff, author of Moral Politics

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  1. Print length
    308 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    University of Chicago Press
  4. Publication date
    November 15, 2008
  5. Dimensions
    8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0226401936
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0226401935
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author


Mark Johnson is the Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. He is the author of The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason and Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics and coauthor, with George Lakoff, of Metaphors We Live By and Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; Illustrated edition (November 15, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 308 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0226401936
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226401935
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 48 ratings

About the author

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Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson

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Mark Johnson is the Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon. He is the author of The Body in the Mind and Moral Imagination, both published by the University of Chicago Press. Johnson and George Lakoff have also coauthored Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
48 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Republica Peruanu
5.0 out of 5 stars A most remarkable book for the seriously advanced reader
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2014
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A book for the serious analytic philosopher or neuroscientist researching the embodied nature of human ethics. Mark Johnson, former partner to George Lakoff, are leading psycholinguists and scientific philosophers, with Johnson the most referenced embodiment scholar, famed for his farsighted foundational thinking in this specialized domain. When completing my final review copy, it will be uploaded with accompanying text.
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handoff
5.0 out of 5 stars a meaningful shortcut to understanding some latent assumptions of our modern world
Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2013
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while it is abrasive at first to consider meaning-making such a driving force, johnson's relaxation of such a potent construct allows access to a deeper understanding of aesthetic. if you don't feel called out for selling out your creative endeavors, than you won't be willing to trust your body with a truth that extends beyond the intellect.
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THALES
4.0 out of 5 stars Important book
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2014
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Mark Johnson emphasizes the importance of the body but not as Merleau-Ponty did from a phenomenological point of view, but from a Deweyan pragmatist angle. This approach is very important together with Shusterman's somaesthetics, for they renew the strong and very valuable tradition of American pragmatism
5 people found this helpful
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brazil2010
5.0 out of 5 stars Nice
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2019
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I like the writer
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thomas
5.0 out of 5 stars The Book I Wanted to Write.
Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2013
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Thanks for writing it, Mark.

I think I felt this book coming when I read Metaphors We Live By the second ... or third time around. Well done.
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mike oconnor
5.0 out of 5 stars One you will read again and again.
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2015
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Single most inspiring book on metaphor, creativity, human understanding. A game changer and life changer.
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S. Bradley
3.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant description of mind-body. Disappointing conclusions
Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2014
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This is an important book in many ways in that it gives a rich experience of the mind-body-environment relatedness and exquisitely describes the unity of the way consciousness is embedded in the physical and how all are interdependent on "each other". I think he is zealously refuting the objectivism and rationalism of Kant and much of the literalist representational theories. It's high time this kind of thinking was challenged and this is, while not a new vision, certainly a brilliant 21st century articulation of the interdependent ecological view of life. Where he fails is in his assumption then that "mind" cannot exist separate from the body. It's as though by so richly describing the mind-body-matter relationship he thinks he can then refute things like soul or god or divinity beyond this schema. While aptly noting that much of reason is in fact metaphoric schema arising from this ecological context, he then fails to deconstruct his own theory as such and thereby falls into the trap of seeing this as somehow the only view. I'm sure the fish in my fish tank, if they were intelligent and descriptive enough would define their fish-body water existence as "all that is", because in that experience they are limited by their mind-body to their perception. Johnson seems to say the same thing here. We should focus on the "horizontal" because the vertical is unknowable by the definition/schema/metaphor he's described. He then rather regressively falls back on neuroscience to explain why this is true. Basically this means that since we can explain "god" by finding a neurological place or process in the brain which "creates" that. This explanation is frankly not consistent with his own model and he ignores the more likely possibility that there is indeed an interactional process with spirit, consciousness, and energy which the mind-body relates to. We don't say that ice cream doesn't exist because we can now find the sensorimotor neurocognitive process by which we percept and concept it. Ice cream may by this view has no independent existence in and of itself. It's existence and especially it's definition is a function of it's relationship with the mind-body. Meanings emerge from the bottom up. True. But to say that it has no existence is a step which even logically makes no sense. We can't refute the mystery simply by richly describing the tuning instrument. He gives one paragraph of deference to this notion early on my referring to W. James statement that we can't "prove or disprove" the existence of a disembodied soul. He did indeed state that the "disembodied soul must remain a real possibility. He then discounts this based on contemporary on "contemporary biology and neuro-science" This is like my fish discounting the world outside their tank based on their limited schematic fish-water reference point. Johnson correctly sees science as ultimately "just" another metaphorical image schemata, but then fails to recognize the limitations of this. He says "it's difficult to see any way in which it could be me, or you, as we exist in our present incarnation." But, indeed this is precisely the point. "God" (in the broadest sense of the term) exists outside this incarnation. By failing to include this in his analysis he severely limits his conclusions) He is quite correct in recognizing that the objectivist/reason/literalist approach to religion has contributed to the fundamentalism which is so rampant today within Christianity and many world religions. But to discredit this aspect of our experience as some sensorimotor fueled neuro-cognitive fantasy exemplified by the movie "Heaven can Wait" ignores a vast rich body of evidence to the contrary (see eg. Gary Schwartz "The Sacred Promise") James would see his assumptions here as a 21st century elaboration of what he, at the time called "medical materialism" (The Varieties of Religious Experience). He states, "Modern psychology finding definite psycho-physical connections to hold good, assumes as a convenient hypotheses that the dependence of mental states upon bodily conditions must be thorough-going and complete. If we adopt the assumption, then of course what medical materialism insists on must be true in a general way, if not in every detail.....But now I ask you, how can such an existential account of facts of mental history decide in one way or another upon their spiritual significance....there is not a single one of our states of mind, high or low, healthy or morbid, that has not some organic process as its condition. Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are." Thus, while Mr. Johnson brings us right up to the edge of enlightenment here by finally giving credence to emotional aesthetics, and the eco-systemic inter-relatedness of consciousness, he then stops short and lapses back into the supposition that rational science trumps this and is somehow more "true". Disappointng.
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José Monserrat Neto
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2014
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I WANT TO SEE THE TABLE CONTENTS OF AMAZON BOOKS!!!
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Top reviews from other countries

Bret Treasure
5.0 out of 5 stars Important, graceful, big picture philosophy
Reviewed in Australia on December 28, 2023
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A compelling explanation of embodied meaning and its role in abstract thought and aesthetics.

Not just important thought-leadership which will resonate through the ages, but a beautifully constructed argument.

There’s a moment In the chapter on music where having discussed the meaning of a Beatles song, he then goes on to use the metaphor in the song’s lyrics to lay out his forthcoming argument - I had to stop reading and go for a walk - I was so struck by the skill and elegance…

A synthesis of a lifetime of profound thinking. You should read it.
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Reader
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 30, 2017
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Clear, wise, topic well explained, just what I have been waiting for.
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Javier Andres Morras Cortes
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 13, 2015
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Cool!
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