The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Edited and introduced by Donn Welton, 1999)

Introduction (P. 1 -8)

• P.2 The nature of the mind is such that it has an existence that is completely independent of the body. For Descartes this means not only that it is the unassailable foundation of all that can be known but also that what is known must itself be understood using a method that is consistent with those criteria that allow the mind to become self-evident to itself, i.e., clear and distinct ideas.
• P. 3 ....I will provide only a brief suggestion as to how we might place our thinkers in relation to each other and thereby find a certain historical flow to the problematics of the body through twentieth-century Continental philosophy.
• One should be careful not to think of a strict linear development as these very independent thinkers pursed creative lines of their own and do not in any sense form a school.
• P.4 Martin Heidegger "We do not 'have' a body; rather, we 'are' bodily."