Body and World
Samuel Todes
The MIT Press
Body and World is the definitive edition of a book that shouldnow take                  its place as a major contribution to contemporary existentialphenomenology. Samuel                  Todes goes beyond Martin Heidegger and MauriceMerleau-Ponty in his description of                  how independent physical natureand experience are united in our bodily action. His                  account allows himto preserve the authority of experience while avoiding the                  tendencytoward idealism that threatens both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.Todes                  emphasizes the complex structure of the human body ;front/back asymmetry, the need                  to balance in a gravitational field, and so forth ;and the role that structure plays                  in producing the spatiotemporal field of experience and in making possible objective                  knowledge of the objects in it. He shows that perception involves nonconceptual, but                  nonetheless objective forms of judgment. One can think of Body and World as fleshing                  out Merleau-Ponty's project while presciently relating it to the current interest in                  embodiment, not only in philosophy but also in psychology, linguistics, cognitive                  science, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and anthropology. Todes's work opens                  new ways of thinking about problems such as the relation of perception to thought                  and the possibility of knowing an independent reality ;problems that have occupied                  philosophers since Kant and still concern analytic and continental                  philosophy.