Persons and things
Subtitle: from the body's point of view
By: Roberto Esposito ; translated by Zakiya Hanafi
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 2015
Place of publication: Cambridge; Malden, MA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 163
ISBN-13: 9780745690643; 9780745690650
Subjects: Individualism; Persons; Property; Materialism; Human body (Philosophy)
Work titles: Persone e le cose
Description: What is the relationship between persons and things? And how does the body transform this relationship? In this highly original new book, Roberto Esposito - one of Italy's leading political philosophers - considers these questions and shows that starting from the body, rather than from the thing or the person, can help us to reconsider the status of both. Ever since its beginnings, our civilization has been based on a strict, unequivocal distinction between persons and things, founded on the instrumental domination of persons over things. This opposition arose out of ancient Roman law and persisted throughout modernity, to take its place in our current global market, where it continues to generate growing contradictions. Although the distinction seems to appear clear and necessary to us, what we are continually witnessing in legal, economic, and technological practice is a reversal of perspectives: some categories of persons are becoming assimilated with things, while some types of things are taking on a personal profile. With his customary rigour, Roberto Esposito argues that there exists an escape route out of this paradox, constituted by a new point of view founded in the body. Neither a person nor a thing, the human body becomes the decisive element in rethinking the concepts and values that govern our philosophical, legal, and political lexicons.--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Persons; title: Possession; title: The great division; title: In one; title: Use and abuse; title: Non-persons; title: Things; title: The nothing of the thing; title: Res; title: Words and things; title: The value of things; title: Das ding; title: Bodies; title: The status of the body; title: The power of the body; title: To exist the body; title: The soul of things; title: Political bodies.