Making spirit matter : neurology, psychology, and selfhood in modern France /
The problem of the relation between mind and brain has been among the most persistent in modern Western thought, one that even recent advances in neuroscience haven't been able to put to rest. Historian Larry McGrath's Making Spirit Matter is about how a particularly productive and influen...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Chicago :
University of Chicago Press,
[2020]
|
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | The problem of the relation between mind and brain has been among the most persistent in modern Western thought, one that even recent advances in neuroscience haven't been able to put to rest. Historian Larry McGrath's Making Spirit Matter is about how a particularly productive and influential generation of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French thinkers attempted to answer this puzzle by showing the mutual dependence of spirit and matter. The veritable revolution taking place across disciplines, from philosophy to psychology, located our spiritual powers in the brain and offered a radical reformulation of the meaning of science, spirit, and the self. Pulling out connections between thinkers such as Bergson, Blondel and Fouille̹e, among others, McGrath plots the intellectual movements that brought back to life themes of agency, time and experience by putting into action the very sciences that seemed to undermine metaphysics and theology. In so doing, Making Spirit Matter lays bare the long legacy of this moment in the history of ideas and how it might renew our understanding of the relationship between mind and brain. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | 278 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780226699790 022669979X 9780226699820 022669982X |