Embodiment and Personal Identity in Dementia
Theories of personal identity in the tradition of John Locke and Derek Parfit emphasize the importance of psychological continuity and the abilities to think, to remember and to make rational choices as a basic criterion for personhood. As a consequence, persons with severe dementia are threatened to lose the status of persons. Such concepts, however, are situated within a dualistic framework, in which the body is regarded as a mere vehicle of the person, or a carrier of the brain as the organ of mental faculties. Based on the phenomenology of embodiment, my lecture elaborates a different approach to personal identity in dementia. In this perspective, selfhood is primarily constituted by pre-reflective self-awareness and the body memory of an individual, which consists in the embodiment and enactment of familiar habits, practices and preferences. The ethical consequences of such an embodied approach to dementia are outlined.
Speaker
Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Fuchs
Karl Jaspers Professorship for Philosophical Foundations of Psychiatry
Senior Physician of the Clinic for General Psychiatry
Prof. Fuchs holds the Karl Jaspers Professorship for Philosophical Foundations of Psychiatry and is head of the section “Phenomenological Psychopathology and Psychotherapy” at Heidelberg University Psychiatric Hospital. He is also coordinator of the Marsilius Project “Embodiment as a Paradigm of an Evolutionary Cultural Anthropology” as well as research unit leader of the Karl Jaspers Edition. His main scientific interests include phenomenological anthropology and psychopathology on the one hand, and the theory and ethics of psychiatry and neuroscience on the other.
His recent publications include the books:
- “Ecology of the Brain. The Phenomenology and Biology of the Embodied Mind” (2018)
- “In Defence of the Human Being. Foundational Questions of an Embodied Anthropology” (2020)
- “Randzonen der Erfahrung. Beiträge zur Phänomenologischen Psychopathologie” (2020)
In addition, Prof. Fuchs is editor of the publication series of the German Society for Phenomenological Anthropology and Psychiatry (DGAP) with research volumes on Karl Jaspers (2013), Wolfgang Blankenburg (2014), Ludwig Binswanger and Erwin Straus (2015).
This event will be held in-person at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) Seminar Room 1/2 and concurrently online via Zoom.
Online event page: link
If you are no longer able to attend, please release your ticket, so that someone else may attend. Spaces are limited. The event will be recorded.
