Abstract
This essay explores the ways in which hermeneutic philosophy has shaped current research on the body. Using the experience of health and illness to frame the discussion and drawing on major figures such as Wilhelm Dilthey, Hans Georg-Gadamer, and Martin Heidegger as well as a number of contemporary theorists, the aim of the essay is to show how hermeneutics challenges core naturalistic assumptions we have about the body by bringing our attention to the situated place of the body as it is lived. By focusing on the ‘lived-body’ (Leib) rather than the ‘corporeal body’ (Körper), hermeneutics illuminates the tacit, situated understanding we have of the world, how the experience of illness can shatter this understanding and transform our self-interpretations, and the extent to which our bodies and their various ailments make sense to us only through the public meanings we give to them.