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Bodies, Gods and Other Imponderables: Cross-Cultural Metalogues

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Bodies, Gods and Other Imponderables

Cross-Cultural Metalogues

Geoffrey Lloyd and Aparecida Vilaça

172 pages, bibliog., index

ISBN  978-1-80758-041-4 $120.00/£92.00 / Hb / Published (October 2026)

eISBN 978-1-80758-042-1 eBook

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781807580414


View CartYour country: - edit Request a Review or Examination Copy (in Digital Format)Recommend to your LibraryAvailable in GOBI®

Reviews

This dialogue between a classical philosopher and an Amazonian anthropologist is remarkable. In exploring and contrasting ancient Greek philosophical and indigenous Amazonian conceptions of themselves and their worlds, it addresses fundamental questions about human perception and understanding of bodies and souls, dreams and myths, ways of life and death. Nicholas Jardine, University of Cambridge

I have the highest opinion of this work. It takes a common problem of anthropologists and historians alike, namely radical otherness, and subjects it to a rigorous examination in terms of specific themes in ancient and non-Western systems of knowledge and knowing. It takes us far beyond psychic unity to a more layered and reflective exposition about the human experience. Francesca Rochberg, University of California

Description

Through a dialogue between a philosopher and an anthropologist, one a specialist in ancient Greek and Chinese thought, the other in Amazonian Indigenous peoples, Geoffrey Lloyd and Aparecida Vilaça revise our understanding of beliefs and behaviours considered counter-intuitive in the Western world. These include ideas about the body and its antitheses, dreams, sickness, gods and the narratives and myths which are used to untangle these concepts. What is distinctive about the approach adopted here is that it poses radical questions about the nature of the problems themselves. This turns the study into a resource for the revision of many of our own current presuppositions.

Geoffrey Lloyd is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Philosophy and Science at the University of Cambridge. He was Master of Darwin College, Cambridge, from 1989 to 2000. Among his most notable publications are Magic, Reason and Experience (Cambridge University Press, 1979), and Cognitive Variantions (Oxford University Press, 2007).

Geoffrey Lloyd is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Philosophy and Science at the University of Cambridge. He was Master of Darwin College, Cambridge, from 1989 to 2000. Among his most notable publications are Magic, Reason and Experience (Cambridge University Press, 1979), and Cognitive Variantions (Oxford University Press, 2007).

Subject: Anthropology (General)Sociology


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