Bodies, Gods and Other Imponderables: Cross-Cultural Metalogues

A dialogue between a philosopher and an anthropologist, one a specialist in ancient Greek and Chinese thought, the other in Amazonian Indigenous peoples. Lloyd and Vilaça revise our understanding of ideas about the body and its antitheses, dreams, sickness, gods, and the narratives and myths which are used to untangle these concepts. 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.