Abstract
In this 1981 manuscript for a talk, Elias criticises the supposed ‘rediscovery’ of the body by sociologists of that period. He shows that it represents a revival of the old philosophical dualisms of ‘mind–body’ and ‘body–soul’, which in turn had their roots in the religious aspiration to eternal life. Instead, Elias describes these aspects as inseparable poles of the human capacity of self-control, ranging from more deliberate to more automatic forms.
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Notes
- 1.
When writing in English, Elias himself never used the word ‘psychic’. In German, the difference in the meaning of psychisch and psychologisch corresponds to that between ‘social’ and ‘sociological’. Unfortunately, in English, the word ‘psychic’ long ago acquired a different meaning: ‘relating to or denoting faculties or phenomena that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, especially involving telepathy or clairvoyance’. In consequence, in English the word psychological came to be used to refer both to mental phenomena and to the academic discipline that studies them. In the Collected Works, the editors therefore chose (somewhat reluctantly) to translate psychisch as ‘psychological’.—eds.
- 2.
In the typescript, Elias wrote ‘…tomy’, apparently not being able to recall the correct term by the time of writing, but he was obviously referring to lobotomy.—eds.
- 3.
For Elias’s critique of conceptual Zustandsreduktion or ‘process-reduction’, see What is Sociology? (Dublin: UCD Press, 2012 [Collected Works, vol. 5]), chapter 4, pp. 106–17.—eds.
- 4.
See Elias, The Symbol Theory (Dublin: UCD Press, 2011 [Collected Works, vol. 13]).—eds.
- 5.
See Elias, ‘On nature’, in Essays I: On the Sociology of Knowledge and the Sciences (Dublin: UCD Press, 2009 [Collected Works, vol. 14]), pp. 53–65.—eds.
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Norbert Elias. (2018). The ‘Rediscovery’ of the Body. In: Haut, J., Dolan, P., Reicher, D., Sánchez García, R. (eds) Excitement Processes. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-14912-3_12
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