Chaire internationale de philosophie contemporaine de l’Université Paris 8
Séminaire 2025-2026

Elettra STIMILLI
(Università degli Studi "La Sapienza" di Roma)
The Reasons of Bodies and the Philosophical Discourse

Mercredi 12h-14h (8 séances)
Université Paris 8 | Campus de Saint-Denis
2 rue de la Liberté, 93200 Saint-Denis (M° Saint-Denis Université)
1ère séance : Mercredi 4 mars 2026.

Bodies are all too often considered to be exclusively biological domains, but they have always been the sites of theoretical and political conflict. This course aims to identify the conceptual framework within which bodies feature in modern philosophical discourse.
Throughout much of Western cultural history, bodies have been viewed as a means of reproducing life and as a means of labour, considered to be part of a ’natural’ order. The course will focus on the role of ’means’ in the philosophical exploration of the purposes of reason, examining some classical texts by Kant, Hegel and Heidegger, as well as on the ’utopian’ condition of bodies as described by Foucault.
The question that will be addressed is whether the concept of ’means’ both reveals and conceals bodies.
This will open up a field of experience in which bodies are understood not simply as instruments for purposes outside themselves that sanction their subordinate nature, but as non-instrumental means of new forms of social reproduction and alternative ways of living.
The course will be held in English, will begin in the first week of March 2026 and will take place on Wednesdays from 12:00 to 14:00 for eight lessons.

Bibliography :
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement. Translated by James Creed Meredith and edited by Nicholas Walker. Oxford University Press, 2007 : “Introduction” and “Appendix : Theory of the Method of Teleological Judgement”.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Science of Logic. Edited and translated by George di Giovanni. Cambridge University Press, 2010 : “Teleology”, pp. 651-669.
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. State University of New York Press, 2010 : pp. 37-211.
Michel Foucault, “The Utopian Body.” In Sensorium : Embodied experience, technology, and contemporary art. MIT Press, 2006.
Elettra Stimilli, Philosophy of Means. Toward a new politics of bodies, Fordham University Press (Forthcoming) : Handouts will be provided during the lessons.