HEALTH AND HEALING: PERSONAL, SOCIAL, ENVIRONMENTAL
49TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL MERLEAU-PONTY CIRCLE
Wells Conference Center, University of Maine, Orono, ME
Co-directors: Susan Bredlau, Don Beith, and Kirsten Jacobson
Throughout his work, Merleau-Ponty conceives of the person as always existing in creative
communion with others and the natural world. This dynamic model of personhood in turn calls
for a dynamic understanding and approach to health and healing. Concepts such as embodied
subjectivity, intercorporeity, existential healing, habits that sustain or deny meaningful living,
our strange kinship with nonhuman others, chiasmic or symbiotic relationships, and
intersubjectivity, provide avenues for exploring human and nonhuman flourishing, for critiques
of practices or institutions that are detrimental to our health, and, ultimately, for radical
reflections on lived experiences of caring and healing at individual, communal, and global levels.
See complete program here: merleauponty.org/
