Beyond Binaries The Category of Body and Ontological Tripartition

Abstract

Dominant interpretations of Western philosophy have presented it as being epistemologically and ontologically binary, with a schism between what is cursorily called ideation and sensation, mind and matter, running through most of it, dividing it into two sets of dogmatic and non-penetrating schools. This rigid dichotomy is conveniently presented in the academic theat1ics of Platonic Realism versus Aristotelian Nominalism in the Graeco-Roman age, Cartesian Rationalism versus Lockean Empiricism after the Renaissance, ~d Ideal sm versus Materialism in the nineteenth century.