Sensible Life: A Micro-Ontology of the Image

We like to imagine ourselves as rational beings who think and speak, yet to live means first and foremost to look, taste, feel, or smell the world around us. But sensibility is not just a faculty: We are sensible objects both to ourselves and to others, and our life is through and through a sensible life.

This book, now translated into five languages, rehabilitates sensible existence from its marginalization at the hands of modern philosophy, theology, and politics. Coccia begins by defining the ontological status of images. Not just an internal modification of our consciousness, an image has an intermediate ontological status that differs from that of objects or subjects. The book's second part explores our interactions with images in dream, fashion, and biological facts like growth and generation. Our life, Coccia argues, is the life of images.

Author: Emanuele Coccia
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 02/29/2016
Pages: 126
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9780823267422

About the Author

Emanuele Coccia is an Assistent in Philosophy at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg.

Kevin Attell is Associate Professor of English at Cornell University. He is the translator of The Open: Man and Animal and State of Exception and co-translator of The Signature of All Things by Giorgio Agamben.