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Chapter 4 Body

Although is a which seeks to emphasise rational and therefore appears to be a fundamentally “ based” , the concept of body is also fundamental to Stoicism in a number of ways. Stoics have inter- esting and at curious things to say about the body. The body is dealt with in Stoic literature in two main ways; firstly there is the “lived” body and how it impinges upon our way of in the . Epictetus and Seneca in particu- lar frequently allude to bodily in their writings. In addition, the body is discussed in Stoicism as a broader philosophical figure. In this sense, the body finds an important place within a philosophy that has a thoroughly materialist bent, connecting to Stoic as well as to ethical consider- ations concerning notions of fate and . Discourses of the body occur in Stoicism in a range of contexts, so one aim of this chapter will be to look at the body from some of these different perspec- tives, while also attempting to advance a general and coherent position on the body from a Stoic – or at least Stoic-informed – perspective. Below are some initial points that I shall expand upon:

Everything that exists is a body, and only bodies exist. Bodies are always changing. Following from the above, we do not have (ultimate) control over our bodies. As human , we “appropriate” or claim special ownership over our bodies, (in whatever state we find them), yet in a strict sense our bod- ies are not truly ours. We can use our bodies to generate affective which can be used to cultivate tranquillity of mind. The limit of a body does not exist as such; we are always exploring our limits. A body therefore is not predefined but is in the process of deter- mining itself.

My is not to demonstrate the above point by point, but rather to de- velop these points over the course of the chapter, and to keep them in mind throughout the discussion, with a view to drawing out implications for think- ing about the body in performance.

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Body 85

1 Mind-Body Dualism

In his book Psychophysical Acting: An Intercultural Approach After Stanislavski (2009), Phillip Zarrilli begins from the premise of a now pervasive view within the context of actor-training , that the actor must work to free herself from the mind-body dualism that has become entrenched in western culture and western thought. Zarrilli puts forward the following context:

When emerged as a separate discipline from philosophy in the nineteenth century, the of mind and the self were often con- sidered separate from the (s) of the physical body. This split re- flected the longer term Western binary dividing mind from body that so problematically crystallized in the mind-body dualism of the seven- teenth-century French philosopher René Descartes. zarrilli 2009: 13

In this context, Zarrilli identifies Stanislavski’s concept of the “psychophysical”­ – implying an equal to both psychology and physicality of the actor – as a radical move, but one that continues to divide subsequent practitioners who have perpetuated the “legacy” of Stanislavski, with some approaches “highly susceptible to some form of mind-body dualism” (Zarrilli 2009: 17). Bella Merlin has likewise sought to emphasise the psychophysical aspects of Stanislavski, arguing that what she terms “psycho-physical openness” is crucial to Stanislavski and developing his in a contemporary con- text (Merlin 2007: 24). An assumption within these and other positions/debates on actor training is that the legacy of Cartesian dualism continues to exert a powerful influence on contemporary thinking about the actor and the body. As both Merlin, Zar- rilli and others attest, psychophysical techniques are many and varied but a key underlying is the overcoming of Cartesian dualism and the integra- tion of the body into the creative work of the actor. While the concept of the psychophysical is developed in relation to theoretical positions and , from non-western practices and concepts to phenomenology and cognitive neuroscience, Stoic philosophy can also provide a useful point of refraction from which to think about these notions of the body. From the perspective of the mind-body issue, one can find a number of pas- sages in the Discourses of Epictetus in particular, which appear to suggest that there is indeed a dualism at work in Stoic understandings of the body. We see for example where Epictetus personifies Zeus in the cause of discovering what