Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul (Hardcover)

by Roy Porter (Author), Simon Schama (Author) "Who are we?..." (more)
Key Phrases: conscious selfhood, corporeal soul, nosce teipsum, Erasmus Darwin, William Godwin, Royal Society (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The distinguished historian died shortly after completing this sequel to his monumental Enlightenment (2000). Flesh examines "the triangle of the moral, the material and the medical" in 18th-century Britain. The Reformation's ouster of church dogma brought with it a wave of speculation about the nature of physical and rational being-most importantly Locke's innovative concept of conscious selfhood that dispensed with the immortal soul. In its place arose a dialectic between internal and external identity that focused on life before rather than after death, a conception of self that has remained a foundation of Western thought. Porter considers the many questions and clashes involved in that conception in what he calls a "gallery of contrasting yet interlocking studies" divided into sections. The first concentrates on the mental and moral self as advanced by such influential literary figures as Shaftesbury, Swift and Johnson; another takes up the physical and social self in contemporary preoccupations with mortality, health, manners, race and madness. Most of these discussions feature significant contemporary figures, often in unfamiliar guises: Dr. Johnson on depression, Adam Smith on astronomy, Byron on the state of his teeth. Others are memorable but unremembered, like George Cheyne, a proponent of healthy diet whose own weight at one time reached more than 470 pounds. These studies of individuals are augmented with a wealth of information about health trends, child-rearing fads and hygiene scares that bear a remarkable resemblance to our own times. The final section pursues the self into the Romantic era, when social science and poetics "smudged" the problematic boundaries between inner and outer being with new distinctions between individual and collective experience. Porter's theme is the puritan doctrine of human perfectibility and progressive economic, social and somatic models it spawned. With humor and enthusiasm, he combines a terrific fund of scholarship, canny observation and intelligent synthesis.
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From The New England Journal of Medicine
Roy Porter died too young. One of the most distinguished and prolific medical historians of the day, Porter had recently taken early retirement from the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London when, in the spring of 2002, he collapsed while riding his bicycle and died at the age of 55. This book, alas, will be his last. (Figure) And what a book it is. Porter takes us on a romp through the long 18th century, exploring ideas about health and disease, ruminations about the soul and what awaits us after death, reflections on the declining role of religion, and conceptions of the relationship between the human mind and the body in which it resides. After an early chapter devoted to the time of Hippocrates and Galen, this lively and erudite book centers on English sources, both familiar and little known, from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the rise of Romanticism in the 1800s. Readers should not expect a single, linear path of argument. Instead, Porter combines a broad set of questions with fine-grained detail about the day-to-day world his many subjects embodied in some instances and created in others. He gives us particularly insightful readings of autobiographies and first-person novels that are "preoccupied with the relations between the body and the consciousness belonging to it." His careful, innovative analysis of a wide range of sources alerts us not only to what is present but also to what has been omitted. Even though there is an 80-page, double-columned bibliography, Porter's death meant that his editors were not able to locate the precise editions from which the numerous quotations were taken. There is much here for readers of the Journal. We learn about the creation of dividing lines that today are taken for granted; some founders of modern science, for example, tried hard to prove the supernatural through science. We read about debates over whether the mind can exist without the body and how the mind can divert attention from the ailments of the flesh. Porter gives us much detail (perhaps more than some readers would want) about the travails of the flesh in the 18th century. The Earl of Shaftesbury was troubled at the dawn of that century by the "squalor of snot," and he debated with Bernard de Mandeville, a physician-satirist who grappled willingly with the realities of the flesh and its many emanations. But both men, like others of the day, put aside the religious emphasis on managing the body that had characterized earlier learned discussions. As religion receded in relevance, clergymen gave way to physicians at the bedside in the management of death. Some aspects of the world that Porter describes presage issues and customs of the 21st century. Santorio Santorio, who did early work on the thermometer, lived in a balance machine, weighing his intake and output, measuring, measuring everything. He was followed a century later by Lord Byron, an exercise fanatic who mastered his body through a regimen so rigorous that not an ounce of excess flesh remained. Corpulence became undesirable, the slim look became popular, and long before our current understanding of obesity took root, a cult of thinness had developed, from which we have not yet emerged. Eighteenth-century critics shared our contemporary concern about overpopulation. William Godwin trusted individuals to solve the problem, believing that as medicine enabled people to live forever, sexual urges would abate and reproduction would thus cease. Perhaps the most poignant part of this book comes in Porter's discussion of the great historian and autobiographer Edward Gibbon, author of the classic, six-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon suffered from a whole host of painful and obvious ailments. But those ailments were merely of the body, subordinate to the life of the enlightened mind. Gibbon did not believe in an immortal soul, but he hoped that his Memoirs would mean that "one day his mind [would] be familiar to the grandchildren of those who are yet unborn." As Porter observed, "His mind will thus live on" through his immortal words. One could make the same observation for the words of Roy Porter, and for that we all should be very thankful. Joel D. Howell, M.D., Ph.D.
Copyright © 2004 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 660 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (February 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393050750
• ISBN-13: 978-0393050752
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #465,555 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Read, May 10, 2004

By A Customer

I cannot believe no one has reviewed Roy Porter's last book. It reminds me of the Metaphysical Club, but it is perhaps a bit more wry. I enjoyed it thoroughly and have added it to my collection of books on the Enlightenment. It was simultaneously funny and intellectual stimulating. Also, Porter makes the subject of the Enlightmentment exciting.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, But..., September 7, 2004

By	Thomas M. Sullivan (Lake George, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Having come late to Porter, but immediately smitten by his wonderful writing, I have read several of his books and enjoyed them all, particularly his "social" and medical works. But this one has me a bit stymied. The subject matter is facially interesting, changing perceptions and characterizations of "body and soul" over the course of the Enlightenment. But Porter's execution struck me as a bit too ponderous to consistently maintain reader interest. When I take up a History book, I generally "can't put it down" if the subject matter is of at least some interest to me and the writing is better than passable. Well, the late Dr. Porter's writing is as good as I've ever come across, but I must say I found it all too easy to put this book down. Indeed, I had pretty much given up on it, but then decided to go back and finish it. I'm glad I did, but the exercise only validated in my mind that the book wandered far too much for my taste and seemed to lack a cohesiveness both atypical and unworthy of Porter. But if you're a Porter fan, I suggest you read it anyway, if only to be reminded what a wonderful writer he was. I only wish his last work were among his best.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great Enlightenment History..., November 29, 2005

By	Warner Todd Huston "History Minded" (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Flesh in the Age of Reason is wonderful. I mean, I cannot give this book enough credit. One can easily find books on various aspects of Enlightenment period philosophy. Adams, Hume, Locke, et al., are easy to find. But, put into context with their day, their battles with each other, and the growth of their ideas in that context is something not as easily found.

Roy Porter passed away just after finishing and publishing this work and it is a fitting end to his career. In fact, in retrospect, it seems a fitting exploration for one on the verge of death himself. Was Porter, aware that the end of his days was approaching, was he seeking to locate that final truth? I cannot say, but he certainly gave the rest of us who are still shuffling about this mortal coil a great resource to assist us in our own search.

This book neatly "historicizes" the ebb and flow of Enlightenment philosophy and gives us all something to think about.

Thanks Roy Porter and R.I.P.