"Suffering, Ineffability and Radical Bodily Doubt" and One Event This Week
On illness as a transformative experience.
Hello readers!
Enjoy the Sunday Read today! It’s from Crossing the Floods, which you can still buy as a digital copy for only £6.99 ($9.40 usd)! On Monday, don’t miss another in our “Philosophies of the South” series: “On Indigenous Inhumanities”!
______________________________
Sunday Read
“Suffering, Ineffability and Radical Bodily Doubt”: An essay by Havi Carel
Havi Carel explores the challenge of articulating and understanding suffering, focusing on illness as a deeply embodied and transformative experience. Drawing on phenomenology, she examines how illness profoundly reshapes a person’s relationship to their body, identity and environment. Carel reveals how illness disrupts the taken-for-granted certainty of bodily existence, leading to ‘bodily doubt’. This gives way to uncertainty, vulnerability and sometimes the collapse of agency itself.
Read it here, and feel free to comment on the article in the comments below!
______________________________
Monday Event: June 8th ~ 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm BST
Mark Minch-de Leon in conversation with Krushil Watene
Register here, free or by donation. Check out Mark Minch-de Leon’s book, Indigenous Inhumanities: California Indian Studies after the Apocalypse, and hope to see you Monday!
______________________________
Event Recordings:
You can always check out our YouTube channel to watch any webinars you miss.
Please like, subscribe, and/or comment on YouTube to help bring our channel to more people!
______________________________
Closing:
The Philosopher is unfunded and directly relies on your support to keep doing the work we do. The best way you can do this is becoming a supporter via Patreon, if you’re not already. This helps us to keep our events series free and to pay our contributors. Find out more and become a member. The second best way to help is to follow us on any one of our social media pages, and please like and share our posts!
Enjoy today’s essay!
Marie Snyder, Substack Manager




The concept of “bodily doubt” alone makes me want to read this essay. Thank you for sharing.