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The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies
Available for the first time in English!
Winner of the Prix Médicis Essai!
Marginalized by the scientific age with its metaphysical and philosophical systems, the lessons of the senses have been overtaken by the dominance of language and the information revolution.
Exploring the deleterious effects of the systematic downgrading of the senses in Western philosophy, Michel Serres - a member of the Académie Française and one of France's leading philosophers - traces a topology of human perception. Writing against the Cartesian tradition and in praise of empiricism, he demonstrates repeatedly, and lyrically, the sterility of systems of knowledge divorced from bodily experience.
The fragile empirical world, long resistant to our attempts to contain and catalog it, is disappearing beneath the relentless accumulations of late capitalist society and information technology. Data has replaced sensory pleasure, we are less interested in the taste of a fine wine than in the description on the bottle's label. What are we, and what do we really know, when we have forgotten that our senses can describe a taste more accurately than language ever could?
Winner of the Prix Médicis Essai!
Marginalized by the scientific age with its metaphysical and philosophical systems, the lessons of the senses have been overtaken by the dominance of language and the information revolution.
Exploring the deleterious effects of the systematic downgrading of the senses in Western philosophy, Michel Serres - a member of the Académie Française and one of France's leading philosophers - traces a topology of human perception. Writing against the Cartesian tradition and in praise of empiricism, he demonstrates repeatedly, and lyrically, the sterility of systems of knowledge divorced from bodily experience.
The fragile empirical world, long resistant to our attempts to contain and catalog it, is disappearing beneath the relentless accumulations of late capitalist society and information technology. Data has replaced sensory pleasure, we are less interested in the taste of a fine wine than in the description on the bottle's label. What are we, and what do we really know, when we have forgotten that our senses can describe a taste more accurately than language ever could?
364 pages, Paperback
First published October 23, 1985
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About the author
Michel Serres
199 books214 followersMichel Serres was a French philosopher, theorist and author.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 25, 2012
I confess that I don't always know what Serres is on about. His thought just keeps expanding -- seemingly outward, but then you notice the lattice work of internal connections building within -- into a complex philosophical poetry. It's a joy to read his work and marvel at what he comes up with, without feeling burdened to figure out a way to "use" it.
October 22, 2018
Serres expertly dismantles the hegemony of vision in western sciences. One should always remember the victory of Hermès - infiltrating messenger - over Argus Panoptes!
December 11, 2022
Read part of Theory class.
This is one of those books that straddle the line between philosophy and literary essay - and leaves one confused about the merits of it in either domain.
I personally think it is much more worth reading as an aesthetic experience of journeying through various senses with a variety of literary and philosophical landmarks on the way than an actual philosophical argument.
In case one is interested in the philosophical argument, I wrote this in my notes:
In The Five Senses, Michel Serres ambitiously counters the project of Cartesianism and rationalism with his alternative of a sensual phenomenology. This book is fundamentally based on the body, and bodily sensations as a way to reach knowledge about the world. Serres makes his task explicit here: “My discourse is scientific and at odds with epistemology; it breaks with two millennia of method. Or rather, this old fiction is saturated with a different, incredible kind of knowledge. New knowledge. It is not fiction and not a true story I seek, but the exodic discourse or, more exactly, the entertainment, the diverting, diversionary path of most cunning Ulysses who had in his baggage all of the twists and turns of the new science, the theory of blind knowledge, obscure evidence, evidence hidden by several centuries of method” (261). Serres is trying to reinvent a scientific discourse - one that is not based on method, as a linear line between point A and point B, but on a more immersive and tangible path that can not be clearly traced. In contrast to the Cartesian path, Serres proposes the Odyssean journey, which is “a long, winding, intricate, brightly-coloured path” (263).
This is one of those books that straddle the line between philosophy and literary essay - and leaves one confused about the merits of it in either domain.
I personally think it is much more worth reading as an aesthetic experience of journeying through various senses with a variety of literary and philosophical landmarks on the way than an actual philosophical argument.
In case one is interested in the philosophical argument, I wrote this in my notes:
In The Five Senses, Michel Serres ambitiously counters the project of Cartesianism and rationalism with his alternative of a sensual phenomenology. This book is fundamentally based on the body, and bodily sensations as a way to reach knowledge about the world. Serres makes his task explicit here: “My discourse is scientific and at odds with epistemology; it breaks with two millennia of method. Or rather, this old fiction is saturated with a different, incredible kind of knowledge. New knowledge. It is not fiction and not a true story I seek, but the exodic discourse or, more exactly, the entertainment, the diverting, diversionary path of most cunning Ulysses who had in his baggage all of the twists and turns of the new science, the theory of blind knowledge, obscure evidence, evidence hidden by several centuries of method” (261). Serres is trying to reinvent a scientific discourse - one that is not based on method, as a linear line between point A and point B, but on a more immersive and tangible path that can not be clearly traced. In contrast to the Cartesian path, Serres proposes the Odyssean journey, which is “a long, winding, intricate, brightly-coloured path” (263).
August 23, 2020
I'm abandoning after reading 2 of the 5 sections.
It is full of clever word play and images, and draws links across the whole of European culture (but no wider than that). The insistence on seeing everything thru the prism of Greek myth is tiresome.
Maybe I'll pick it up later. It is distracting and light-weight amusement. A divertissement. But it all seems rather pointless and detached.
It is full of clever word play and images, and draws links across the whole of European culture (but no wider than that). The insistence on seeing everything thru the prism of Greek myth is tiresome.
Maybe I'll pick it up later. It is distracting and light-weight amusement. A divertissement. But it all seems rather pointless and detached.
May 27, 2021
I love his style of writing, it's beautiful, informative, seemingly chaotic and unfocused yet produces strong arguments.
Read
October 21, 2024read excerpts
March 12, 2025
Incredibly beautiful and extremely difficult
July 6, 2025
Best book I’ve ever read
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews