Michela Marzano analyses the cult of the body beautiful

The French philosopher Michela Marzano, has coordinated a 'Dictionary of the body'. She explains this work in an interview conducted by Geneviève Simon. "The idea was to gather about me a certain number of people who are already working on the body and to unite them around a unique project: an attempt to consider the body as a prism for reading today's society and a certain amount of uneasiness that characterises it. ... There exists a real cult of the body, but few people realise that the body we are talking about is an ideal body. The image of the body is proposed as a target everyone can reach although, as an ideal, it is unattainable. We also wanted to show that today we still have yet to extract ourselves from an on-going characteristic of the history of thinking: a dualism between body and mind. As a consequence of this opposition, many philosophers and intellectuals consider that soul, thought and reflection count more than the body, perceived as an obstacle - from an ideological point of view - to attaining knowledge and virtue."

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