The discovery of lungfish (Dipnoi) in 1837 instantly became a zoological sensation. Because of their amphibian affinities, these fishes were generally considered a transitional form between aquatic vertebrates and tetrapods. Due to substantial morphological differences between recent lungfishes and early fossil forms of tetrapods this position was later questioned and the main focus switched to the coelacanth and its fossil relatives. However, the advent of genome analyses has reshaped our views. After 170 years of intensive research, the 6 species of dipnoans now indeed appear to be the closest living relatives of land vertebrates.
The article offers a systematic interpretation of the turn to embodiment in continental philosophy based on the distinction of two different lines of thought: the phenomenological and the ontological. The first of these, which involves the shift of the intensional structures of consciousness into embodied existence, is connected with a tendency to the spiritualisation of the body. The second line returns to the theme of bodily substance as the element of thinking which is endowed with its own causal activity: this line rejects any analogy between embodiment and transcendental subjectivity. In considering the first line, the article works with Husserlian motifs, including the adoption of an Aristotelian analogy of sense perception and the rational faculties, and it traces the development of these motifs up to the attempt at an erotic reduction in the work of J.-L. Marion. In considering the second line attention is given to the link between Deleuze’s conception of the body and Stoic ontology, and to Deleuze’s radicalisation of Spinoza’s conception of the structure of the body as a scheme that is co-extensive with the ideas of the human mind. The article also tackles the question of the connection between cogitative and bodily happening in Merleau-Ponty, in whose work we find elements of both the lines that we have described.
The introduction to this study describes the genesis of Vladislav Vančura’s novel The End of the Old Times (1934), which was based on a film script about Baron Munchausen. This is followed by an outline of its critical reception at the time and its historical background. It involves both the phenomenon of emigration from Russia after 1917 and the land reform carried out in Czechoslovakia from 1919 onwards. The core of the study is an analysis of Jan Mukařovský’s study of the novel, published in 1934 in the journal Listy pro umění a kritiku (Art and Criticism) and Mukařovský’s afterword to the fourth edition of The End of the Old Times, published in 1958. The author also considers both analysed texts in the context of the relevant literature.