Hermeneutiek van het lichaam: Aangepaste en geredigeerde versie van de inaugurele rede ter acceptatie van de leerstoel Wijsgerige Antropologie en de grondslagen van het humanisme, aan de Universiteit Leiden, op maandag 12 december 2022

In this inaugural lecture, I argue that philosophical anthropology in the
twenty-first century should address questions about gender, race, sexual
orientation. The lecture concentrates on gender and argues for a notion of
gender (in Dutch ‘geslacht’) as a complex interaction between embodiment,
personal identity, and the way it is given meaning in the social world around
us. The implication is that transgender and cisgender identities are not
opposed to each other. I furthermore suggest that hermeneutics offers
the philosophical tools to consider these complex interactions. Firstly,
because in hermeneutics humans are considered as embedded in history,
language, culture. Secondly, because understanding the world entails selfinterpretation
and self-understanding. Thirdly, because starting points can
be found in hermeneutics for thinking about the specific self-interpretation
that is at play in the case of cis- and transgender people, namely the narrative
one.