The Second Body by Daisy Hildyard
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
-
Deep ecology
14 min read
Hildyard's concept of the 'second body' directly parallels deep ecology's philosophical framework that humans are not separate from nature but part of an interconnected whole. This movement provides the intellectual foundation for understanding the book's central argument about dissolving the boundary between self and ecosystem.
-
Gaia hypothesis
16 min read
The book's core concept—that the Earth is literally our 'second body'—closely mirrors James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, which proposes Earth functions as a self-regulating system. Understanding this scientific theory provides crucial context for Hildyard's philosophical extension of viewing the planet as an extension of individual bodies.
-
Anthropocene
12 min read
The article discusses how human self-conception has led to climate crisis and how individual bodies are 'implicated in the whole world.' The Anthropocene—the proposed geological epoch defined by human impact on Earth's systems—is the scientific framework underlying Hildyard's exploration of how personal and planetary bodies have become inseparable.
I keep unintentionally picking up books that turn out to be brilliant but devastating. This is what I get for not reading much about a book before I begin it. I prefer not knowing what I’m getting into — it’s so great to be surprised — but the downside is … not knowing what I’m getting into. That said, The Second Body by Daisy Hildyard was a painful read but also mind-alteringly great.
I had glanced at the description of The Second Body by Daisy Hildyard a number of times trying to understand what “the second body” means, but then I put the book away, not finding a quick and easy answer. When I finally committed to reading it, it turned out that there is no quick and easy answer because it takes the whole book to explain it.
The book is about bodies, identity, selfhood, and climate change. “The second body” means something like the global ecosystem that is also, in a very literal way, the body of every being on earth. Your first body is easy to understand — it’s the one you think of as “your body.” Your second body is the whole world that you might think you are separate from, but you are not. This is why she uses the phrase “second body” instead of calling it “the earth” or “the global ecosystem”: it’s easy to think of ourselves as separate from the earth; harder to maintain that separation when the earth is your own, literal body:
The second body is your own literal and physical biological existence — it is a version of you. It is not a concept, it is your own body. The language we have at the moment is weak: we might speak vaguely of global connections; of the emission and circulation of gases; of impacts. And yet, at some microscopic or intangible scale, bodies are breaking into one another.
We are not separate, and to think of ourselves as separate is an illusion — a very common one that is hard if not impossible to overcome, but an illusion nonetheless.
The book begins with Hildyard holding an injured pigeon in her hands. That pigeon is real and concrete, a body she can hold onto, a “first body” that is separate from her own “first body,” but whose life she can affect in immediate ways: she thinks about how she could
...This excerpt is provided for preview purposes. Full article content is available on the original publication.