The Problem of Embodiment: Some Contributions to a Phenomenology of the Body

ISBN-13: 9789401030168 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 306 str.

Richard M. Zaner

Opis

Early in the first volume of his Ideen zu einer reinen Phiinomeno- logie und phiinomenologischen Philosophie, Edmund Husserl stated concisely the significance and scope of the problem with which this present study is concerned. When we reflect on how it is that consciousness, which is itself absolute in relation to the world, can yet take on the character of transcendence, how it can become mundanized, We see straightaway that it can do that only by means of a certain participation in transcendence in the first, originary sense, which is manifestly the transcendence of material Nature. Only by means of the experiential relation to the animate organism does consciousness become really human and animal (tierischen), and only thereby does it achieve a place in the space and in the time of Nature. l Consciousness can become "worldly" only by being embodied within the world as part of it. In so far as the world is material Nature, consciousness must partake of the transcendence of material Nature. That is to say, its transcendence is manifestly an embodiment in a material, corporeal body. Consciousness, thus, takes on the characteristic of being "here and now" (ecceity) by means of experiential (or, more accurately, its intentive) relation to that corporeal being which embodies it. Accordingly, that there is a world for consciousness is a conse- quence in the first instance of its embodiment by 2 that corporeal body which is for it its own animate organism.

Spis treści

I: Marcel’s Theory of the Body as Mystery.- I: Introduction.- (1) Survey of Marcel’s Philosophy.- (2) The Genesis of the Problem in Marcel’s Thought.- (3) Methodological Considerations: The Problem of System.- II: The Theory of the Body-Qua-Mine as Mystery.- (1) My Body Qua Mine.- (a) The Qui-Quid Relation in Having.- (b) The “Within-Without” Relation.- (c) Having as “Before the Other qua Other”.- (2) The Meaning of Sentir.- (3) My Body as Etre-Au-Monde.- (4) My Body as the Repère of Existence.- III: Critical Remarks.- (1) The Relation Between “Feeling” and “Acting”.- (2) The Meaning of Bodily Acting.- (3) The Meaning of the “Urgefühl”.- II: Sartre’s Ontology of the Body.- I: Introduction.- (1) Sartre’s Ontology.- (2) The Theory of the Other.- II: The Ontological Dimensions of the Body.- (1) The Body as Being-For-Itself: Facticity.- (2) The Body-For-Others.- (3) The Third Ontological Dimension of the Body.- III: Critical Remarks.- (1) The Apprehension of the Body-For-Itself.- (2) The Body as a Center of Reference.- (3) The Problem of “Ontological Dimensions”.- (4) The Problem of the Other’s Body-For-Me, and My Body-For-The-Other.- III: Merleau-Ponty’s Theory of the Body-Proper.- I: Introduction.- (1) The Problem of “Form”.- (2) Merleau-Ponty’s “Phenomenology”.- (3) Merleau-Ponty’s “Existentialism”.- II: The Theory of the Body.- (1) The Body-Proper as an Instrument of “Knowledge”.- (a) The Body-Proper as “Sense-Giving”.- (b) The “Corporeal Scheme”.- (c) The “Intentional Arc”.- (2) The Body-Proper as Etre-Au-Monde.- (a) The Body as “Belonging-to” the World.- (b) The Body as “Being-to” the World.- (c) The Body as “Temporalité-engagée”.- (3) The Body-Proper as “Expression”.- (a) The Body as Sexual Being.- (b) The Body as “Expression”.- III: Critical Remarks.- (1) Methodological Problems.- (2) The Theory of the Body as “Knowledge”.- (a) First Thesis: The Body is a Latent Knowledge.- (b) Second Thesis: The Body is “tout établi”.- (c) Third Thesis: The Body as an Ambiguity.- (d) Fourth Thesis: Temporality.- (3) The Meaning of Merleau-Ponty’s Existentialism.- Epilogue.