The Concept of Body as the Nature We Ourselves Are

Why a Concept of the Body?

The demand for a concept—for a definition specifying what one means by a term (or, for a thing, what it actually consists of)—is a classical requirement of philosophy. As a rule, however, this demand can scarcely be satisfied, and there are good reasons for not wanting to satisfy it. For a definition is always a way of fixing something, and a concept is an intervention in the manifold diversity of things and phenomena that freezes them. The defense of the diversity of the particular and, to speak with Adorno, of the nonidentical is also an aim of phenomenology. The demand for a concept and the preservation of phenomena therefore appear to be in conflict with one another.

The idea of formulating a concept of the body seems to conflict, especially, with genetic phenomenology. For the basic methodological conviction of that discipline is that there is a diversity of ways in which the body manifests itself—depending on different modes of access to our complex somatic being as Leibkörper and on the ways in which human beings behave toward themselves. It follows, at the least, that there cannot be one concept of the body, so that the question as to the concept of the body becomes a question as to the particular justification of different concepts of the body. As far as such concepts exist, whether in everyday understanding or in philosophy, it would be necessary to demonstrate from which type of access, or from which self-relationship of human beings, the definitions derive their meaning. Such a demonstration might perhaps bring an end to unproductive discussions and theoretical controversies and strengthen our realization that what actually is at stake is precisely this relationship to ourselves. Beyond that, however, it would be desirable to form a concept of the body that not only determines the predicates of a particular type of bodily phenomena—and therefore remains within the cognitive—but also incorporates this self-relationship in the concept of the body itself. That would be, in Kierkegaard’s sense, an existential concept of the body.

Let us begin with Descartes. For Descartes the body (Körper) is res extensa: that is, what is essential to the body is really its volume. The body therefore manifests itself primarily by occupying a space and, as the case may be, displacing other bodies. However, Newton already pointed out that such a concept of the body does not even yield a satisfactory mechanism, and he therefore also ascribed forces to the body: first, inertia or mass as a vis insita and, second, weight, the reciprocal attraction of bodies. Viewed historically, this Cartesian concept of the body, in being applied to the body of the human being, has made possible a radical, and above all disenchanting, objectification of the body and has thus inaugurated modern medicine. Now, however, we must ask under which conditions we experience ourselves in such a way that the Cartesian concept of the body is adequate.

We have already given an answer to this question and have just repeated it once more: The Cartesian concept of the body has meaning to the extent that we objectify human bodies in the same way as other things and subject them to scientific methods. But that clearly is not the whole answer, for it takes for granted that we ourselves are and must be the body-thing thematized in this way. How other people see us cannot be a matter of indifference to us, and indeed we try, with mirrors or without them, to see ourselves as other people do. Yet the estranging glance does not estrange us from our body (Körper) entirely, for it is, after all, our body (Leib) that is being objectified in this way. Furthermore, we have to contend not only with the glances of others but also with other objects. Even for other objects—if I may put it so—we are also just objects, that is, mechanical entities, and we have come to terms with this. The rule that two bodies cannot occupy...