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3 Introduction In the dawn of the modern era, philosophy was reinterpreted as the study of consciousness, and along with this move the body was cast into the side of the object, and hence pushed into the margins of philosophy. Descartes famously argued that the body is something completely different from mind, a particular thing standing over against the latter, and something that the mind could also well do without.1 Whereas the Cartesian tradition followed suit, the empiricist tradition proceeded in the opposite direction, and interpreted the subject of consciousness as a mundane being. As a consequence, rationalism ultimately developed into an absolute idealism and spiritualism, reducing the body to consciousness of the body, whereas empiricism eventually culminated in a type of naturalism that, on the contrary, reduced consciousness to the body as a material, worldly thing. However, it is rather symptomatic that, regardless of their remarkably different developmental directions, as to the notion of the body rationalism and empiricism did not end up offering an alternative to one another: despite the disagreement concerning the metaphysical and epistemological status of consciousness and reason, both lines of thought equally conceived the body as a thing of the objective world.2 Kantian philosophy, too, was seduced by this objectifying way of thinking. By investigating the general “conditions of possibility” of worldexperience , Kant thematized the ultimate a priori structures of consciousness and reoriented philosophy according to “transcendental” cognition . Yet, even though some of Kant’s early writings indicated wider possibilities,3 he never ended up constructing a general and concise argument about the constitutive, transcendental significance of embodiment or bodilyness. Instead, in hisCritiques he explicitly treated the body in terms of an external thing, and admitted, in a strikingly Cartesian manner, that “I distinguish my own existence, that of a thinking being, from other things outside me (to which also my body belongs).”4 The power of objectifying thought can hardly be exaggerated. Modern philosophy and science are strongly labeled by the peculiarity that the body is generally introduced as an empirical thing. The tendency to reify and objectify the body is rather curious, considering that it is only in exceptional cases that our body is actually experienced as a mere empirical thing or an object of consciousness. In our 4 I N T R O D U C T I O N normal everyday life we of course may once in a while become more or less explicitly aware of our own physical appearance. For example, when we are speaking in front of a large audience or addressing persons that we admire, our visual or auditory outlook may become thematic to ourselves . Similarly, when we are in pain, when we feel the “call of nature,” or when we see ourselves in the mirror, our conscious attention may turn toward a certain part of our body. In addition to these common experiences , there are pathological cases of schizophrenia and depression, for instance, in which a patient may experience her5 own body as a mere thing devoid of vitality and feeling. Yet, it is rather indisputable that this is not the way we usually experience ourselves. If, while walking, for instance , we become aware of our body as an objective thing, our experience of walking changes remarkably; our movements at once lose their naturalness, so that we become incapable of walking properly. From the fact that the aforementioned types of bodily experience are possible, one should not infer that all bodily experiences are generally or fundamentally characterized by self-objectification. In the light of experience, therefore, the tendency to discuss the body mainly in terms of an object for consciousness is indeed curious. To be sure, our body undoubtedly has empirical and objective dimensions to it, and theories that study the body in this manner are undeniably important and crucial in many regards. However, all theories that conceive the body merely, or fundamentally, as an empirical thing or an object of consciousness fail to account for how we normally, and most of the time, experience our own body, and all such theories are hence bound to remain philosophically insufficient and unsatisfactory. As far as experience is consulted, our body is not normally a mere object, which literally means something standing over against us. We never experience ourselves as disembodied minds who are in contact with things and other people only in a mediated manner, through a body. Accordingly, besides a theory of consciousness directed at the body (a theory already well covered in...

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