Idealism and Corporeity

In a way, the problem of the body in Husserl' s writings is relatively straightfo r ward: it is an exercise in faithful description and elaboration of a sense or mean ing, that of the "lived body," using the tools and methods of intentional analysis. What is to be described is nothing exotic, but a recognizable, familiar element of experience; further, it is not something limited to any special type of experience, but is ever-present, whether it is in the background or the center of attention. Thus the lived body is, in a way, the most mundane of topics in phenomenology, to be du1y noted as a matter of course--of course we should include the body in the analysis of lived space; of course the body is an element in the consciousness of other persons. Along with the obviousness of the task is the impression that, at least at the outset, the problem of the body does not appear to tax the resources of intentional analysis, forcing us to raise critical questions about the scope and limits of phenomenological philosophy. There is nothing extreme about the problem of the body-it demands neither that we discern structures of the end most interior of consciousness, as does the study of "internal time conscious ness," nor does it calion us to fix the sense of the normativity that constitutes the "logic" of the world by grounding it in an absolute foundation.

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What is meant by body' in Husserl's phenomenology? br/Body' is a thing that is alive' oranimated' (embeseelt/em). In Husserl, this concept covers a wide range of phenomena. It is the condition for the possibility of the event of the arrival of someone and my being in the position to meaningfully announce this presence. It is as ensouled' that theI' speaks and is spoken to. To be without soul' means to be separated from the world and from other, incarnate beings. br/ But why rely on the concept ofsoul' to understand such phenomena? Is this not a reprise of a metaphysics of the soul, one that posits the mental' as a unique substance, an invisible mover of things? br/ This essay argues that the problem of the body is of central importance for Husserl's emtranscendental idealism/em. It is the key to the sense of human being as, despite itsworldliness', something transcendent with respect to the world, thus something `spiritual'.

Contenu
One Alterity and Otherness: The Problem of the Body in the Cartesian Meditations.- The Alterity of the Ego and the Otherness of the World.- The Peculiar Epoche of CM §44: The I As Its Own.- Inside the I.- The Dissemination of Ownness: Appresentation, Pairing (Paarung), and Expression.- Outline of the Phenomenological Ontology of the Body.- Two Body as Res Extensa.- The Extension of Perception, The Location of Sensation.- The Phenomenological Formulation of the Problem: Comparison to Kant and Brentano.- Perspective: The Distance of Things and the Sensation of Place.- The Place of Sensation.- The Pre-Phenomenal Synthesis of the Body.- Three Body as Res Materialis.- Phenomenology and the Problem of Causality.- The Enigma of the Materiality of the Body (Leib).- The Normal and the Suspicious.- The Reality of the Soul.- Four Body As Res Temporalis.- The Dependency of Consciousness and the Spirit (Geist).- The Ego Question.- Objectifying Acts and the Transcendence of the World.- The Ich-Pol.- Habits and the I.- The Second Reality.- Conclusion.- Notes.- References.