Experimenting risks
Natalie Depraz
The need to replace the risk of the relation with the security of the possession. (Giannaras 1992: 26, author’s translation)
. Introduction
Experimenting life is experimenting risks. There is a growing tendency today to “overprotect” living beings against any possible danger, thus wishing to leave no more space for uncertainty. Yet, you will never be able to eliminate all dan-ger, so that you will in fact create more danger by wanting to protect the living being from all danger than you would if you did not protect it at all. Indeed, an overprotected person is over-dependent on the protecting other and he or she ends up in danger in every situation where he or she will have to make decisions on his or her own. On the basis of such a Nietzsche-inspired understanding of life, I would like to suggest the hypothesis of a strong identity between risk and embodiment. Being embodied is being able to take risks, that is, being open and exposed to the unknown.
Now, when we speak and think of embodiment we usually have in mind human and/or animal living beings, because we are used to defining embodied living beings as moving beings. Indeed, movement has recently become in the phenomenological tradition (even though it can also be traced back to Aristo-tle) the main feature characterizing living beings (cf. today Sheets-Johnstone 1991; Barbaras 1999; Sheets-Johnstone, this volume). In contrast with Husserl who always – as early as in 1901 – stressed perception as being our basic activity as subjects, although kinesthesis was also very early – in 1907 – put to the fore as the primordial experience of embodied subjects, that is, as Leiber,
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Natalie Depraz
Ponty was the first among phenomenologists to radicalize Husserl’s view, so as to identify living beings with their ability to move, that is, to be movement. In that respect, he considers motor activity as having a primacy over perception.
As a consequence, if a living being is a moving being, it means that the best way to protect it is not to prevent him or her from moving but, on the contrary, to help him or her moving at best, along its own drive-thrusts.
Within such a framework we would like to distinguish between two ways or modes of being embodied. On the one side, the risky way of being, on the other side, the secure way of being. Let us say first and foremost that with these modes we do not have to do with substantial realities, that is, with modes of nature, but with existential/personal actions/tendencies, which means that they are not once for all the givens of an individual but can each time be transformed and improved. In other words, each of us is inhabited by several potentialities, with a primacy given to the one or to the other, and our embodiment therefore is an interesting mixture of security/programmation and risk/surprise. The question then is: how are these two modalities of our embodiment articulated in every singular living being?
Let us try to provide descriptive phenomenological and cognitive prag-matic translations for such a modal polarity of embodiment. (1) On the phe-nomenological level, Leib represents the mode of the risk, while Körper corre-sponds to the secure modality of embodiment. Leib indeed contains in itself the irreducible opening of life (Leben) as an indeterminate flowing, whereas Körper is the object-closed side of the body as a determined reality. An opened body involves some degree of uncertainty and hesitation, that is, of freedom; a closed physical surface somehow provides comfort and easiness but also means objec-tification, namely potential alienation (cf. Depraz 1997). (2) On the pragmatic level, body schema as well as body image respectively correspond to familiarity and habituality on the one side, and to the opened directedness of intentional-ity on the other side (cf. Gallagher 1986). Even though they are both inhabited by a certain interplay of inner plasticity, both pragmatic bodies remain reg-istered under the label of security. Indeed, they show dimensions of bodily experience which are structured by the horizon of the near world and by the presence of close others. In that respect, such world- and otherness-structures contribute to reassure each time the own stability of my bodily existence. On the contrary, a risky pragmatic body would be permeated at each instant by the experience of the risk of non-being, that is, by its being open every time to the imminent possibility of dying. In that respect, life is such a challenge and it be-comes quite adequate to identify the phenomenal Leib with the very modality of the risk.
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More precisely, there is some phenomenal evidence for contending that the phenomenological lived body (Leibkörper) has clear affinities with the body schema insofar as both integrate their own sedimented experiences and de-velop them as know-hows; on the contrary, the living flesh-body (Fleischleib) understood as a pure stream corresponds to a practical body experiencing a radical unceasing mobility.1Only such a radical streaming bodily mobility seems to be relevant in order to describe the experience of our body as intrinsi-cally inhabited, permeated by risks and besides genuinely living through them.
We would like to use these two modes of living we have just mentioned (risk/security) as methodological tools in order to engage in a renewed de-scription of animal embodiment in contrast with and in relation to vegetal embodiment. Contrary to the current view that tends to identifying animal embodiment with the mode of risk and vegetal embodiment with the mode of security, we would like to suggest here a more complex analysis of the general experience of embodiment.
. Animal adventure and vegetal rest
Daily observing animals and plants provides an obvious understanding of their differentiated embodiment. The former are characterized by their motor activ-ity whereas the latter seem to lead a static life. You put plants in your home and you do not expect them to move by themselves; you buy a dog and you know that you will have to go outside with it at least twice a day; or you walk in the countryside and you see birds and insects flying while flowers and trees are moved by the wind and hurt by rain. Basically, in order to carry on living, ani-mals need to go and get their food, either by killing other aniani-mals, by searching for already killed animals, or by looking for plants, as it is attested by the pur-chasing and nomadic life of anthropoids. Instead of looking for food, plants wait for water to nourish them and draw food from the soil via their roots.
So it seems that the classical distinction between animal mobility/vegetal immobility is highly relevant and can also be translated into the difference be-tween activity and passivity. It was for example remarkably presented by Von Uexküll as early as in the twenties in Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen – Bedeutungslehre (Von Uexküll 1956).
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. Animality is mobility
Looking back at the etymology is a good indication of such an equivalence:
“animal” comes from the Latin anima, which means “soul” and furthermore
“breathing”, that is, the innate and initial life-drive of the living being at its very birth. Breathing makes the communication between the inside and the outside possible, and opens up the possibility of sensory knowledge of oneself and of the world.2From the very beginning of life, animals are moving their lips in order to suck the milk of their mother; soon they are grasping everything in order to touch and taste it; a bit later they move their legs and feet, sit and crawl, before standing and walking. All these movements are, beyond the practical need for feeding oneself, also an eminent source of knowledge.
A majority of authors situated at the crossroads between biology and phe-nomenology advocates such a definition of living beings through their mobil-ity. (1) Von Uexküll early stressed the mode of being of animals as eminently structured by their mobile relationship with the environment. In contrast with both introspectionism, which exclusively deals with the inner mental abilities of the lived body, and behaviorism, which is only interested in the external behavior of the animal in its world and considers their mental states as an inaccessible “black box”, von Uexküll chooses the medium descriptive way of the animal way of being. The image of the “intentional arc” thus suggests an understanding of sensory motor activity as a phenomenal recurrent circular-ity between the body and its surrounding world. Unlike atomism, which sees sensations as local impressions affecting the body from outside and punctu-ally printing themselves on it, von Uexküll’s view is highly holistic, integrating lived body, conscious self and living world in a plastic unified bodily struc-turing. (2) In his turn, Merleau-Ponty, in the thirties-fifties, strongly relies on Husserl’s new conception of intentionality as a dynamical linkage between con-sciousness and world, but he questions the Husserlian primacy of perception in order to give a more material account of our embodiment. He therefore rad-icalizes Husserl’s analysis of kinesthetic embodiment and literally grounds per-ception upon movement. In his view, perper-ception remains formal and too much cognitive-oriented, while motor activity opens up the realm of our kinesthetic sensory roots and relates ourselves far more to our most archaic embodiment.
(3) In the sixties, Hans Jonas goes one step further in his book The Phenomenon of life by situating mobility at the very origin of life. According to him, unicel-lular beings are always already inhabited by a primordial thrust that provides them with the ability to self-develop. In that respect, living (moving) precedes knowing (perceiving). The whole evolutionary process is nourished by such
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an initial drive of living, which provides beings with the originary energy to search for new territories, to discover other beings and to welcome unforeseen events. More than instinct, which calls for a mere physical and mechanistic understanding of such a driving thrust of life, we would like to name this pro-cess “desire”3or, to use a Greek word, “eros”. (4) In a sense, Francisco Varela’s whole path of thinking offers us a remarkable synthesis of these three major phenomenological steps towards the understanding of the “radical embodi-ment” of a living being. (a) From von Uexküll, he draws interesting views in order to conceptualize with Maturana his auto-poiesis-model, more precisely the notion of structural coupling (estructural acoplamiento) (cf. Maturana &
Varela 1973/1980; cf. also Varela, Maturana & Uribe 1974); still he always ques-tions von Uexküll’s holistic (nicely ideal) understanding of the living to the benefit of the precarious existence of the latter. Thus Varela considers reduc-tionism and holism as two complementary (but also one-sided) views on the living system (cf. Varela & Goguen 1977). (b) From Merleau-Ponty, he draws a first adequate phenomenology of the lived body. He develops, thanks to the Buddhist meditation practice, the dimension of training inherent in our being embodied, what he calls “enaction”, as opposed to any representational concep-tion (cf. Varela, Thompson & Rosch 1989). (c) Inspired by Jonas, he enriches and radicalizes his understanding and experience of embodiment, thanks to the idea of the precariousness and preciousness of life and the potential im-minence of dying (cf. Jonas 1966, first essay: “Life, Death and the Body in the Theory of Being”).
If he had had the opportunity to write further, he probably would have ar-ticulated more precisely the desiring erotic dimension as an intrinsic part of his definition of a living being. Still, one question remains open in Varela’s thrust, and it has to do with the radical alterity of the other. It seems that his under-standing of the coupling of self and other tends to dialectalize the relationship with the other so as to give primacy to the circularity of self and other over the singularity of the other itself. Besides, his stress on the autonomous identity of the self-organizing living being leaves too little room for the alterity of the con-tingency of non-being. Varela’s optimism is little thwarted by his interest for natural drive and his consequent criticism of performant adaptation. In that respect, radical embodiment would claim more room for the indeterminacies of world-events and for the passivity of the welcoming of the other.
The whole growth of the animal (both individual-ontogenetic and phylo-genetic-evolutionary) leads it to walk and to move towards others. It thus seems to us that the definition of living beings as moving beings needs to be more pre-cisely articulated by adding to it its originary relational component. Giannaras,
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a contemporary Greek philosopher, uses a superb word for describing such a desire-founded quest for our relationship to otherness: in his book Variations sur le cantique des cantiques he speaks of “eros”.
It is no doubt in eros that the natural and the relational effect converge and accomplish themselves. That is the reason why eros also confirms alterity, and reveals the subject. It is the supreme tension of existence, the thread that per-mits to leave the enigma of mortality. If my inner conscious self, or our soul, emerges and affirms itself in eros, then it only exists as relation. When shall the last resistance against the plenitude of the relation, [to wit the] corporeal and psychic resistance of individual autonomy disappear [. . .]?
(Giannaras 1992: 21, author’s translation) Erotic desire therefore seems to be the genuine experience of living beings.
Being embodied is being related.
In that respect, the sexual intercourse is an eminent place where the re-lationship with the other is continually intensified, re-asserted but also ques-tioned and therefore renewed: you meet the other each time with the possible risk of losing him or her. Instead of taking the relationship for granted, you will each time compel the other to be there in a renewed way. Each new encounter is the recreation of a whole new experience.
. Vegetality is security
On the contrary, the life of plants is in principle a motionless life. To begin with, and also to provide a transition with what was just argued with regard to reproduction, plants are well-known for their non-sexual reproduction, that is, for living in a parthenogenetic way. It fundamentally means that their way of living is a self-assertion of their own identity without any alter-ing. Repro-ducing oneself is repeating oneself without transforming oneself thanks to and through the other. At first sight, such a solipsistic functioning seems to be the most secure way of living. The absence of confrontation with the other, even of sheer relationship is the best way (so it seems) not to be in danger of losing one’s own identity, that is, to get altered and hence lost.
Plants therefore lead such a secure life. According to von Uexküll, the de-velopment of plants is gradual and linked to a specific place. The author takes the example of the acorn of the oak: “from this germ various cells shall come out, some of which form the underground roots, and others the branches and their roof of leaves, according to a rule of development characteristic to the oak” (Von Uexküll 1956: 115, all quotations are translated from the French by
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the author). So the oak uses the place where it is in order to grow without hav-ing to move itself. In The Phenomenon of Life, Jonas remarkably shows how plants develop such a great ability.
The division between immediate and mediate environment-relation coincides with that between plants and animals and must thus be related to the basic difference in their modes of metabolism. By its ability to synthesize inorganic matter directly into organic compounds the plant is enabled to draw its suste-nance from the ever-ready mineral supply of the soil, while the animal has to depend on the unassured presence of highly specific and nonpermanent or-ganic bodies. Furthermore, the intake of solid food which the animal mode of nutrition requires as against the mere osmotic absorption of dissolved nutri-ments by plants, involves the interposition of an auxiliary, “mechanical” stage (of conveying, shredding, etc.) before the direct, chemical stage of metabolic appropriation. On these counts the plant shows a superiority rather than a de-ficiency in comparison with animals. But the possession of this one power of direct synthesis, and the sufficiency which it affords, are the very reason for the absence of those other features which the animals were constrained to evolve on the basis of their more precarious mode of metabolism. (Jonas 1966: 103) Or again: “In terms of mere biological safety, the advantages of animal over plant life are highly questionable, and in any case they are bought at a high price.” (Jonas 1966: 106)
So first the vegetal life is characterized by a stability linked to its assured way of getting food: directly from the inorganic soil. In short, food is always there, you do not have to worry about it. Besides, with plants the appropriation of food is always direct, while it takes some time for animals. Immediacy and ever-presence make up the security of vegetal life. In that respect, the plant is ef-ficient while things are precarious for the animal. Security is synonymous with fullness and satisfaction, while absence, void or difference creates instability and insecurity.
. Spontaneity of the vegetal and anxiety of the animal
Hence the tendency inherent in animals to develop more stability in their way of living. Since animals are naturally exposed to dangers, to uncertainty with regard to food, to the precariousness of survival, and are thus subjected to the anxiety of loss, absence, and desires, they end up looking for a more secure life.
“Motile existence is fitful and anxious: plant life is nothing of the kind.” (Jonas 1966: 106) On the contrary, insofar as plants have developed highly satisfactory
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and efficient automatisms, which “relieve them of the necessity of moving”
(Jonas 1966: 106), they may be able to create another kind of freedom: “The ability to go out in search of food merely answers to the necessity which its mode of metabolism imposes upon the animal and from which the plant is free.” (Jonas 1966: 106) Such a freedom from the necessity of nature goes hand in hand with a later feature that we will deal with, that is, spontaneity.
In short, the traditional distinction articulating being an animal with risk and being a plant with security belongs to nature. Now, such a distinction refers in fact to modes of being (of living) and not to substantial realities. That means that the difference is phenomenological or involves at least a phenomenological conversion, which leads to take into account the mobility of the plant and the stability of the animal.
. The secure life of the animal
If we look closer at the continual movements of animals, what appears is their ability to synchronize themselves in order to make them serve each time a par-ticular goal. The motor activity of the animal is therefore not an unceasingly non-oriented mobility. In its very movements the animal endeavours to master what irreducibly escapes it. In other words, if experimenting life is experiment-ing risks, in the end the latter are always accurately calculated. You give yourself possibilities of action, but you know how to measure to what extent you can accomplish them.
More concretely, animals live and move in a delimited environment, the proximity of which brings about know-hows and familiarity. It has interesting correspondences with the way living beings gradually settled in the long history of their becoming humans. In that sense, individual sedimentation and histor-ical settlement amount to a similar thrive to create stability by sitting: “sedere”
is the common Latin root of both resting processes (“sedimentation”, “set-tlement”, “sedentary”). In order to sit (including for a stabilized meditation) however, one needs to stand and move.
Resting by sitting is the supreme way to experience stability, which is the opposite of death insofar as it enables the living being to experiment its own limits. Respecting instituted laws may also be considered as an invitation to really work with one’s own challenges. It sometimes goes hand in hand (in a very ambiguous experience) with a counter-invitation not to change. In that sense, limits may become limitations and sitting a death-bearing immobiliza-tion. Stability is therefore ambivalent, either as the experience of a resting life or as the counter-experience of a rigidified life.
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Now, not inviting changes, respecting laws, establishing limits is often con-sidered as a tendency proper to masculinity. It may become an all-or-nothing rule, according to a manicheistic distinction between what is allowed and what is not, which amounts to the difference between openness and closure or be-tween possibility and necessity, or again, bebe-tween freedom and necessity. A distinction of this kind however underlies an opposition which is itself highly rigid. In other words, it is in fact guided by one of the terms of the distinction, namely the closure-polarity, that is, prohibition, law or fixity. Being allowed is being rightly entitled to do so in quite a disembodied, formal, abstract and general way. Such a law is death-bearing: it must not be discussed, it is given as such.
. Vegetal growth as spontaneous life
Where is then the vitality of the law? If the latter can be accommodated, it means that the living being is entitled to discuss, that is to question it. It in-volves the possibility of appropriating the law itself, bearing it in the sense of developing it with regards to a room for “auto-nomy”.
.. Spontaneity and satisfaction
Indeed although the plant does not move, it develops a capacity to create its own autonomy. Let us read again von Uexküll.
We know that in the acorn the organs are situated in potency that will allow the oak to support its vital struggle with the thousand different actions of the ex-ternal world. We see in our mind the future oak fight against the coming rain, the tempest to come and tomorrow’s sun. We see it resist the later summers and winters. (Von Uexküll 1956: 115, author’s translation) So the vegetal growth is a self-development which provides a form of spon-taneity. A great deal of its actions are put to work in order to favor such an autonomy of the plant.
In order to be able to give an answer to all the actions of the external world, the cells of the acorn will have to diverge into organs, roots, branches and foliage that catches the sun beams, and of which the leaves will follow as light pennons the wind, which will be resisted by gnarled branches. At the same time, the foliage will serve as an umbrella that directs the precious humidity from the sky to the fine underground roots. The leaves contain chlorophyll that will use the sun beams in order to change, as by magic, their energy into substance. (Von Uexküll 1956: 115, author’s translation)