This chapter would discuss the Phenomenological approach to The Problem of the Embodied Person and its implications especially to the Life World issues some of which are already discussed in the previous chapter. In order to explore significance of the body in phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, this chapter makes an attempt at introducing phenomenology with special emphasis on Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
This, it is hoped, will provide the necessary background for understanding what is meant by the phenomenological model of the embodied person and in what sense this one in particular, appears to have better impact than some others of its kind.
The Post Cartesian situation and the search for an alternate way of doing philosophy:
Although it took some while for philosophers and Cognitive scientists to acknowledge the importance of the body in academic discussions, the denigration of the body governed most metaphysical thought, and perhaps even most philosophical thought, until at least Nietzsche (Reynolds, 2002). If biotechnologies have paradoxically resulted in undermining the tradition mind-body-dualism, the question arising of how to conceive the newly discovered unity of man shows the importance of the phenomenological approach to the mind-body-problem, especially because the naturalistic model of the mind-body-identity is not able to explain all aspects of this unity. The main theme of the present chapter centers round the concepts of embodiment within a phenomenological perspective.
In our contemporary time, on the one hand one can witness this unique phenomenon of an apparently explicit and nearly universal rejection of Cartesian dualism in academic discussions on embodiment, yet it seems that Cartesianism is not that easy to escape (Gallagher, 1995). Even at this point there are many Cognitive scientists, who are ready to willingly reduce all mental events to brain processes thereby replacing intentional explanations with neurophysiological accounts. In such a view, the body is reduced to a mental process. A good example of this disembodiment is the image of the brain in the vat (Dennett xxx; see Gallagher, 1995). Although the 20th postmodern century has succeeded in replacing the image of the brain in the vat, with the image of a disembodied person, the embodied person is somehow resurrected in a modified of a digital body in a digital space. Hence, the same question, as centuries ago, is committed for trial once again. This time again we have to look in the eye of Descartes. It appears that many technology-theories will celebrate the final and total disembodiment of the virtual body. From their point of view the new technology is ultimately liberating us because in cyberspace we can leave our age, sex and race behind and interact in a disembodied space. To a large extent, the new technology has succeeded in creating the ultimate, invisible body or the anti-gravitational body, the multi-layered, the vanishing, the inside-out bodies.
Is it possible to forget the physical, materialised body when we fly in digitalized space? In other words, is it possible to exist disembodied (the underlying assumption of many of the technology-theories)? In its search for an alternate model of an embodied person this chapter seeks to safeguard ‘embodied subjectivity’ that keeps bodily identity as central. Following Maurice Merleau-Ponty, this chapter opts for a rejection of any
claim that makes a distinction between Disembodiment and Embodiment simply because, as Merleau-Ponty lets us know: I am just my body. Any distinction between ‘I’ and ‘my body’ would necessary lead to the conclusion that I can also have a non-body.
The omnipresence of the body, in terms of Merleau-Ponty, excludes any pure non-physical state. This is a crucial step. As long as one makes a distinction between disembodiment and embodiment, even when they are intimately related and connected, one falls into the trap of body-mind duality. In the phenomenological perspective, cognition depends on experience that is informed by a body with various perceptual and motor capacities are supported (see, Gallagher, 1995). In this notion, the concept of
‘flesh’ becomes relevant. Merleau-Ponty uses the word ‘flesh’, as the domain in which experiences exist. Experiences are the mode of functioning by which we, inevitably, participate in the flesh.
Merleau-Ponty re-names the lived body as ‘human flesh’. In terms of the ‘flesh’
we are able to have direct, immediate contact with others and the world. This is the immediate contact of seer and seen, both of which are made of the same stuff, that is, flesh.
“My body is not able to forget its flesh. Although not always consciously, my body is always present and is involved in every action I undertake, even when I dream, invent or imagine things. Notice that my imagined bodily appearance can take a completely different appearance than my
‘real’ or materialised body. Imagining to be somewhere or to be someone else, does not mean that I leave my own, materialized body behind and escape via the back of my head, since this imagination is located in and