Download Body and Reason – A Short Genealogy of Subjectivity

Body and Reason – A Short Genealogy of Subjectivity
Asistent universitar doctorand Raluca NIŢU
Universitatea din Piteşti
The paper is an attempt at tracing representations of subjectivity in modern and postmodern
culture, with a focus on the changing perspectives on the relation between body and reason. It tries
to present a short genealogy of subjectivity, going from Descartes’ cogito ergo sum (where
subjectivity is represented exclusively as reason, the body being considered utterly irrelevant for
knowledge and philosophy), to Kant, who represented subjectivity as pure reason, to Heidegger, for
whom subjectivity was being-in-the-world, to Nietzsche’s plea for a return to the body and winding
up with Merleau-Ponty’s embodied subjectivity.
1. Cogito Ergo Sum: Subjectivity as Reason and the Missing Body
Founder of modern thinking and modern philosophy, René Descartes set up the basis of a
philosophical discussion that was to go on for about four centuries – the body/soul dichotomy. In
Discourse on the Method and especially in Meditations on First Philosophy he discusses in detail
this body/soul dichotomy and he tries to prove, using the method of „free examination”, that
subjectivity means nothing else but reason.
Descartes makes, from the very beginning, a clearly cut difference between body and
spirit/reason: “there is a great difference between spirit and body – the latter is always divisible,
whereas the former is always indivisible; because indeed, when I look at myself as a thinking being,
I can see I am a whole and unified being. But when I think of my body, I can see it is made up of
parts. I can conclude therefore that my spirit is utterly different from my body”. 1 After having
proved that his spirit is different from his body, Descartes continues his free examination method
and tries to prove that, even if his body did not exist, he could not possibly say that he, as a subject,
did not exist at all. Supposing that he did not have a body or that there were no place in the world
for him to exist, he still could not believe he did not exist at all; on the contrary, the simple doubting
of the truth of other things, showed that he most certainly existed and, if he had ceased to think even
for a moment, he would not have had any reason to believe that he ever existed. The subject can
exist therefore without his body, his essence consisting exclusively in the fact that he is a thinking
being: “I am a susbstance whose essence and nature is to think and which, in order to exist, does not
need any place, nor does it depend on any material thing; therefore, this ego, i.e. the spirit, through
which I am what I am, is entirely different from the body and easier to be known than the body.
Even if the body did not exist, the soul would remain what it is”.2
Descarets, René Două tratate filozofice: Reguli de îndrumare a minţii. Meditaţii despre filozofia primă, Bucureşti,
Editura Humanitas, 1992, p 298
2
Descarets, René Discurs asupra metodei de a călăuzi bine raţiunea şi de a căuta adevărul în ştiinţe, Bucureşti:
Editura Mondero, 1999, p 38
1
The first conclusion that René Descartes draws after having examined the problem of
subjectivity in the world is „cogito ergo sum”, that is as long as I think, I exist. Starting from the
idea that everything that we know through our senses might be deceiving, he argues we should
ignore everything that is connected to the real world, we should ignore our body and rely
exclusively on our reason. Carthesian subjectivity, which is an exclusively rational one, will
dominate the entire modern thinking period, the entire modern philosophy.
When analysing the concept I think, Kant follows, up to a certain point, Descartes’
conclusions. He separates the soul from the body: „I, since I think, am an object of internal sense
and I am called the soul. That which is an object of external senses is called the body.”3 His
Critique of Pure Reason focuses on two ways of knowing the world: a sensitive one and an
intellectual one. But, unlike Descartes, he does not ignore the importance of a sensitive knowing of
the world. He starts his analysis from the idea that our knowledge comes from two fundamental
sources: the capacity of receiving representations and the capacity of knowing an object through
these representations; through the former an object is given to us, through the latter the object is
thought in relation to that representation. The first capacity is called sensibility / sensitivity, the
second one – intellect and Kant emphasises the idea that none of them is preferable to the other. For
him our internal experience itself is not possible without an external experience. Subjectivity is
therefore for Kant intellect and reason which cannot exist without experience or without a priori
knowledge.
Nevertheless the role of the body in the process of constructing subjectivity seems to be
almost null. When analysing subjectivity and its relation to the world, Immanuel Kant defines it as
pure reason, that is the reason comprising the principles of knowing something absolutely a-priori.
Pure representations are for him those representations in which there is no longer anything
belonging to sensations/feelings/perceptions. The spirit is for Kant a result of inner reason, whereas
the body is a result of external perceptions. Kant argues therefore that pure intellect utterly separates
itself not only from everything empirical, but also from any sensibility. He defines the intellect as
being a “unity which subsists by itself, which is sufficient to itself and which cannot be
increased/improved by anything coming from the outside”4. He acknowledges therefore that
subjectivity cannot exist outside the world, but he pays no attention to the body as being integral
part of human subjectivity.
2. Subjectivity and Being-in-the-World
Unlike Descartes, who decided to ignore both the body and the world when analysing
subjectivity, Kant admits that any kind of knowledge we might have is based on experience. The
objects belonging to the world around us influence our senses, which produce representations,
which in their turn determine our intellectual activity, which leads to experience. Experience is the
first result that our intellect produces by processing the raw material offered by our senses. When
discussing subjectivity Kant takes into account both internal and external experience. The subject’s
existence is determined in time and this determination is possible only through the existence of real
things/objects that the subject perceives outside itself. Internal experience is possible only starting
from external experience. Subjectivity cannot exist but within the world.
This latter statement constitutes the main idea on which Martin Heidegger focuses in Being
and Time. Dasein is defined by Heidegger as being-in-the-world. Being-in-the-world is not a
spiritual something being in a bodily something. It is not given once for all in a particular way; on
3
4
Kant, Immanuel Critica raţiunii pure, Bucureşti: Editura Ştiinţifică, 1969, p 309
ibidem, p 100
the contrary, its being is determined every moment by the way it moves permanently in this world.
The relation between Dasein and the world is not the same relation, Heidegger says, as the one
between Subject and Object. Dasein is defined by being in the world. Space is not within the
Subject, it is an a-priori representation. Space is full of utensils, whose role, functionality and
relation to Dasein Heidegger approaches in his analysis. During his daily activity Dasein „sends
itself” towards the familiar meanings of the utensils it is using. The world we live in is full of
meanings, of already interpreted objects. We have a coherent behaviour in the world precisely
because we understand all existing relations among the objects of the world or between us and these
objects. None of these would be possible were we to subscribe to Descartes’ words, who said that
subjectivity is pure reason and it could very well exist outside the surrounding world. Pure reason
would mean that Dasein should refrain itself from any utilization or handling of things / utensils and
should place itself in an undetermined place, transform the world into a stage to be contemplated.
There is a contrast therefore between Descartes’ pure theoretical regard and the phenomenological
impure regard, adapted to the fact of being in the world.
Heidegger also argues that the world of Dasein is a shared world. Being-in-the-world is
being-together with the others. The others are met in the world in which Dasein exists. Beingtogether determines Dasein’s existence even when the other is not in fact present and is not
perceived as present. Daseins’s being-alone is in fact being-together. Subjectivity is therefore no
longer defined in terms of the thinking subject, in terms of cogito ergo sum, but in tems of being-inthe-world-together-with-other-subjects. The subject in no longer isolated and sufficient to himself,
he must define himself in relation to the world and to other subjects. He cannot exist but in the
world.
3. Subjectivity and the Return of the Body
Going from Descartes’ cogito ergo sum to Kant’s pure reason, subjectivity became – with
Heidegger - embedded in the world. The subject no longer exists by himself. Nevertheless, the body
is still not acknowledged as an integral part of subjectivity. Not until Nietzsche, for whom
eliminating the body, ignoring one’s feelings and one’s senses is equivalent to a “castratrion of the
intellect”. He “preaches” the subject’s return into the world and to the body; he sees asceticism as a
disease, as a feature of those who are weak and coward. He urges philosophers to beware of the old
ideal of pure reason, pure knowledge, of the atemporal subject with no will whatsoever. They
should all stay away from the tentacles of such contradictory notions as pure reason, absolute
spirituality, self-consciousness. He argues that emotions help one better understand a certain object,
a particular notion, the surrounding world.
Nietzsche analyses the ascetic ideal which reduced corporeality to a mere illusion. All
virtues of the ascetic ideal were established by sick people, jealous of the healthy ones. They turned
health, strength, pride into something imoral, into vices that must be expiated. These sick, unhappy
people try to revenge themselves on the healthy, happy ones by making them be ashamed of their
happiness: “It’s a shame to be happy! There is too much misery!”. Nietzsche argues that nothing
else has destroyed the health and the strength of the races the way this ascetic ideal has. He calls it
the “ill-fated misfortune” within the European man’s history of health. Dieting, fasting, sexual
abstinence, fighting against one’s senses and emotions - all of these have kept mankind ill for
centuries.
It was the sick and the dying who despised the earth and the body and who invented
celestial things. But now the philosopher urges people to “no longer hide their head in the sand of
celestial things, but to freely raise their earthly head, the one that gives a meaning to the earth”.
Nietzsche preaches man’s return into the world, his turning back to the earth. Zarathustra begs his
brethern to stay loyal to the earth. He tries to make them get rid of all those fake hopes for the better
life beyond this real one and understand that the only life a man could know is the one on earth. He
urges them to remember/to learn what laughter is, what real beauty is, he urges them to no longer be
just spectators, but actors of life. He also urges them to kill that reason that teaches them to give up
the world. Zarathustra no longer wants the kingdom of heaven, but the kingdom of earth. Life
deserves to be lived on earth.
Nietzsche’s final urge:“let’s better listen to the voice of the healthy body: it’s a more honest,
a purer voice” brings the body (back) to the fore of philosophical thinking, making it an integral
part of human subjectivity. Starting with Nietzsche subjectivity is no longer represented exclusively
as reason/spirit, the body is no longer considered something one can do without; late modern /
postmodern philosophers start talking about embodied subjectivity.
4. Embodied Subjectivity
In order to thoroughly understand pure ego Edmund Husserl proceeds to reducing
transcendental experience to the sphere of the ego. He reduces everything that does not directly
belong to the ego, everything that is foreign to it. The final result is simple nature which has lost the
characteristic of being available to everybody; it is something that belongs exclusively to the pure
ego. Within the area of this simple nature Husserls discovers the body/his body, which is
characterised by its uniqueness, by its being the only object within the world he obtained by
reduction. The body is the only entity within which the pure ego is absolutely and directly in
charge.
The body cannot be object to phenomenological reduction. In order to reach the pure ego
one can reduce the others, one can reduce the world with its objects but one cannot reduce the body.
The ego is active within the body and - through the body - within the world; there is a psychophysical unity, there is a unique report between the ego and the organic body.
Following Husserl’s steps, Maurice Merleau-Ponty brings the embodied subject to the fore.
He is the first philosopher who revealed the real role of the body within the process of
understanding the world. The subject cannot exist into this world without his body; the ego cannot
become acquainted with the surrounding world unless he has a body. The faculty of feeling –
characteristic to the body – represents a vital means of communicating with the world, of making
the environment a familiar place to live in. Ego cogitans cannot exist without perception; the body
is the vehicle of the ego in the world. The thinking subject must rely on the embodied subject. The
body is not an object and the only way of knowing it is by living it.
Traditional viewpoints – Merleau-Ponty argues - transformed the living body into an
exterior without interior, whereas subjectivity became an interior without exterior, an impartial
spectator. It is precisely this separation, this gap between inner and outer parts that the philosopher
tries to fill in. He states that ego cogitans can never be utterly separated from an individual subject,
who knows things from a particular point of view. Ego cogitans cannot exist without perception:
“the body is the vehicle of being in the world; I am aware of the surrounding world through my
body. “5
Man is not just a union between a mind/a soul and a body, the relation between spirit and
body being much more complex. Any movement within a body is related to a certain psychic
intention, any psychic act has at least the general contour within psychological dispositions. The
union between body and soul is not the arbitrary union of a subject and an object, but existence
itself.
The body is always with me, it is permanent and its permanence is not a permanence in the
world, but a permanence for myself. The body is never before me, I can never see it entirely, it stays
at the end of my perceptions. I can never observe it; in order to do it, I would need another body
5
Merleau Ponty, Maurice Fenomenologia percepţiei, Oradea: Editura Aion, 1999, p 115
which, in its turn, would be impossible to be observed. My body is object only in those parts which
are far from my head / my eyes, but as it gets closer to the eyes, it separates itself from objects. As it
sees and touches, my body cannot be seen or touched. The body is never an object, it is never
completely constituted; it is a means of communication between myself and the world.
The body cannot be just an assembly of organs placed within space. I own it globally and I
know the position of each member through a bodily scheme that comprises them all. The body is
essential for my perceiving the space and there wouldn’t be any space for me if I did not have a
body. It helps me settle down within the environment. Merleau-Ponty compares the body within the
world to the heart within the organism: “the body is the one that keeps the visible spectacle alive, it
animates it, it feeds it from inside, it forms a system with it.”6
Merleau-Ponty concludes that the thinking subject must be founded on the embodied
subject. Subjectivity cannot exist but in the world and in the body, there is no pure reason, no
subject outside one’s body. Embodied subjectivity is the only subjectivity that late modern and
postmodern thinking acknowledges.
5. Conclusion
What I tried to do in this paper was to draw a short genealogy of subjectivity, focusing on
the various representations of subjectivity and on the shifting relation between body and reason
throughout modern and postmodern philosophical thinking. Since the human body has become
lately a site of investigation, interrogation and research for a number of disciplines (sociology,
psychology, anthropology, cultural studies in general), such a paper might be useful to those who
are interested in the study of the human body as a cultural object. Because it tried to trace the
changing representations of the human body throughout time, going from the beginnings of modern
thinking, when subjectivity was represented exclusively as reason, the body being considered
utterly irrelevant, to representations of subjectivity as being-in-the-world, to Nietzsche’s plea for a
return to the body and ending with a presentation of postmodern embodied subjectivity.
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Descarets, René Două tratate filozofice: Reguli de îndrumare a minţii. Meditaţii despre filozofia
primă, Bucureşti, Editura Humanitas, 1992
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6
ibidem, p 249