The crisis of the modernity and the enigma of man

The aim of the present dissertation is to offer a new reading of the role of the body in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. I will focus on passage §312, which immediately precedes the discussion on Physiognomy and Phrenology. I will read this passage in the context of the chapter on Reason. The idea of Reason is, I argue, to search for an organic whole, a shape (Gestalt) in nature. A self-developing, independent Gestalt is found instead in the human body. I will analyse how the human body, however, fails as a Gestalt, and how this failure is at the same time a failure of an organicist world-view. The challenge will be to analyse the nature of the Hegelian body, while recognizing that Hegel himself does not analyse it further. I will ask if the Hegelian body is that of psychoanalysis, by referring to Lacan’s theory of the formative function of the Gestalt of the body. I claim that the Hegelian body is similar but ultimately incompatible with the Lacanian one. I will find a striking similarity however with Deleuze’s and Guattari’s idea of a body without organs. I will look at the Hegelian body through the analysis of bodies without organs in A Thousand Plateaus. Finally, the ambition will be to problematize Deleuze’s and Guattari’s idea of a body without organs by seeing it all too compatible with Hegel’s analysis of the phrenologist’s body. I will also argue that Hegel’s analysis of the human body in §312 has an important historical dimension, which we have to take into account when we discuss the ethics of a bodies without organs on the one hand, and the nature of the Hegelian body on the other.

2021

Referring to neurological structures and functions within the brain, as well as thought operations and behaviors coming from the brain, this short paper distinguishes between the Body and the Soul, and between the Soul and the Spirit. Materialists, attempting to describe the fully functioning human being, argue there is only Body. Dualists argue there is only Body and Soul. The Spiritual/Tripartite view is that humans exist as Body, Soul, and Spirit. There are scientific indications, as well as literary/philosophical/theological indications that human beings exist at all three levels. The scientific indications come from brain scans, thought operations, and complex behaviors. The Soul develops from the Body, and the Spirit develops from the Soul, but that does not mean that (once formed) they can be reduced to one another. This paper attempts to move the reader from a “substance” orientation (materialism) to a “functional” orientation (measurable abilities). Reductionistic materialism does violence to the functional integrity of the human being. What hangs over this whole discussion is the materialistic “substance” metaphysics of the 1600s. Unless you can specify a tangible, measurable “substance”, then whatever you are talking or writing about is not really “real.” This position is, of course, nonsense. Anyone who knows about the electro-magnetic forces, clouds, speeds, positions, transformations, sudden appearances and disappearances in particle physics knows that the era of a “single observable stuff universe” is long over. What supplies a much more complete, understandable, and satisfying perspective is a functional orientation, where the focus shifts from “material substances” to “observable functions and outcomes.” This is the descriptive orientation of this paper. Yet, often, if you bring this up this newer orientation, you will instantly be called “unscientific.” What is truly “unscientific” is refusing to question assumptions and refusing to look at life through anything but a “substance” lens. If ever we are to have what Abraham Maslow called “a Science of Persons”, we are going to have to get past our obsession with material “substance” and accept/welcome an Analysis of Functions.

European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2012

There is no question more urgent for phenomenology than the question of "one's own body" [corps propre], as it has come to be called since Husserl. But neither is there a question that has been more neglected by contemporary phenomenologists. At first sight, this claim seems incongruous given the nearly exponential production in the literature around this topic for more than thirty years, as much in the history of philosophy as in various efforts to cross the phenomenological perspective with contributions from cognitive sciences. The trouble is that this ample literature does not pose any of the preliminary questions relevant to adopting the concept of one's own body or lived-body (Leib) in phenomenology; for the most part, it takes this concept as self-evident and limits itself to considering the ways in which the concept of the lived-body may "fertilize" more positive scientific approaches. The legitimacy of the concept of Leib itself and of its legacy within the phenomenological tradition is never questioned as such.

2020

This thesis is an essayistic exploration into human self-alienation, of the split or strife between the 'inner' and the 'outer', or 'mind' and 'body'. Its central aim is to open up a perspective on the problem of the life of the mind, a perspective that suggests a shift in the understanding of this problem form a purely epistemological-ontological (or structural) to a radically moral-existential one. The thesis begins with a certain idea of the mind-body problem, which is in turn identified as confused and unclear, but out of which a certain general logic and dynamic is distilled. It then moves on to analyse this logic and dynamic and develops a specific perspective on or understanding of it. Perhaps one might say that the ‘truth’ of the perspective that is opened up lies in the way in which it is able to guide us to a radically moral-existential horizon without losing touch with the general logic and dynamics from which it sets out. One of the central claims that the thesis makes, through the perspective it attempts to open up, is that the ‘inner-outer’ split, or human self-alienation, concerns a moral-existential displacement of desire, and more specifically, a displaced desire for (social) affirmation. The rationale of this temptation or urge to displace desire, it is argued, lies in the way in which (social) affirmation phantasmatically manage to secure a (displaced or split) desire from the other. Moreover, it is in and in relation to this logic and dynamic of desire and affirmation that the ‘body’ or the ‘outer’ enters the picture and is identified as announcing itself as the object and instrument of displaced desire. ‘Body’ is disassociated form the soul or the ‘inner’ and its desire, or, alternatively, (mis)identified with it, and thus seen as somehow the cause of the ‘mind-body strife’, or, alternatively, seen as that which somehow necessarily veils the ‘real of the soul’. The narrative of the thesis is structured along the following lines. It begins by identifying the contemporary naturalist ‘mind-body problem’. Distilling or deciphering out of this, so it is argued, confused problem a general logic and dynamic, the thesis moves on to discuss Francis Bacon’s, and more importantly, René Descartes’ epistemological outlook and mind-body dualism. Here the discussion centrally revolves around how Bacon’s and Descartes’ mind-body dualism and the associated mind-body strife binds together epistemology with ethics; their claim that the mind-body strife essentially concerns a ‘problem of the will’. This discussion is followed by an extensive reflection on Plato’s dialogue Gorgias. The suggestion is that the Gorgias ties together the different themes and concerns that have emerged in relation to the discussion on the mind-body strifeand helps clarify issues that remains obscure in Descartes’ philosophy and, consequently, in contemporary naturalist philosophy of mind. It is also in connection to the reading of Gorgias that one of the central claims of the thesis is developed, namely that the mind-body strife is rooted in a displaced desire for social affirmation. In the final chapter, the central questions and concerns identified throughout the thesis are re-discussed, now with the question of meaning at the epicentre. Drawing on resources identified in both Plato and Wittgenstein, the chapter develops critical perspectives on what is termed the Augustinian-Cartesian picture of the soul and meaning, as well as on Jacques Lacan's theory of (decentred) subjectivity. The final chapter ends with a sketchy account of how the central claims developed in the thesis can be illustrated in terms of ‘examples’.

Corporeal… a. bodily, physical, material; corporeality… n. Embody… v.t. make (idea etc.) actual or discernible; (of thing) be an expression of; include, comprise; embodiment n. 1

In this text reference is often made to neuroanatomy contents, brain physiology and neuroscience. Readers interested in exploring these notions can refer to the excellent site 'The brain from top to bottom', < http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/> Then simply use the site's search tool for a true mine of documentation on the subject. Prologue Disorder gradually wins the human sciences, this is particularly true for psychology. This young discipline had settled comfortably on the perfectly clear foundations of Cartesianism, a convenient dualism distinguishing between matter and spirit. While despite being the heir of biology, psychology had forced a sometimes tortuous path out of materialism. There was therefore a body and a psyche, with all the derivative semantic products that could satisfy a provisional concern for coherence. For it was well suspected, and very early on, that psyche and soma were not so distinct as one would have us believe. We made accommodations by inventing the psychosomatic or the somatopsychic. If it is psychic, it's somatic and if nothing confirms organic disease, it is necessarily psychic ... Then various disciplines were inserted into this duality. Human and animal ethology has taught us that the human being is above all a social animal, supported by genetics, this offense against the supremacy of human consciousness now reduces man to a species like any other, half-blood to these savages of the war of fire, the Neandertals. The body, this assembly of hydrogen and carbon, the brain, this complex computer suddenly appear, not only endowed with an autonomous life but also capable of a complex self-organization whose consciousness, this flagship of the Enlightenment, would not be a residual body, just responsible for giving the actual decision. A surprising as well as an unknown and autonomous order appears where science believed to operate with bistouris or molecular potions. J. Scott Kelso perfectly describes this invisible order by evoking dynamic models: « The brain is fundamentally a self-organizing system that creates models, governed by potentially discoverable and non-linear dynamic laws. More specifically, behaviors such as perceiving, anticipating, acting, learning, and remembering arise as metastable spatio-temporal models of brain activity, which themselves are produced by cooperative interactions between neural assemblies. Self

Life Sciences, Society and Policy, 2017

The aim of this manuscript is to highlight that from the phenomenology and psychoanalysis point of view, the meaning of the notion of the body is different from the medical biologicist discourse. In psychoanalysis, the body is an erogenized body. It is constituted as an object for another self. Similarly, in phenomenology, the body is an own body in first instance. It is the body of a self, rather than a living body and a material body. Both positions enable us to understand how this conceptualization of the body is essential in any human field. Especially in the clinic, the position of the subject before the other will lead to a specific form of intervention. From this understanding of the human body, both phenomenology and psychoanalysis confirm that the biologicist understanding of the body, presumed by all psychological and medical practices, is insufficient.

In the Theology of the Body, there are the three words of Jesus, the three original experiences, the three types of shame, the threefold concupiscence, and the three masters of suspicion. In this essay, I want to discuss yet another triptych -a triptych of questions -that is at the very heart of the Theology of the Body. These are the three questions of our age that form the back drop of that great work.