School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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Author: Joseph, Felicity Anne × Start date: 2002 × Type: PhD thesis × Subject: 20th century ×

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    Phenomenologies of the lived body : Husserl, Stein, Merleau-Ponty and Marcel on embodiment
    Joseph, Felicity Anne ( 2005)
    On the topic of embodiment, the phenomenological tradition in philosophy departs significantly from the standpoint of the dominant philosophical tradition. Rather than approaching embodiment through the framework of the 'mind/body problem', its method is to adopt the subject's point of view and ask what the phenomenon of embodiment is like for the subject experiencing it - for instance, what is it like to be a body? And what is it like to have one? Sometimes this query is formulated as 'what is it correct to say about' the role of the body in personhood - for instance, is it more correct to use the word 'have' or the word 'be' to express my relationship to my body? However, the inquiry is not principally a linguistic one: it is an inquiry into our experience of embodiment, in its relation to other things in the world and to consciousness. It is the phenomenologists' acknowledgement of the subject-inquirer's point of view on embodiment that renders their approach a particularly appropriate one for this topic. Accordingly, in this study I have chosen to investigate the theories of phenomenological philosophers. This research project thus consists of a comparative study of four phenomenological philosophers on the topic of embodiment (the body-person relationship): Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gabriel Marcel. In addition, I look at some remarks Ludwig Wittgenstein in his later writings makes about the language of embodiment, and investigate how the issues raised there may condition the conclusions drawn from these phenomenological studies of the body. I also investigate how feminist critiques of phenomenology may affect our examination of issues of embodiment and prompt us to further investigate the nature of embodiment. In response, I argue that the 'lived body' schema is compatible with more specific accounts of embodiment and that the phenomenologists are aware of and cautious about their use and interpretation of the language of embodiment.