About my body in the world of life: a critique of Claude Romano

Abstract

The essay is a reply to Claude Romano's article «Après la chair». I argue that the two fundamental objections that the French philosopher raises to the Husserlian understanding of the lived body are based on an incorrect interpretation of the distinction between Körper and Leib. The physical condition of the lived body does not refer at all to the scientific objectification of organisms, but to the dimension of thing of the experience, perceptible, visible, touchable, which every living being in the world possesses. The first-person condition of the body, for its part, does not arise from the phenomenon of double sensations in which the body touches itself, but refers to the spatial condition of tactile sensibility which, by extending in principle, is the descriptive basis for the fact that sensations can be duplicated in the contact between bodily members. The conclusion is that the pretended overcoming of the Husserlian phenomenology of the body is, in this case, an empty attempt.