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Phenomenology and corporeality : How we are our bodies

Publication at Faculty of Physical Education and Sport |
2018

Abstract

The article deals with the topic of the body from the phenomenological point of view, which is still mainly considered as confused and ungraspable in kinanthropological circles. The aim is therefore to present the issue so comprehensively that the necessity of re-evaluating some aspects of working with the body arises.

This is achieved primarily by emphasizing the motif of difference or exceptionality of the body copared to the objects. The starting point is the dualism of René Descartes, in which the body is a extended object, something other than the thinking self.

Edmund Husserl builds on Descartes methodically, but he overcomes him in a significant way - in his conception the body is the unity of subject and object, but his conceptual framework leads him to paradoxical statements. These paradoxes then lead Maurice Merleau-Ponty to criticize empiricism and intellectualism, the philosophical traditions in which modern Western science is grounded, and to establish a new ontological position in which the body is conceivable non-paradoxically.

Few relevant thoughts based on this position and depicted on examples follows. The result should be to iniciate thinking of experts to the body to discover new notion of the body, freed from traditional presuppositions.