IN WHAT SENSE IS MY BODY MINE? THE “BODY PROPER” IN IDEEN II AND PHÉNOMÉNOLOGIE DE LA PERCEPTION

Abstract

The article confronts the MerleauPontyan analyses of the four features of the “body proper” in Phénoménologie de la Perception (I.2) with the original Husserlian consideration of the same issues in Ideen II (II.3). I examine their analyses of absolute permanency, double sensations, cenesthesis and kinesthesis, to determine the different meaning that the “body proper” acquires for each author. It is thus observed that “localized sensations” do not play for Merleau-Ponty —as they do for Husserl— the constitutive role of the body proper. This leads to distinguish, following Husserl, two different senses of ownership. Whereas Husserl associates the “body proper” with a secondary sense of ownership deriving from an originary sense of self, for Merleau-Ponty the most basic experience of myself and of ownership is lived by a corporeal subject in perception and movement