HUSSERL. OWN LIVING BODY AND ALIENATION

Abstract

In this paper I wish to clarify the I/(own) living body distinction, an issue that arises from constitutive analysis in Ideas II. I am interested in Husserlian insistence on the constituted dimension of the own living body, the body as the “have” of I, where all descriptions of living body arrive. This possession points to the fundamental anthropological condition and encloses the possibility of being alienated or not recognized. The first step is to describe the lived sphere of the own body, its animal condition, as exposed in the second part of Ideas II. The second part is aimed at disclosing the constitution of bodily “owness” in relation to different constitutive levels. Finally, in the third part I delve into most important features of alienation of the I and the body through kinaesthetic and hiperaestetic experiences, in which primary sensitivity seems to numb the force of free and active I. The hiatum between I and body reveals itself as awake consciousness on every level of constitution, and it is the condition for a consciousness irreducible to the body and a body which is not apprehended in the limits of I.