MY BODY

 
- Any philosophy is a systematic and holistic attempt to answer the question of “Who am I?”
- What could be clearer and obvious to us than the reality of our “I?”
- An important aspect of answering this question is the experience of my body:
- What are you? A man—because I have form, activities, and a body of a man. Who are you? I am
- Juan Santos, tall, mestizo-looking, long-haired, with small ears and big belly due to beer-drinking.
- Where am I? Here, where my body is; I seem to say, I am my body.
- I am not just my body.
- I am a man because I have an understanding and mind of a man—whole spirit and will.
- The intimate relation of myself and my body. Therefore, I am my body.
- I cannot reduce my whole humanity to my body. I am also spirit and will; my body is something I have: I
have my body.
- What is the meaning of this paradox?
 
SOME ANSWERS FROM HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
- CLASSICAL VIEWS. What is the body of a man? Is it truly a part of his being man? Or is it just a
contingent “addition” to his self? Is it a bestial imprisonment of the human spirit or its perfection?
- PLATO (430-350 BC), man is his soul.
- This is the essence of his humanity and the source of all his activities.
- [PHAEDRUS] The soul is a charioteer of two winged-horses. One is sensible and flies high to the heavens
to reach the light of truth and goodness. The other comes from a bad breed and because of neglect and
sinfulness, had lost his wings and fallen to earth to assume human form.
- No wonder heavenly and earthly tendencies are in conflict in the spirit of a man.
- The taking of a human body is an unfortunate accident and a cruel imprisonment of the free and pure
soul.
- In death, the true man is freed from his imprisonment to see perfectly the pure light of absolute truth.
- ARISTOTLE (304-322), man is the whole of his body and soul. There is no sense in asking if body and
soul are one. The relation of the body to the soul is the relation of matter to form; the body and the soul of a
man are the only aspects of the whole man.
- ST. AUGUSTINE (354-430), a man can be divided into body and soul, and no doubt the soul is more real
and important.
- But is it only the soul that is man, its relation to the body similar to the relation of the charioteer to his
horse? This is not possible, because the charioteer is not called a charioteer without its horse; similarly, the
soul is not a soul if it is not the soul of a body.
- Man is the unity of body and soul, and he can exist only as this unity.
- ST. THOMAS AQUINAS (1226-1274), soul is not a man.
- RENÉ DESCARTES (1596-1650): methodic doubt. we shall doubt all that we know because they come
from our senses, which can be mistaken or can deceive us; these can be just the result of a dream.
- I think, therefore I am.
- “But what is this I which I have proven to exist?”
- “What is a thinking being?”
- It is a being that doubts, which understands, and affirms. Which denies, wills, and rejects. It imagines and
also, perceives.
- The real essence of a man is still different from his body.
- Man’s body is just a material thing—extended and as such—does not seem to differ from a complex
machine like a computerized robot.
- We cannot say, for instance, that the relationship of the body and soul is like that of the captain and his
ship. If the ship meets collision, it is only the ship that is damaged, but not the captain who simply observes
the damage. But when a body is hurt, I do not just observe the incident; I am involved.
- When I am slapped by a storekeeper in the market with whom I have quarreled, I do not say only my
cheeks hurt, but I am hurt.
- He does not really say a man is “a ghost inside a machine.”
- The body and the soul is the real unity. However, this unity itself of the body and soul cannot be known
and discussed by philosophy due to its inherent ambiguity.

GABRIEL MARCEL
- Man’s embodiment is not simply a datum alongside other data but the primary datum that is the starting
point and basis of any philosophical reflection.
- The way of thinking is on the level of primary reflection.
- “A body” is an objective idea apart from me; I have nothing to do with is nor does it have anything to do
with my life.
- In SECONDARY REFLECTION, we discover that what exists is not “a body” but “my body”—a body full
of life, eating, sleeping, happy, afflicted, etc.—my body that is uniquely mine alone.
- Marcel’s philosophy of the body is an inquiry on the meaning of the experience of my body.
- “What is the relation of the I to the body?” The reason is because the body referred to here is no longer
“my body” but the abstract “a body.”
- But what is meant by my in “my body.” Is it the my of possession that I refer to when I talk of “my ball-pen”
or “my dog?” Is the logic of “I have a body” the same as “I have a dog?”
- There is validity in likening “I have my body” to “I have my dog,” but there is also a limitation. Even if I am
intimate with my dog, I cannot deny that our lives are still separate.
- Wherever I am, there is my body, and wherever my body is, there I am, too.
- The body that I can say I have is a body-object, “a body” that I or anybody can use.
- His secondary reflection recuperates and states that there is no gap between me and my body.
- In short, I am my body.
- I cannot detach my from my self; they are not two things that happen by chance to be together.
- Rather, my self is absolutely embodied. Likewise, I cannot reduce my self to my body.
- “I have my body” and “I am body.”
 
THE LIFE OF EMBODIED SPIRIT
THE BODY AS INTERMEDIARY
- Now, when I say my body is the intermediary between my self and the world, I refer to the two things of
intermediary. An encounter of the experience of my self and the experience of the world as my world and
we are familiar to each other.
- Because my body, I have experience of “near” and “far,” “up” and “below,” and many relations in space.
- My body is by nature intentional and creates and discovers meaning that I am conscious of in my
existence. Thus, because of my body, my subjectivity is openness to the world and the world opened to
me; the world fills me, and I fill the world.
- Because of my body, I experience the world as separate from me. I am “not-world,” and the word is “not-
I.”
- My body participates in the world but cannot be reduced to it.
THE BODY IN INTERSUBJECTIVITY
- My body is not only an intermediary between me and the world but also between me and others.
- Because of my body, we interrelate with each other in many different ways—in our vision, actions,
attitude, on our rituals, signs, and speech.
- The language of the body has its own grammar and rhetoric in expressing my interiority.
- Embodiment is not just as additional or an external appearance; it is a gesture and appearance of what I
truly feel inside.
- As Apostle James says, “Whoever listens to the world but does not put it into practice is like a man who
looks in a mirror and sees himself as he is. He takes a good look at himself and then goes away and at
once forgets what he looks like.”
- The spirit and the world is fulfilled in the actions and deeds of the body.
- I cannot separate my intersubjectivity from its embodiment, but I cannot also reduce it to its embodiment.
- The spirit needs to be expressed and realized in the body but my body cannot fully state all of my
subjectivity.
- The paradox of “I have my body” and “I am my body” also applies to my interrelationship with others.
 
THE VALUE OF THE BODY
- My body had a unique value and dignity.
- It directs me not only to the world and others but also to God.
- St. Paul says, “You know that your bodies are parts of the body of Christ. Don’t you know that your body
as the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God?
- You do not belong to yourselves but to God, he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God’s
glory.”