On knowing one's own body

Richard Schmitt

pp. 152-169

in: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed), Analecta Husserliana, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1971

Abstract

For most philosophers the only problem about the body concerns its relation to the mind. Not so for a transcendental philosopher like the later Husserl. He claims some sort of relativity of the world to a subject. The world is said to be ‘constituted’ by the subject. Many, if not all, of these subjects are embodied. The transcendental philosopher must therefore ask himself whether the body functions in the process of constituting the world. But the body is also in the world and is, in many respects, like the other entities in the world. Thus the body is also constituted by what is relative to a subject. The transcendental philosopher must make clear in what sense the body is constituted and participates in the process of constituting. More specifically, he must make clear in what sense it is true that any particular subject, say I myself, constitutes any particular body, for instance my own, and does so in a different way from that in which it constitutes any other person’s body.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund