MY BODY*

by Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz

Any philosophy of man is a systematic and holistic attempt to answer the question of who am I? In our day-to-day life, we may be so engrossed in our activities that we do not bother anymore to question what seems clear and obvious to us. The question of Who am I? is such a case. It is surprising to ask this to ourselves. At first glance, isnt this question so simple? What could be clearer and obvious to us than the reality of our I? But this is only at first glance, from a superficial and uncritical natural attitude. Certain events in our life (like sickness, failures, death) can awaken us and bring us to the limits of our ordinary experience. And then, the once-so-simple question deepens, begins to complicate, and beckons on us: who am I? An important aspect in answering this question is the experience of my body. If I were asked about myself, my answers inescapably have reference to my body. What are you? Man, because I have a form, activities and a body of man. Who are you? I am Juan Santos, tall, mestizo-looking long haired, with small ears and a big belly due to beer drinking (isa-pa-nga!). Where am I? Here, where my body is; look at me, look at my body. In these ways, I seem to say I am my body. But there are times too that know I am not just my body. I am a man also because I have an understanding and mind of man. When I say to my parents, I love you, this one loving them is not just this tall-mestizo-looking-long-haired-with-small-ears-fat-belly-etc. body of mine but my whole spirit and will. And it can happen that while my body is in room B-109, listening to a boring lecture on the theories of Lobachevski or the poems of Chairil Anwar, I am taking a walk at the beach, along with my sweetheart, watching the sunset. On one hand, I recognize an intimate relation of myself with my body, and thus truly say: I am my body. Yet, on the other hand, I also know that I cannot reduce my whole humanity to my body. I am also spirit and will: my body is only something I have: I have my body. What is the meaning of this paradox?

Some Answers from the History of Philosophy Classical Views. Already in early times, the ancient philosophers of Greece tackled question of the human body. What is the body of man? Is it truly a part of his being man? Or it is just a contingent addition to his self? It is a bestial imprisonment of the human spirit or its perfection? According to Plato (ca. 430-350 B.C.), man is his soul. This is the essence of his humanity and the source of all his activities. In the Phaedrus, Plato uses the following metaphor.1 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 man. The taking of a human body is an unfortunate accident and a cruel imprisonment of the free and pure soul. Consequently, Plato states in the Phaedo, that the true philosopher strives to evade body because Surely the soul can best reflect when it is free of all distractions such as hearing or sight or pain or pleasure for any kindthat is, when it ignores the body and becomes as far as possible independent, avoiding all physical contacts and asso ciation as much as it can, in it search for reality.2 In death the true man is freed from his imprisonment to see perfectly the pure light of absolute truth. In the view of Aristotle (304-322 B.C.), man is the whole of his body and soul. There is no sense in asking if body and soul are one. They are one like the oneness of the ugly and his figure. The relation of the body to the soul is the relation of matter to form.3 there is no matter that is not informed by form, and no form that is not the form in matter. Likewise, the body and soul of man are only two aspects of the whole man. In De Anima, we read the following observation: A further problem presented by the affections of soul is this: are they all affecttions of the complex of body and soul, or is there any one among them peculiar to the soul by itself? To determine this is indispensable but difficult. If we con sider the majority of them, there seems to be in no case in which the soul can act or be acted upon without involving the body; e.g. anger, courage, appetite, and sensation generally. Thinking seems the most probable exception; but if this too proves to be a form of imagination or to be impossible without imagi nation it too requires a body as a condition of its existence.4 The Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages also dealt on the question of mans body. In the City of God, St. Augustine (354-430) mentions that 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, and its relation to the body similar to the relation of the charioteer to his horse? This is not possible, because the charioteer is not a charioteer without the horse; similarly a soul is not a soul if it is not the soul of a body. It is possible

* Reprinted with the permission of the author and translated from the original Pilipino by Manuel B. Dy, Jr. 1 Phaedrus, 246-47. 2 Phaedo, 65. 3 De Anima II, I. 4 Ibid., 1, 2.

that only the body is man, and its relation to the soul is similar to the relation of the jar with the water? Neither is this possible, because the end of the jar is to be filled with water and the end

likewise of the body is to be filled with the soul. Man is the unity of the body and soul, and he can exist only as this unity.5 The great St. Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274) in the Summa Theologiae also said that the soul is not a man: For just as it belongs to the nature of man to be composed of soul, f lesh, and bones.6 And in another place, he further states that although the body is not part of the essence of the body, nevertheless the very essence of the soul inherently needs to be one with the body.7 It is Rene Descartes (1596-1650) who sets the kind of questioning regarding the human body in the present history of the philosophy. A prominent French philosopher and mathematician, he is considered the father of modern philosophy and analytic geometry. In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes explains the profound and real difference between the body and soul of man. In the first meditation, he states the methodic doubt: we should doubt all that we know because, first, they come from our senses which can be mistaken or can deceive us, and second, this can be just the result of a dream. Even the certain and universal truths of religion and mathematics I can think of as only imaginary, the work of a bad spirit.8 In the second meditation, Descartes shows that even if I use the methodic doubt, there is one truth that I can not deny or doubt: I think, therefore, I am (Cogito, ergo sum). Even if I fully deny or doubt this, I only prove by my denial and doubting that I am thinking and existing. Descartes continue to ask, But what is this I which I have proven to exist? And his answer: A thinking being (res cogitans). What is a thinking being? It is a being which doubts, which understands, which affirms, which denies, which wills, which rejects, which imagines also, and which perceives.9 In the last meditation, Descartes adds that even we can prove the reality of the world and material things, the real essence of man is still different from his body. He stresses,

5 6

De Civitate Dei, XIX, 3. Summa Theologiae, 1a, 75, 4. 7 Ibid., 1a, 75, 7. 8 Meditationes de prima philosophia, I. 9 Ibid., II.

And although perhaps, or rather certainly, as I will soon show, I have a body with which I am very closely united, nevertheless, since on the one hand I

have a clear and distinct idea of myself in so far as I am only a thinking and not an extended being, and since on the other hand I have a distinct idea of a body in so far as it is only an extended being which does not think, it is cer tain that this I (-that is to say, my soul, my virtue of which I am-) is entire ly (and truly) distinct from my body and that it can (be or) exist without it.10 At first glance, for Descartes, mans body is just a material thing, extended, and as such does not seem to differ from a complex machine like a computerized robot. Yet Descartes himself also admits that the answer is not as simple as that. He mentions, again in the Meditations, that we cannot say, for instance, that the relationship of the body and soul is like of that captain and his ship, another metaphor of Plato.11 If the ship meet a collision, it is only the ship that damaged or hurt but not the captain who observes the damage. But when my body is hurt, I do not just observe the incident; I am involved. When I am slapped, for instance, by a storekeeper in the market with whom I have quarreled, I do not say only my cheeks but I am hurt. If we read Descartes himself, we can see that his inquiry is rather complicated, and he does not really say that man is a ghost inside a machine.12 In several writings, he admits that the body and soul of man is real unity.13 However, this unity itself of the body and soul cannot be known and discussed by philosophy due to its inherent ambiguity. In Descartes view, the aim of philosophy is to reach clear and distinct ideas regarding reality. Mathematical truth is for him the model of philosophical truth. But the truth regarding the unity of mans body and soul cannot fit into this frame of thinking. Thus, even if Descartes reco gnizes the unity of mans body and soul as a truth based on experience, he emphasizes that this is not a philosophical truth. In a letter to Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, he summarizes his opinion regarding this matter: The soul can be apprehended only by the pure understanding; body, i.e. exten sion, shapes and movements, can also be known by understanding alone, but it is known much better by the understanding aided by the imagination; and finally, the things which pertain to the union of the soul and the body can be known only obscurely by the understanding alone, and even by the understand ing aided by the imagination, but they are known very clearly by the senses. Hence, those who never philosophize, and who make use only of their senses, do not doubt that the soul moves the body and that the body acts on the soul. it is in dealing only with life and everyday affairs, and in refraining from study ing and meditating on things which exercises the imagination, that we learn to apprehend the union of the soul and the body.14
10 11

Ibid., VI. Ibid., Laws, XII, 961. 12 Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), pp. 13-25. 13 Letters to Regius, Arnauld and Princess Elizabeth; and replies to the fourth, fifth, and six objections. 14 Letter to Princess Elizabeth, 28 June 1643.

Gabriel Marcel. In present times, a number of philosophers, notably the phenomenologists, have criticized the philosophy of Descartes. One of them is Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973). Like Descartes, Marcel is a Frenchman, but unlike Descartes, he is a playwright

and musician. His propensity is not the clear and skeletal order of mathematics but life itself and the clear-vague world of drama and music. In Marcels philosophy, mans embodiment is not simply a datum alongside other data but the primary datum that is the starting point and basis of any philosophical reflection. 15 Descartes failure, according to Marcel, lies in the imprisonment of his methodic doubt which aspires for mathematics-like truths. This way of thinking is on the level of primary reflection. In this kind of reflection, I place myself outside of the thing that I am inquiring on. An ob-jectum (thrown in front). It has nothing to do with myself nor do I have anything to do with it. I take each of the parts (analysis), study their ordering (systematize) and arrive at some clear and fixed ideas regarding the thing itself (conceptualize). But in this manner, the body studied in primary reflection is no longer my body but a body. A body is an objective idea apart from me; I have nothing to do with it nor does it have anything to do with my life. This is the body talked about in anatomy, physiology, and the other sciences. Because this is an objective and universal idea, this can be the body of anybody else, and consequently, of nobody. There is a particular value in primary reflection on the body (Medicine, for example, would not progress without the sciences that study the human body), but this is not the whole truth. In order to come closer to an understanding of the totality of all that exists (and isnt this the primary aim of philosophy?), we have to go back and root our reflection on the concrete experience of my body. We have to enter in a level of secondary reflection. In this kind of reflection, I recognize that I am part of the thing I am investigating, and therefore, my discussion is sub-jective (thrown beneath). I have something to do with it and it has something to do with me. Because I participate in the thing, I cannot tear it apart into clear and fixed ideas; I have to describe and bring to light its unique wholeness in my concrete experience. In using secondary reflection, we discover that what exists is not a body but my bodya body full of life, eating, sleeping, happy, afflicted, etc., my body that is uniquely mine alone. Marcels philosophy of the body is an inquiry on the meaning of the experience of my body. If we used secondary reflection and recognize the experience of my body as the starting point and the foundation of our inquiry, we can see that it does not make sense to separate the I and the body and to ask, 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.

Marcel summarizes his discussions on the body in Chapters 5 and 6 of The Mystery of Being, I, Reflection and Mystery, translated by G.S. Fraser (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1960).

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But what is mean by my in my body? Is it the my of possession (avoir) that I refer to when I talk of my ballpen or my dog? Is the logic of I have a body the same as I have a dog? Marcel shows that in order for me to possess a dog, we must have an inter-relationship with each other. I must have a claim, for instance, on the dog: I decide when it will stay and I take care of it or have it taken care of. Likewise, the dog must recognize my claim over it: it follows me, it loves or fears me, etc. In short, I must have responsibility and control over what I possess. At first glance, it seems that this is also the relationship I have with my body. First, like having my dog, my body is mine and mine alone. Even in societies where slavery exists and the masters own the body of their slaves, the slaves experience that this is unjust and violates their rights as human beings. If they do not realize this, then we can say their humanity is destroyed. Secondly, I have a responsibility over my body and I take care of it; I nourish it and let it sleep, bathe it, give it pleasure, etc. The limit of these examples is the ascetic who evades whatever pleasures of the body; it is difficult to say if he is still included in the experience of my body. Thirdly, I have control over my body. It can do whatever I want it to do if it cansit, walk, go out of the room, drink Un-cola, talk, etc.if I so desire. There is validity in liking I have my body to I have my dog, but there is also a limitation. Even if I intimate with my dog, I cannot deny that our lives are still separate. It can be in the house while I am in the movie house; it was born while I was in my teens, it may die earlier than I. This is not the case with my body: our location and history are inseparable. Wherever I am, there also is my body, and wherever my body is, there I am too. Upon reconsideration of secondary reflection, it does not make sense too to consider the relation with my body as only an instrument. If I say I own my body, I treat it like an instrument that I possess and use in order to possess and use other things in the world. Only by means of my body, for instance, can I possess and use this ballpen, this table, this car, this building and others. Is my body then an instrument? An instrument is an extension or reinforcing of a power or part of my body. The eyeglasses reinforce my sense of sight; the car extends the ability of my feet to travel; the clothes and building extend our skin; and the hammer further reinforces my hand, the computer our brain, and so on. If my body were an instrument, it would need some other body that extends and reinforces, and this body would also need another body, and thus we would arrive at an unending series of bodies ad infinitum. Clearly this is an absurdity that is contrary to our experience. For Marcel, the body that I can say I have is a body-object, a body that I or any body can use. This is the body studied by primary reflection of the sciences. But if I treat my body as only a possession, its been mine loses its meaning. The experience of my body is the experience of I-body (body-subject). Here secondary reflection recuperates and states that there is no gap between me and my body. In short, I am my body.

If I say I am my body, this does not imply that I am the body that is the object for others, the body seen, touched, felt by others. Like the dualism of Descartes, this materialistic view is imprisoned in the Procrustean bed of primary reflection and reduces the experience of my body to the idea of a body. I am my body has only a negative meaning. It simply states that I cannot separate my self from my body. My being-in-the-world is not the bodily life alone nor the spiritual life alone but the life of an embodied spirit (etre incarnee). Marcel admits that it is difficult to conceive of this experience of my body in a clear and distinct manner. Thinking involves making use of ideas that mediates the experience or thing itself investigated. But the experience of my body is what Marcel calls non-instrumental communion. My body cannot be framed in an instrumentalist idea, and if I only think of it. I have not really reached the essences of the experience. My body is a unity sui generis and this unity is inconceptualizable. I do not think of my body; I feel it. This feeling that makes known my body is termed by Marcel as sympathetic mediation. If we want our thinking to be faithful to experience, we need to use concepts that point to this feeling (directional concepts). And this can be fulfilled only if we enter into secondary reflection and humbly return to the experienced reality of ordinary life.

The life of Embodied Spirit We begin our reflection on the experience of my body by recognizing its paradoxical character. On one hand, I cannot detach my body from my self; they are not two things that happen by chance to be together. Rather, myself is absolutely embodied. Likewise, on the other hand, I cannot reduce my self to my body: I also experience my self as an Ispirit and will that can never be imprisoned in my flesh and bones. That is why we can say there are two faces shown in the experience of my body: I have my body and I am my body. It is very tempting for any erudite person, philosopher or scientist, to forget this paradox and fix his attention to only one side of the experience. This precisely is the danger of any primary reflection: our inquiry becomes clear and distinct but we get farther away from real experience. The paradox is the experience itself, and this should be the one described by the philosophy by means of secondary reflection. The body as intermediary. I experience myself as being-in-the-world through my body. My body acts as the intermediary between the self or subject and the world.16

In this part, I am indebted to some ideas of William Luijpen in his Existential Phenomenology (Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press, 1969), pp. 274-82.

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When we use the term intermediary, we refer to one of two conflicting meanings. If I say, X is the intermediary of Y and Z, I may mean that because X, Y, and Z encounter or become

closer to each other or come to an agreement. Let us take this example from the story of Macario Pineda titled, Kung Baga sa Pamumulaklak. A young farmer named Desto wants to win the hand of the illustrious young lady named Tesang. However, he cannot just present himself directly to the lady of his affection to tell her of his feelings. He first approaches his uncle Mang Tibo who is the kumpare of Tesangs parents so he can act as intermediary between him and Tesangs parents. Only then do Tesangs parents allow Desto to court her. In this situation the intermediary serves as the bridge for the union of the young man and the lady. On the other hand, I can also mean the opposite. I can say that because X, Y, and Z are separated. Still with the example of courting, the parents of the girl may stand between our affection and prevent our being sweethearts. In the old film of Virgo Production, often Lolita Rodriguez plays the role of the other woman who stands between the beautiful relationship of the couple Eddie Rodriguez and Marlene Dauden. Here the intermediary is not a bridge but an obstacle. Now, when I say my body is the intermediary between my self and the world, I refer to the two meanings of intermediary. On one hand, because of my body, an encounter and agreement occurs between my self and the world. In reality, the encounter of the experience of my self and the experience of the world can only take place in the experience of my body. Because of my body, I experience the world as my body and we are familiar to each other. Because of my body, the chair I am sitting on is hard, the sunset is as red as a rose, the effect of the lambanog on my empty stomach is strong., the smell of Pacwood factory in San Pedro, Laguna, is like hell. Because of my body, I have an experience of near and far, up and below and many other relations in space. The world of man is different from the world of the fly because their bodies have different frameworks. My body is by nature intentional (directed to the world), and it creates and discovers meaning that I am conscious of in my existence. Thus, because of my body, the whole universe has and reveals a meaning for-me-and-for-man. Through my body, my subjectivity is openness to the world and the world is opened to me: the world fills me, and I fill the world. On the other hand, also because of my body, I experience the world as separate from me. I am not-world, and the world is not-I. in the giving-meaning-to-the-world of my body, I also experience the self as outside of the world, I am the one who sees, and who gives -name to this or that. My body shows that I am not simply a thing among other things in nature. The oneness and wholeness of my body is different from the wholeness of the world. If I did not have this kind of distance from the world, I would become only a thing without an interiority; and clearly this view is not true to our experience of life. My body participates in the world but cannot be reduced to it. The body is intersubjectivity. My body is not only an intermediary between me and the world but also between me and others. I show my self to the other and the other also shows himself to me through my body. Because of my body, we interrelate with each other in many different waysin our vision, actions, attitude, in our rituals, signs, and speech. We face each other in anger, tenderness, sadness, etc., because we have a body to present. If the other shows wrinkles on his forehead, he is indicating dissatisfaction, confusion or disapproval of what I am saying. The wry and red appearance of my face is an anger; my fixed-to-the-ground look and my sigh are my

loneliness.17 The child does not have to disobey his parent, a look from the parent is enough to prevent him. Every part and action of my body says something of myself and my world. As what a poet says of an alluring young woman: Theres a language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out At every joint and motive of her body.18 The language of my body has its own grammar and rhetoric in expressing my interiority. If I love Maria, I show this through my kisses, embrace, holding tenderly to her hand, etc., and also through exchanges of rings, daily telephone conversations, weekly visits. I respect my parents in kissing their hands; I accept a new acquaintance in shaking his hand. Embodiment is not just an additional or an external appearance; it is a gesture and appearance of what I truly feel inside. I cannot say I love my brothers and sisters if I do not show this love to them. I cannot say I respect my parents if my speech to them is not respectful. My faith is meaningless if I do not realize it in my daily actions and life. In social life too, the great aspirations of the citizenry need to be embodied in political, economic, cultural, (etc.) framework for this two have an enduring realization. A the apostle James says, Whoever listens to the word 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. (James 1, 22 -23). The spirit and the word is fulfilled in the actions and deeds of the body. However, as we have seen, there are two facts to the body as an intermediary. I cannot separate my intersubjectivity from its embodiment, but I cannot also reduce it to its embodiment. The spirit needs to be expressed and realize in the body but my body cannot fully state all of my subjectivity. I may truly love my family even if my body is far away from them. The fullness of my love for the beloved cannot be said in exchange in rings or in daily telephone conversations. My subjectivity transcends in expanse and depth its embodiment. Indeed my body shows myself, but it can also be a mask that hides what I truly think or feel. I can smile in the company of my friends while suffer inside of frustration (as they say, laughing in the outside but crying in the inside). The paradox of I have my body and I am my body also applies to my inter relationship with others.

This is discussed in the chapters on the body in Maurice Merleau-Pontys Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962) and Jean Paul Sartres Being and Nothingness (New York; Washington square Press, Inc., 1966). 18 William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act 4, scene 5.

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The value of the body. As the appearance and expression of my subjectivity, my body has a unique value and dignity. It directs me not only to the world and to others but also to God. St. Paul says in the first letter to the Corinthians: You know that your bodies are parts of t he

body of Christ. Dont you know that your body is 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 Gods glory. (1 Corinthians 6, 15-18).