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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 10, No. 11

Publication Date: November 25, 2023

DOI:10.14738/assrj.1011.15676.

Godwins, J. (2023). Philosophy of Body: Emodiment and Spatiality. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 10(11). 10-23.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Philosophy of Body: Emodiment and Spatiality

Jude Godwins

Department of Philosophy,

Seat of Wisdom Seminary, Owerri,

Imo State University Owerri, Nigeria

ABSTRACT

The issue of human existence is not a question of reason but a matter of one’s

relation to one’s body (Leib). Studies on laughing and crying as well as clinical

studies reveal human existence is the problem of how being body (Leibsein) and

having body are harmonized in certain life situations (Plessner, 1970, 37). They

show how human existence is not a question of human reason but a matter of one’s

relation to one’s body. For Plessner this indicates a new way of defining reason.

Reason would now mean how one relates to one’s body and to one’s environment.

The human being consists of the unity of the centric and the eccentric dimensions

of human existence. It boils down to the relationship between being body and

having body. The phenomena of laughing and crying show how man’s existence

consists in the attempt to balance these two existential arts of being and having.

Plessner shows that laughing and crying are answers to crises of human behaviour.

They are reactions to border situations. Laughing answers to the blockade that one

experiences when stimuli to action become irrevocably equivocal. Crying reacts to

the behavioural blockade one experiences when one and things no longer relate to

each other. When one finds oneself incapable of establishing a relationship to a

certain situation because the surrounding things have lost their meaningful links to

one another and so no longer make sense to one, one loses one’s ability to act. The

human body reacts with laughing and crying to behavioural crises and offers bodily

answers to boundary situations. This seems to reveal how our existence could be a

matter of our relationship to our body rather than a question of abstract reason.

Man, unlike the animal, can withdraw from his embodied, spatial existence and say

“I” to himself. This is demonstrative of how his situation in the world is (one of) a

mediated immediacy. By means of his Leib, man has immediate contact with the

things in his Umwelt (Plessner, 1970, 41). The "immanence of consciousness"

carries out its duty of revealing reality through the intertwining activity of receding

and residing, engaging and disengaging, remoteness and nearness.Only through the

body’s mediateness and only as Leib (lived-body, living body, inner life) can man be

with things, seeing and acting. The positional character of man’s life is man’s mode

of relating to his surroundings (Plessner, 1970, 42). Man’s possibility of “controlling

nature objectively in knowing and doing” has its roots in the Leib’s mediated

immediacy. Mediated immediacy in turn comes from our eccentric position, and our

eccentric position decides how we relate to our body as positional and situational

beings.

Keywords: Being body (Leibsein), having body, mediated immediacy, bodily answers,

eccentric position, positional and situational beings, human existence, bodily relationship,

abstract reason.

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Godwins, J. (2023). Philosophy of Body: Emodiment and Spatiality. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 10(11). 10-23.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.1011.15676

BEING-BODY AND HAVING-BODY: INTRODUCTION

Plessner argues for a philosophy where being body and having body inseparably belong

together. His study of non-linguistic expressive behaviours provides him with credible evidence

for this viewpoint. Non-linguistic expressive behavioural forms belong to that field of behaviour

that is uniquely human, i.e., a field of behaviour that humans monopolize.

Plessner picks two unique expressive behaviours, laughing and crying, and examines them in

themselves and in their “relation to the fundamental nature of man.” Unlike speaking, walking,

or giving signals by nodding or smiling, laughing and crying are not “intentional.” They are

involuntary behaviours. Yet they are not the kind of behaviours found in other animals. Only

human beings laugh and cry. Laughing and crying are not accidental byproducts of our

biological makeup; instead, Plessner insists, they belong to the nature of human existence and

are part of our meaning structure (Plessner, 1970, Xi).

Plessner shows that laughing and crying distinguish human existence from other forms of

animal existence, because in laughing and crying there “already appears an interpretation of

man by himself." It is aninterpretation that affords man a unique position. The body can only

be explained by behaviour; and only behaviours that are peculiarly and uniquely human and

conform with man’s understanding and setting of goals for himself, such as acting, speaking,

crying and laughing, make the human body intelligible (Plessner, 1970, 8).

There is more to animal behaviour than the chain of functions that the animal has and uses.

Animal behaviour is, over and above these functions, a “reciprocal bond” between the entire

organism and its surroundings. Human behaviour is also a “reciprocal bond” between one and

oneself. Human behaviour, Plessner insists, is the “self-interpretation of man by himself as

man.” (Plessner, 1970, 9). This differentiates one behaviour from the other and lends each type

of behaviour its place and meaning. The capacity for speaking and acting means much more

than merely having particular organs; it implies also that we have the ability to give meaning.

Thus, acting and speaking are always preceded by self-disclosure and acknowledgement of

meaning. This provides evidence for the fact that a person has relation to his body and to his

Umwelt (Plessner, 1970, 10).

Therefore, Plessner’s study reveals laughing and crying as unique expressions of human nature.

Put differently they (laughing and crying) reveal a breakdown of human nature that

“characteristically exposes it at its limits” (Plessner, 1970, Xii). Laughing and crying, Plessner

holds, are authentic, fundamental possibilities of all human beings, irrespective of any spiritual

and historical transformation (Plessner, 1970, 10), because (as forms of behavioural relation to

self) laughing and crying are “forms of expression of a crisis” occurring suddenly in particular

situations due to man’s relation to his body (Plessner, 1970, 11).

Whereas animals are and have bodies, man is the only animal that not only is and has a body

but that also knows about it (i.e., he knows about his being a body and having a body). However,

this does not mean, Plessner insists, that man’s essential characteristic is some form of

theoretical knowledge or rationality that distinguishes him from other animals. Instead of

rationality, it is relation (ways of relating to the body) that distinguishes man from other

animals. Human beings and other animals relate to their bodies differently (Plessner, 1970, Xii).