A Summary: My Body
What difference lies when someone says: I have my body or I have a body? Well, let’s take a short glimpse of the different philosophical views to give us a scoop of wisdom. In ancient times, the question of the human body had already been debated. According to Plato, man is his soul. This was narrowed by his metaphorical analogy of the soul as a charioteer of two winged-horses. In Aristotle’s case, he viewed man as the whole of his body and soul. They are one as being associated to matter and form. There is no matter that is not informed by form, and no form that is not the form of matter. The Christian philosophers also dealt on the question of man’s body. St. Augustine mentioned that man can be divided into body and soul, the soul being more real and important. Man is the unity of body and soul; himself having existed by this unity.
It was Rene Descartes, by virtue of his methodic doubt and levels of meditation, that the body and soul is a real unity. In either separate states, one is always involved. However, this unity remains unknown due to its inherent ambiguity. But in Gabriel Marcel’s philosophy, it comes into two: ob-jectum (“thrown in front”) and subjective (“thrown beneath”). The former places a man’s state outside the thing he is inquiring on. The body now becomes “a body”, an objective idea apart from “me”. While the latter recognizes man as a part of the thing he is investigating. It becomes “my body”- a body that is uniquely man’s possession. The basic reflection on the experience of man’s body recognizes its paradoxical character. It is a living reality in man which actually is a composite nature of body and soul, matter and mind, intellect and sense, reason and emotion. It is an intermediary between one’s self and the world. The encounter of the experience of one’s self and his experience with the world can only take place in the experience of his body By which, he does not only share with the world but to others too.
What difference lies when someone says: I have my body or I have a body? Well, let’s take a short glimpse of the different philosophical views to give us a scoop of wisdom. In ancient times, the question of the human body had already been debated. According to Plato, man is his soul. This was narrowed by his metaphorical analogy of the soul as a charioteer of two winged-horses. In Aristotle’s case, he viewed man as the whole of his body and soul. They are one as being associated to matter and form. There is no matter that is not informed by form, and no form that is not the form of matter. The Christian philosophers also dealt on the question of man’s body. St. Augustine mentioned that man can be divided into body and soul, the soul being more real and important. Man is the unity of body and soul; himself having existed by this unity.
It was Rene Descartes, by virtue of his methodic doubt and levels of meditation, that the body and soul is a real unity. In either separate states, one is always involved. However, this unity remains unknown due to its inherent ambiguity. But in Gabriel Marcel’s philosophy, it comes into two: ob-jectum (“thrown in front”) and subjective (“thrown beneath”). The former places a man’s state outside the thing he is inquiring on. The body now becomes “a body”, an objective idea apart from “me”. While the latter recognizes man as a part of the thing he is investigating. It becomes “my body”- a body that is uniquely man’s possession. The basic reflection on the experience of man’s body recognizes its paradoxical character. It is a living reality in man which actually is a composite nature of body and soul, matter and mind, intellect and sense, reason and emotion. It is an intermediary between one’s self and the world. The encounter of the experience of one’s self and his experience with the world can only take place in the experience of his body By which, he does not only share with the world but to others too.
1 comment:
You sure have the gift of words.Good luck on your future posts.....looking forward to it.
Nice blog.
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