Existentialism and the Problem of “Body”

Abstract

The “Body” has been mainly discussed as a problem of its relation to soul. In Descartes' dualism it was entirely identified with the physical thing and was opposed to soul. For this reason the problem of connection of those two entities was succeeded by the hypothesis of psychophysical parallelism. Bergson, however, pointed out that the hypothesis was derived from the principles of the mechanical view of nature. He severely criticized Cartesianism from his own standpoint and introduced the idea of “pure perception” into his treatise concerning the connection of mind with matter, but could not necessarily shake himself free from the cognitive viewpoint. It is existentialism that dealt with body in the pre-reflective dimension of being. In fact, it argued body not as an object of epistemology, but as our existence itself. And thus, the conclusion of this paper is this : existentialism has made an epoch in the history of the problem of body.