Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body

THE SEEMING CONTINGENCY OF THE QUESTION CONCERNING THE BODY AND THE NECESSITY FOR AN ONTOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE BODY When we disclose and bring forth, within ontological investigations aimed at making possible the elaboration of a phenomenology of the ego, a prob­ lematic concerning the body, we may well seem, with respect to the general direction of our analysis, to elaborate only a contingent and accidental specification of such an analysis and to forget its true goal.! Up to the present, we pursued the clarification of the being of the ego [2] on the level of absolute subjectivity and in the form of an ontological analysis. Is it not possible that the reasons which motivated the project of conducting the investigations relative to the problem of the ego within a sphere of abso­ lute immanence may cease to be valid because we might be led to believe that the body also constitutes the object of these investigations and belongs to a first reality whose study is the task of fundamental ontology? Actually, does not the body present itself to us as a transcendent being, as an inhabi­ tant of this world of ours wherein subjectivity does not reside? If, con­ sequently, the body must constitute the theme of our philosophical reflec­ tion, is it not on condition that the latter submit to a radical modification and cease to be turned toward subjectivity in order to be a reflection on