Abstract
The living body appears like an endlessly renewable reservoir of authenticity, hope, and taboo. But, for the sake of conceptual clarity, we are often been told that the (mere) body should be distinguished from the flesh. That is, it’s undeniable that I have a body; that I notice yours; that we worry about their birth and death and upkeep. But the flesh is a more transcendentalized, loaded concept – not least given its frequently religious background (incarnation: the Word made Flesh). It is the body ‘kicked upstairs’, ‘bumped up’ one ontological level. Flesh is like a mantra, an obsessive leitmotif. Is the difference just one of abstraction? Indeed, crucial to the narrative of phenomenology (most obviously in Merleau-Ponty but really, throughout, including in enactivism), to the story of ancestor worship and identity it tells itself and its acolytes around the campfire, is a basic distinction between the merely physical body and the flesh as something requiring ‘mineness’, namely, an understanding of it as uniquely ‘my own’, a feeling of ‘what it is like to be embodied’. This goes back to the Husserlian distinction between Körper, ‘body’ in the sense of one body among others in a vast mechanistic universe of bodies, and Leib, ‘flesh’ in the sense of a subjectivity which is the locus of experience. In this essay I reflect on this vision of the body’s authenticity and its costs, and contrast it with insights derived from Georges Canguilhem, whose critique of mechanism/mechanicism is not done in the name of a wholescale organicism and/or an unproblematized éloge of embodiment and privacy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Merleau-Ponty, 1942, 225 / 1963, 208–209 (trans. modified); Thompson, 2007, 238. Phenomenologically inspired work on proprioception continues to sound this theme of ‘my own body’, ‘my experience’, etc., notably when it employs the Husserlian notion of kinesthesis, i.e., the way the body relates to the external world. All external motions which we perceive are first of all related to kinesthetic sensations, Husserl says when discussing the constitution of space. Our body already displays “originary intentionality” in how it relates to the world.
- 3.
Of course Merleau-Ponty claims, in his concept of “the flesh of the world,” to articulate a level more primary than both objective corporeity (embodiment?) and subjective corporeity (embodiment?): “Flesh, not mind, constitutes the visibility of the self encountered through reflexivity. Flesh, not mind, gives form to the visible-invisible chiasm in which the self acquires meaning for itself through reflexive scrutiny” (Ashbaugh, 1978, 220). And I make no claims about the entirety of Merleau-Ponty’s thought (e.g. the possibility that he came back on the strength of this highly subjectivist, transcendentalized vision of the body in late writings and lectures such as those on Nature, as G. Gandolfi has noted (Canguilhem workshop discussions, 2020–2021)). For more charitable readings see the work (in progress) of Thomas Ebke and of Sebastjan Vörös. But both in Merleau-Ponty and in later phenomenologists of the body like Michel Henry, we are faced with a “transcendentalization of life” (Barbaras, 2008, 9). On the broader question of the ‘theological turn’ in phenomenology, see Janicaud, 1991/2001. As for Husserl himself, to be fair, what I might term the conceptual overdetermination of the lived body in the phenomenology of embodiment with Merleau-Ponty and beyond (which, as I show below, Canguilhem is more than sanguine about) is not entirely to be laid at Husserl’s door; Leib itself in German has no particular religious connotations (cf. Leibarzt, the personal physician), any more than the word ‘flesh’ does in English. But this is not the place to adjudicate the question that slithered, Ourobouros-like, through French phenomenology (as per Janicaud), namely, whether or not divinity is really ‘bracketed’ by Husserl or not (for a reading which emphasizes the theological affinities of Husserl’s analysis of flesh and embodiment, see Depraz, 1993).
- 4.
Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 245–246 / Merleau-Ponty, 1962, 246; Deleuze & Guattari, 1991 / Deleuze & Guattari 1994, 168–169 / 176. That Merleau-Ponty ‘mystifies’ or ‘transcendentalizes’ the flesh more in writings like the Phenomenology of Perception and beyond, and much less in earlier writings like The Structure of Behavior should be noted, for the sake of fairness and precision (I thank A. Métraux for this point). The earlier work, as can be seen from the materials on which it draws, is much closer to Goldstein and Canguilhem; it can still be charged with ‘biochauvinism’ but just like Canguilhem in that way. Its way of emphasizing how the living body does not “fit” in reductionist schemes is less ontologized, e.g. when Merleau-Ponty describes bodily activity as non-reducible to “a blind mechanism, a mosaic of causally independent sequences” (Merleau-Ponty, 1942, 30/1964, 30) or how “the living body does not organize time and space indifferently” (Merleau-Ponty, 1942, 122/1964, 112). Building on Merleau-Ponty, the phenomenology of embodiment will tirelessly repeat that the living body or the organism is ‘not simply its psychochemical reality’, and appeal to the ‘flesh’ as a category to be understood on the basis of the self-constitution of the human body (Ashbaugh, 1978).
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
Canguilhem, “Puissance et limites de la rationalité en médecine” (1978), in Canguilhem, 1994, 409 (this essay was added to the last edition of Canguilhem’s collection).
- 8.
- 9.
Lecture course of 1946–1947 on “Philosophie et biologie,” cit. in Limoges, 2018, 27, emphasis mine.
- 10.
Canguilhem, 1947, 324; on this text cf. Wolfe, Forthcoming.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
The image that the (immaterial) soul is in the (material) body like a sailor in a ship is something that Aristotle considers (De Anima II, i, 413a5) and that Descartes in the Sixth Meditation rejects, without mentioning Aristotle, and sounding rather like a phenomenologist: “Nature . . . teaches me, by these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst and so on, that I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it, so that I and the body form a unit” (AT IX, 64). A similar passage is found in the Discourse on method, part VI, AT VI 59).
- 14.
The living body for Canguilhem seems to mean the human body, although he rejects anthropocentrism explicitly and most of his key concepts, like vital normativity, can apply equally well to a human being, an armadillo or, as Canguilhem would say in The Normal and the Pathological, an amoeba.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
- 18.
- 19.
Thus the authors of the Accelerationist Manifesto (Williams & Srnicek, 2013) criticize other, more utopian versions of their idea.
- 20.
- 21.
“In sum, the classical vitalist grants that living beings belong to a physical environment, yet asserts that they are an exception to physical laws. This is the inexcusable philosophical mistake, in my view. There can be no kingdom within a kingdom [empire dans un empire], or else there is no kingdom at all” (Canguilhem, 1965, 95; 2008a, 70, emphasis mine).
References
Ashbaugh, A. F. (1978). The Philosophy of Flesh and the Flesh of Philosophy. Research in Phenomenology, 8(1), 217–223.
Barbaras, R. (2008). Introduction à une phénoménologie de la vie. Vrin.
Canguilhem, G. (1947). Note sur la situation faite en France à la philosophie biologique. Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 52(3/4), 322–332. Reprinted in Canguilhem 2015, 307–320.
Canguilhem, G. (1958). Qu’est-ce que la psychologie? Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 63(1), 12–25. Reprinted in Canguilhem 1994, 365–381 and Canguilhem 2019, 747–772.
Canguilhem, G. (1965). La connaissance de la vie (Rev. ed.), Vrin. (First published 1952)
Canguilhem, G. (1972). Le Normal et le pathologique (3d rev. ed)., PUF. (First published 1943)
Canguilhem, G. (1973). L’autorité du médecin (autoritarisme et dogmatisme), entretien avec P. Roy et H. Péquignot, Médecine de l’homme, Revue du Centre catholique des médecins français 55: 20–25; in Canguilhem 2018, 607–617.
Canguilhem, G. (1980). What is Psychology? (translation of Canguilhem 1958), (H. Davies, Trans.). Ideology and Consciousness 7: 37–50.
Canguilhem, G. (1992). Le cerveau et la pensée (1980). In E. Balibar, D. Lecourt, et al. (Eds.), Canguilhem, philosophe, historien des sciences (pp. 11–33). Albin Michel. Reprinted in Canguilhem 2018, 895–932.
Canguilhem, G. (1989). The Normal and the Pathological, R.S. Cohen (Ed.), (C.R. Fawcett, Trans.). Zone Books.
Canguilhem, G. (1994). Études d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences, 7e édition augmentée. Vrin.
Canguilhem, G. (2002). La santé, concept vulgaire et question philosophique (1988). In Canguilhem (Ed.), Écrits sur la médecine (pp. 49–68). Éditions du Seuil. Reprinted in Canguilhem 2018, 1143–1154.
Canguilhem, G. (2008a). Knowledge of Life. P. Marrati & T. Meyers (Eds.), (S. Geroulanos & D. Ginsburg, Trans.). Fordham University Press.
Canguilhem, G. (2008b). Health: Crude Concept and Philosophical Question (translation of Canguilhem 1988/2002, by T. Meyers and S. Geroulanos). Public Culture, 20(3), 467–477.
Canguilhem, G. (2018). Œuvres complètes vol. 5: Histoire des sciences, épistémologie, commémorations: 1966–1995, C. Limoges (Ed.), J. Vrin.
Canguilhem, G. (2019). Œuvres complètes vol. 3: Écrits d’histoire des sciences et d’épistémologie, C. Limoges (Ed.), Vrin.
Canguilhem, G. (2015). Œuvres complètes vol. 4: Résistance, philosophie biologique et histoire des sciences 1940–1965, C. Limoges (Ed.), Vrin.
Dale, K. (2001). Anatomising Embodiment and Organisation Theory. Palgrave.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1991). Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? Éditions de Minuit.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1994). What Is Philosophy? (H. Tomlinson & G. Burchell, Trans.). Columbia University Press.
Depraz, N. (1993). L’incarnation phénoménologique. Un problème théologique ? Tidjschrift voor filosofie, 55(3), 496–517.
Descartes, R. (1964–1974). Œuvres, In C. Adam & P. Tannery (Eds.), 11 vols. Vrin (cited as AT followed by volume and page number).
Etxeberria, A. & Wolfe, C. T. (2018). Canguilhem and the Logic of Life. Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science, 4, special issue on Canguilhem (2018): 47–63, online at https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/69; A revised version appears. In C. Donohue & C.T. Wolfe (Eds.), 2022. Vitalism in 20th-century Life Science and Philosophy. Springer.
Ferencz-Flatz, C. (2014). Husserls Begriff der Kinästhese und seine Entwicklung. Husserl Studies, 30, 21–45.
Foucault, M. (1985). La vie: l’expérience et la science. Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 90/1, Canguilhem, 3–14.
Foucault, M. (1989). Introduction. In G. Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological (C. R. Fawcett, Trans.), (pp. 7–24). Zone Books.
Gérard, M. (2010). Canguilhem, Erwin Straus et la phénoménologie: La question de l’organisme vivant. Bulletin d’analyse phénoménologique, 6(2), 118–145. http://popups.ulg.ac.be/bap.htm
Guillin, V. (2008). Les études cartésiennes de G. Canguilhem. Cahiers philosophiques, 114(2), 65–84.
Hutchins, B., Wolfe, C. T., & Eriksen, C. B. (2016). The Embodied Descartes: Contemporary Readings of L’Homme. In D. Antoine-Mahut & S. Gaukroger (Eds.), Descartes’ Treatise on Man and its Reception (pp. 287–304). Springer.
Janicaud, D. (1991). Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française. Editions de l’Éclat.
Janicaud, D., et al. (2001). Phenomenology and “the Theological Turn:” The French Debate. Fordham University Press.
Lefève, C. (2014). De la philosophie de la médecine de Georges Canguilhem à la philosophie du soin médical. Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 82, 197–221.
Limoges, C. (2018). La confirmation de l’historien des sciences et la mise à l’épreuve de sa philosophie biologique: Georges Canguilhem 1966–1995. In G. Canguilhem, Œuvres complètes, vol. 5: Histoire des sciences, épistémologie, commémorations: 1966–1995, ed. C. Limoges (pp. 7–57). Vrin.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1942). La structure du comportement. PUF.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945). Phénoménologie de la perception. Gallimard.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of Perception (C. Smith, Trans.). Routledge Kegan Paul.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1963). The Structure of Behavior (A.L. Fisher, Trans.). Beacon.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). Le visible et l’invisible. Gallimard.
Moya Diez, I. (2018). Canguilhem avec Goldstein: De la normativité de la vie à la normativité de la connaissance. Revue d’histoire des sciences, 71(2), 179–204.
Negri, A. (2008). Towards an Ontological Definition of The Multitude (2002). In A. Negri, Reflections on Empire (Ed. & Trans. E. Emery). Polity.
Penoncelli, M., Wolfe, C., & Wong, A. (2020). Is the Normal and The Pathological Vitalist? In P.-O. Méthot (Ed.), Vital Norms. Canguilhem’s The Normal and The Pathological in the Twenty-First Century (pp. 219–250). Editions Hermann.
Schaeffer, J.-M. (2007). La fin de l’exception humaine. Gallimard-NRF.
Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Harvard University Press.
Weber, A., & Varela, F. J. (2002). Life after Kant: Natural Purposes and the Autopoietic Foundations of Biological Individuality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1, 97–125.
Williams, A, & Srnicek, N. (2013). Accelerate! Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics. http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/14/accelerate-manifesto-for-an-accelerationist-politics/ Reprinted in #Accelerate The Accelerationist Reader, R. Mackay & A. Avanessian (Eds.), (pp. 349–362). MIT Press/Urbanomic.
Wolfe, C. T. (2015). Was Canguilhem a Biochauvinist? Goldstein, Canguilhem and the Project of ‘Biophilosophy’. In D. Meacham (Ed.), Medicine and Society, New Continental Perspectives (pp. 197–212). Springer.
Wolfe, C. T. (Forthcoming). A Note on the Situation of Biological Philosophy. Special Issue of Revue internationale de philosophie on Canguilhem.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wolfe, C.T. (2023). Canguilhem and the Promise of the Flesh. In: Bianco, G., Wolfe, C.T., Van de Vijver, G. (eds) Canguilhem and Continental Philosophy of Biology. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 31. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20529-3_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20529-3_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-20528-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-20529-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)