The Vital Connection

Abstract

Beneath the moral discourse and its imperative demands there appears a human “intersubjectivity” with its own “moral” requirements, which have an inescapable immediacy. This immediacy manifests two closely intertwined moments: corporeal kinaesthetic abilities, and the expressivity of bodily gestures. In this essay these will be treated separately for methodological reasons, yet their intertwining will not be neglected. The two moments do not negate a “higher” level moral discourse; rather they reveal the more “intimate” human cooperative ventures and relationships that are taken for granted, although usually neglected, by moral theorists. The phenomena of our concerns consists of “health,” “abilities,” and “disabilities,” and indeed of “moral” duties at the level where the “individual” and the “community” have not yet been rent asunder. Thus we shall touch upon an “intersubjectivity” that does not yet raise a question of the priority of either individual or community. This is not to deny that such a question can and has been raised. In fact, the bifurcation of theoretical approaches into “individualism” and “communalism” constitutes one of the fundamental “battle grounds” between two major political systems.