LESSON 6; THE HUMAN BODY

THE BODY AS BOTH INTERMEDIARY AND INTERSUBJECTIVE      

THE BODY AS AN OBSTACLE

(1)The body serves not only as a bridge towards the reality, but also an obstacle towards the world. The body becomes an obstacle because the body has limitations. The human body refers to the finitude of man in the sense that human bodily existence is limited by space, time, and death. Besides, the human body is also limited in terms of its accidental constituents. This limitation exists when a human person experiences sickness and diseases. We also experience being tired. We cannot work 24 hours in a day. We experience sickness and death. People get ill through cancer or some cardiac problems. That is why we need doctors and nurses to take care of our bodies. Our bodies become weak as we age. We cannot rely on our senses when our bodies become disintegrated as we mature in age. Medicine battles against sickness, but sometimes, medicine is not enough to make man absolutely healthy and to make human life survive. This becomes man’s limitation of the body. 

(2) Death is the final end of man- the final end of the body. We cannot make our bodies survive for 200 years. We must accept the fact that we will all die. We just do not know when. Is there really a “forever” in terms of the body? The answer is nope. The body is limited.  It will not go to heaven when it dies and decays in the earth. It is the soul or the spirit that is considered transcendent or beyond this world, that will rise up to heaven or go down to hell.

(3)The body is also experienced sometimes as an object, as an instrument. This is an example in which one is treating the body as a thing- as an “IT”. Concrete examples of this is the immorality of prostitution and child labor, wherein the bodies of other persons were not respected but rather, they were treated as merely objects.

THE BODY AS A BRIDGE towards reality and other subjects. This is an I to It relation- “I-It” Subject-Object relationship.

(4) When we say that the human body as intermediary or a bridge, we mean the body serves as a “medium” towards the world, a medium of expression and relationship in the world. Through the Body, I am always in contact with the world or the reality of things. I experience myself as being-in-the world through my body. My body acts as a “bridge” between my self and the world or the reality of things. My experience of the world can only take place through my body. Through my body, the world opens a new meaning to me. Through my body, I know the meaning of near and far, sweet and sour, hard and soft, noisy and silent.  This world has a meaning to me because I have an experience of the world through my body. The world becomes “my” world because of my body. It is true that we can have a contact towards the reality through our body. This is what makes us transcendent.

My body cannot exist apart from the world.

(5) I have a sense experience of the objects in the world through my body. I can see, touch, hear, smell, and taste because I have a body. You cannot see the trees if you don’t’ have a body since our eyes are part of the body. You cannot touch the table, taste the food, hear the teacher, smell the perfume if you don’t have a body.  Philosophically speaking, Ghosts cannot exist in our world. Since they do not have a body, they cannot have a contact and connection to our world. Our world is a material world. And it will also philosophically impossible to see a ghost for they do not have physical and material bodies like our own.

(6)Man is a situated being since man has a body in which it is situated in the world. In this sense, our situation is dependent on our body. That is why it states that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This subjectivity is what gives meaning to our reality. Beauty exists because we are subjects, we are persons. What is beauty if no person can appreciate it? What is a sound if no person can hear it? There are no sounds in the breaking of branches inside the forest if no person is present there.

“We are angels with only one wing and we can fly only by embracing each other.”

(7)The body as a bridge refers to as our interaction towards other subjects. I can interact with other people through my body. I can shake their hands, hug them, smile at them precisely through my own body. If I don’t have a body, I cannot communicate with them. Even though we are afar from one another, I can communicate with them through my body by texting or chatting with them. If I am a ghost, I cannot do this, since a ghost does not have a body. A ghost cannot interact with another person since interaction only occurs through the body. I cannot even see a ghost. What my eyes can only see is the material realities in world.

(8)The human body as a bridge is a gesture of human encounter. It is not, however, an instrument of man's encounter of others—both entities and persons—but as an expression of man as a conscious self. Thus, man's body is not just a medium of his encounter of other beings in the world, but the way whereby man makes himself accessible to others. The human encounter is vested in the embodiment of man's subjectivity.

This is a Subject to Subject relationship(S-S). The subject is making himself or herself accessible to the other person through the body. With this, the subject encounters the other as other through the body. Man is always in a relationship with others. Human existence is a co-existence. An “I-You” relationship according to Martin Buber. The “You” can be our friends, parents or our significant others.                   

(9)The human encounter cannot occur without the body. The one embodied subject enters into the other embodied subject. This encounter of two subjects enables them to unconceal each other's worlds.    

When a personal encounter takes place, my world becomes the world of the other person, and the world of the other person becomes also my world. One's encounter of another person makes him part of the meaning of the world of this person and vice-versa. With this, our world becomes larger. This is the consequence of the intersubjectivity. I do not just remain in my own world, but through meaningful relationship with other people, I enlarge my world. (If we will only love each other, what a wonderful our world will be, as the song goes).  This authentic living of the person demands the recognition, cooperation and respect with other people.

I-Thou relationship is one’s relationship to our friends, loved ones and to God. This is an authentic human encounter. The reason behind this is that in the I-Thou relationship, there is a personal encounter between two embodied subjects in virtue of their mutual openness and unconcealment of each other's embodied subjectivity. Yes, it is true that in the concrete human encounter, a person may not conceal himself or may inhibit himself to be transparent to the other; or still, a person may hide his true self to the other. But all these encounters can only happen when the encounter is cursory, the one which normally occur in the I-It and I-He/she relationships. However, it must be reiterated that it is in the I-Thou relationship where the authentic human encounter happens.

To philosophize is to transcend the self. In spite of one’s limitations, man has these possibilities to overcome any limitations and shortcomings in order to become ubermensch, a super-man.

Here are two examples of self- transcendence:

LET’S READ:

1. THE STORY OF VUJICIC

Excerpt from the book Life Without Limits

(1)My name is Nick Vujicic .I am twenty seven years old. I was born without any limbs, but I am not constrained by my circumstances. I travel the world encouraging millions of people to overcome adversity with faith, hope, love, and courage so that they may pursue their dreams. In this book I will share with you my experiences in dealing with adversity and obstacles, some of them unique to me but most universal to us all. My goal is to encourage you to overcome your own challenges and hardships so you can find your own purpose and pathway to a ridiculously good life. Often we feel life is unfair. Hard times and tough circumstances can trigger self-doubt and despair. I understand that well. But the Bible says, “Consider it pure joy, whenever you face trials of any kinds.” That is a lesson I struggled many years to learn. I eventually figured it out, and through my experiences I can help you see that most of the hardships we face provide us with opportunities to discover who we are meant to be and what we can share of our gifts to benefit others. My parents are devout Christians, but after I was born with neither arms nor legs, they wondered what God had in mind in creating me. At first they assumed that there was no hope and no future for someone like me, that I would never live a normal or productive life. Today, though, my life is beyond anything we could have imagined. Every day I hear from strangers via telephone, e-mail, text, and Twitter. They approach me in airports, hotels, and restaurants and hug me, telling me that I have touched their lives in some way. I am truly blessed. I am ridiculously happy

2. THE STORY OF HELEN KELLER

Excerpt from the book Story Of My Life (Chapter 1)

(1)“It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist. The task of writing an autobiography is a difficult one. When I try to classify my earliest impressions, I find that fact and fancy look alike across the years that link the past with the present. The woman paints the child's experiences in her own fantasy. A few impressions stand out vividly from the first years of my life; but "the shadows of the prison-house are on the rest." Besides, many of the joys and sorrows of childhood have lost their poignancy; and many incidents of vital importance in my early education have been forgotten in the excitement of great discoveries. In order, therefore, not to be tedious I shall try to present in a series of sketches only the episodes that seem to me to be the most interesting and important.

I was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, a little town of northern Alabama.

The family on my father's side is descended from Caspar Keller, a native of Switzerland, who settled in Maryland. One of my Swiss ancestors was the first teacher of the deaf in Zurich and wrote a book on the subject of their education--rather a singular coincidence; though it is true that there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

I lived, up to the time of the illness that deprived me of my sight and hearing, in a tiny house consisting of a large square room and a small one, in which the servant slept. It is a custom in the South to build a small house near the homestead as an annex to be used on occasion. Such a house my father built after the Civil War, and when he married my mother they went to live in it. It was completely covered with vines, climbing roses and honeysuckles. From the garden it looked like an arbour. The little porch was hidden from view by a screen of yellow roses and Southern smilax. It was the favourite haunt of humming-birds and bees.

I am told that while I was still in long dresses I showed many signs of an eager, self-asserting disposition. Everything that I saw other people do I insisted upon imitating. At six months I could pipe out "How d'ye," and one day I attracted every one's attention by saying "Tea, tea, tea" quite plainly. Even after my illness I remembered one of the words I had learned in these early months. It was the word "water," and I continued to make some sound for that word after all other speech was lost. I ceased making the sound "wah-wah" only when I learned to spell the word.