Am I a Body or Do I Have a Body?

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6 responses to “Am I a Body or Do I Have a Body?”

1. 

   Jason

   July 9, 2025

   Thanks for your kind comment doctor (Bill?) regarding my recent thoughts about Epstein and the Right at Malcolm’s place.
   I think a good answer to this problem can be found in Christianity’s traditional emphasis on the resurrection of the body in heaven. If our physicality were not so essential, then why would this be necessary? Wouldn’t our immortal souls be sufficient? Considering all we know about genetics nowadays, how our genome is inseparable from who we are (genotype = phenotype), Hitchens’ remark strikes me as being trenchant.
   To put this personally: I have a very Central European, cool, melancholic temperament, which is likely highly heritable. Surely this very biological aspect of my personality, of my psyche, is inextricably linked to who I am, to what my Self is – although perhaps it cannot FULLY explain it.

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2. 

   Tom

   July 11, 2025

   Happy Friday, Bill.
   I really enjoyed your “Am I a Body or Do I Have a Body?” post. Wonderful stuff — you explain these things so well.
   I’m the guy who emailed you a short while ago about the transcendental ego, so this post was totally on target for me. I don’t want to push my luck, but there was one sentence in particular I hope you follow-up on: “I won’t now say anything further about the ontologization of the transcendental difference.” Does this imply you *will* say something further in the near future? I hope so. The ontological status of the transcendental ego is a big deal, I’m sure you agree.
   Have a great weekend. We are going to be hitting 103º here in Nor Cal today. I can imagine what it will be like down where you live!
   Tom

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3. 

   BV

   July 11, 2025

   Tom,
   Thanks for the comment. Did I respond to your email?
   I have been thinking about “the ontologization of the transcendental difference” for a long time, longer than I care to admit. It is insanely difficult and probably above any mortal man’s ‘paygrade.’
   I can’t lay out the problem here with any clarity. But the gist of it is that the reasons that incline us to say that the ultimate subject of experience cannot be identified with any worldly thing also seem to scotch the idea that the ultimate subject can be identified with any spiritual thing.
   I touch upon it here: https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2020/10/ruminations-on-the-dative-of-disclosure.html
   And in many of the other entries in my Husserl category: https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/husserl/

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4. 

   Tom

   July 11, 2025

   You did respond to my email, Bill. Thanks much. And I’ll bet I’ve read those other posts you mentioned, but now would be a good time to go back again.

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5. 

   Tom

   July 11, 2025

   One final thing, as I re-read your response above.
   You say if the “ultimate subject” cannot be a material *thing*, then (perhaps) it cannot be a spiritual *thing* either.
   Now, please understand I am not trying to feign any deep understanding in an area in which I am manifestly a rank amateur. But what about Sartre’s famous no-thing insight? Regardless of what Sartre may have ultimately meant by that, isn’t this no-thing business (something close to) the realm in which we must operate here? Certainly I’m no material thing. And okay, maybe I’m no “spiritual thing” either. I’m not a thing at all — I’m *no-thing*. Does that necessarily mean I’m not *real*, in some very deep sense? I don’t see why it does. Maybe the transcendental ego is the most real “thing” there is.
   I’m well over my head here, but isn’t (something like) this approach simply what one must go with if he is to take the transcendental ego seriously? We are at the edge of language, probably just over the edge, on the far side of the border – Mexicali, not Calexico. It’s an unfamiliar neighborhood, perhaps, but it does not necessarily seem to be an impossible one, at least not to me.

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6. 

   BV

   July 11, 2025

   Tom,
   You are right to bring up Sartre. In his *The Transcendence of the Ego* which came before *Being and Nothingness,* Sartre questions Husserl’s triadic schema: ego-cogito-cogitatum qua cogitatum. Sartre says he finds no phenomenological evidence of the transcendental ego. The ego is itself something transcendent, i.e., an object in the world. Consciousness does not emanate from a TE: it is “a wind blowing toward objects.” There is nothing thing-like or substantial about consciousness-of. It is no-thing.
   But as you understand, it is nevertheless ‘real’ in some sense or other But of course ‘real’ is from the Latin *res* meaning thing. And so how can we say what we mean here? To borrow some Heideggerian jargon we could say that cs. is not a *nichtiges Nichts*, a “nugatory Nothing” despite its being other than everything that is.
   This problematic has many sides. It surfaces in Frege as the Horse Paradox. It comes up in theology. If God is not a being among beings, is there any sense in which he IS? Or should we move go from Thomas to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite?
   It’s Friday night and time to punch the clock. Stay tuned.

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