MY BODY1

Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz

Edited by: Larona, Suarez and Briones
(No portion of this manuscript maybe copied, reproduced or disseminated in any manner without
the permission of the editors)

Any philosophy of man is a systematic and holistic attempt to answer the question of “who
am I?” In our day-to-day life, we may be so engrossed in our activities that we do not bother
anymore to question what seems clear and obvious to us. The question of “Who am I?’ is such a
case. It is surprising to ask this to ourselves. At first glance, isn't this question so simple? What
could be clearer and obvious to us than the reality of our “I”? But this is only at first glance, from
a superficial and uncritical natural attitude. Certain events in our life (like sickness, failures, death)
can awaken us and bring us to the limits of our ordinary experience. And then, the once-so-simple
question depends, begins to complicate, and beckons on us: Who am I?

An important aspect in answering this question is the experience of my body. If I were

asked about myself, my answers inescapably have reference to my body. What are you? Man,
because I have a form, activities, and a body of a man. Who are you? I am Juan Santos, tall,
mestizo-looking long-haired, with small ears and a big belly due to beer drinking (isa-pa-nga!).
Where am I? Here, where my body is; look at me, look at my body. In these ways, I seem to say I
am my body.

But there are times too that I know I am not just my body. I am a man also because I have
an understanding and mind of man. When I say to my parents, “I love you,” this one loving them
is not just this tall-mestizo-looking-long-haired-with-small-ears-fat-belly-etc.” body of mine but
my whole spirit and will. And it can happen that while my body is in room B-109, listening to a
boring lecture on the theories of Lobachevsky or the poems of Chairil Anwar, I am taking a walk
at the beach, along with my sweetheart, watching the sunset.

On one hand, I recognize an intimate relation of myself with my body, and thus truly say:
I am my body. Yet, on the other hand, I also know that I cannot reduce my whole humanity to my
body. I am also spirit and will: my body is only something I have: I have my body. What is the
meaning of this paradox?

Some answers from the History of Philosophy

Classical Views. Already in early times, the ancient philosophers of Greece tackled the
question of the human body. What is the body of man? Is it truly a part of his being man? Or is it
just a contingent “addition” to his self? Is it bestial imprisonment of the human spirit or its
perfection?

1
Eduardo Jose Calasanz, “My body,” in Philosophy of Man: Selected Readings, ed. by Manuel B. Dy, Jr., Ph.D.
(Manila: Katha Publishing Co., Inc., 2012), pp 89-97. Reprinted by permission of the author and editor.
 According to Plato (ca. 430-350 B.C), man is his soul. This is the essence of his humanity
and the source of all his activities. In the Phaedrus, Plato uses the following metaphor.2 The soul
is a charioteer of two winged horses. One is sensible and flies high to the heavens to reach the light
of the truth and goodness. The other comes from a bad breed and because of neglect and sinfulness,
had lost his wings and fallen to earth to assume human form. Now wonder heavenly and earthly
tendencies are in conflict in the spirit of man. The taking of a human body is an unfortunate
accident and a cruel imprisonment of the free and pure soul. Consequently, Plato states in the
Phaedo, that the true philosopher strives to evade his body because

Surely the soul can best reflect when it is free of all distractions such as hearing or sight or
pain or pleasure of any kind—that is, when it ignores the body and becomes as far as
possible independent, avoiding all physical contacts and associations as much as it can, in
its search for reality.3

In death the true man is freed from his imprisonment to see perfectly the pure light of absolute
truth.

In the view of Aristotle (304-322 B.C), man is the whole of his body and soul. There is no
sense in asking if body and soul are one. They are one like the oneness of the ugly and his figure.
The relation of the body to the soul is the relation of matter to form.4 There is no matter that is not
informed by form, and no form that is not the form of matter. Likewise, the body and soul of man
are only two aspects of the whole man. In de Anima, we read the following observation:

A further problem presented by the affections of soul is this: are they all affections of the
complex of body and soul, or is there any one among them peculiar to the soul by itself?
To determine this is indispensable but difficult. If we consider the majority of them, there
seems to be no case in which the soul can act or be acted upon without involving the body;
e.g. anger, courage, appetite, and sensation generally. Thinking seems the most probable
exception; but if this too proves to be a form of imagination or to be impossible without
imagination, it too requires a body as a condition of its existence.5

The Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages also dealt on the question of man’s body.
In the City of God, St. Augustine (354-340) mentions that man can be divided into body and soul,
and no doubt the soul is more real and important. But is it only the soul that is man, and its relation
to the soul similar to the relation of the charioteer to his horse? This is not possible, because the
charioteer is not a charioteer without the horse; similarly, the soul is not a soul if it is not the soul
of a body. Is it possible that only the body is man, and its relation to the soul similar to the relation
of the jar with the water? Neither is this possible, because the end of the jar is to be filled with
water and the end likewise of the body is to be filled with the soul. Man is the unity of body and
soul, and he can exist only in this unity.6

2
Phaedrus, 246-47.
3
Phaedo, 65.
4
De Anima II, I.
5
Ibid., 1, 2.
6
De Civitate Dei, XIX, 3.
 The great St. Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274) in the Summa Theologiae also said that the
soul is not man: “For just as it belongs to the nature of this particular man to become composed of
this soul, of this flesh, and of these bones, so it belongs to the nature of man to be composed of
soul, flesh and bones.”7 And in another place, he further states that although the body is not part
of the essence of the body, nevertheless the very essence of the soul inherently needs to be one
with the body.8

It is Rene Descartes (1596-1650) who sets the kind of questioning regarding the human
body in the present history of philosophy. A prominent French philosopher and mathematician, he
is considered the father of modern philosophy and analytic geometry. In his Meditations on First
Philosophy, Descartes explains the profound and real difference between the body and soul of
man. In the first meditation, he states the methodic doubt: we should doubt all that we know
because, first, they come form our senses which can be mistaken or can deceive us, and second,
these can be just the result of a dream. Even the certain and universal truth of religion and
mathematics I can think of as only imaginary, the work of a bad spirit.9

In this second meditation, Descartes shows that even if I use the methodic doubt, there is
one truth that I cannot deny or doubt: I think, therefore, I am (Cogito, ergo sum). Even if I fully
deny or doubt this, I only prove by my denial and doubting that I am thinking and existing.
Descartes continues to ask, but what is this I which I have proven to exist? And his answer: “A
thinking being (res cogitans). What is a thinking being? It is a being which doubts, which
understands, which affirms, which denies, which wills, which rejects, which imagines also, and
which perceives.”10

In the last meditation, Descartes adds that even if we can prove the reality of the world and
material things, the real essence of man is still different from his body. He stresses,

And although perhaps, or rather certainly, as I will soon show, I have a body with which I
am very closely united, nevertheless, since on the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea
of myself in so far as I am only a thinking and not an extended being, and since on the
other hand I have a distinct idea of body in so far as it is only an extended being which
does not think, it is certain that this “I” (-that is to say, my soul, by virtue of which I am
what I am-) is entirely (and truly) distinct from my body and that it can (be or) exist without
it.11

At first glance, for Descartes, man’s body is just a material thing, extended, and as such
does not seem to differ from a complex machine like a computerized robot. Yet Descartes himself
also admits that the answer is not as simple as that. He mentions, again in the Meditations, that we
cannot say, for instance, that the relationship of the body and soul is like that of a captain and his

7
Summa Theologiae, 1a, 75, 4.
8
Ibid., 1a, 75, 7.
9
Meditationes de prima philosophia, I.
10
Ibid., II.
11
Ibid., VI.
ship, another metaphor of Plato.12 If the ship meets a collision, it is only the ship that is damaged
or “hurt” but not the captain who simply observes the damage. But when my body is hurt, I do not
just observe the incident; I am involved. When I am slapped, for instance, by a storekeeper in the
market with whom I have quarreled, I do not say only my cheeks, but I am hurt.
If we read Descartes himself, we can see that his inquiry is rather complicated, and he does
not really say that man is “a ghost inside a machine.”13 In several writings, he admits that the body
and soul of man is a real unity.14 However, this unity itself of the body and soul cannot be known
and discussed by philosophy due to its inherent ambiguity. In Descartes’ view, the aim of
philosophy is to reach clear and distinct ideas regarding reality. Mathematical truth is for him the
model of philosophical truth. But the truth regarding the unity of man’s body and soul cannot fit
into this frame of thinking. Thus, even if Descartes recognizes the unity of man’s body and soul
as a truth based on experience, he emphasizes that this is not a philosophical truth. In a letter to
Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, he summarizes his opinions regarding this matter:

The soul can be apprehended only by the pure understanding; body, i.e. extension, shapes
and movements, can also be known by the understanding alone, but it is known much better
by the understanding aided by the imagination; and finally, the things which pertain to the
union of the soul and the body can be known only obscurely by the understanding alone,
and even by the understanding aided by the imagination, but they are known very clearly
by the senses. Hence, those who never philosophize, and who make use only of their senses,
do not doubt that the soul moves the body and that the body acts on the soul. . . it is in
dealing only with life and everyday affairs, and in refraining from studying and meditating
on things which exercises the imagination, that we learn to apprehend the union of the soul
and the body.15

Gabriel Marcel. In present times, a number of philosophers, notably the

phenomenologists, have criticized the philosophy of Descartes. One of them is Gabriel Marcel
(1889-1973). Like Descartes, Marcel is a Frenchman, but unlike Descartes, he is playwright and
musician. His propensity is not the clear and skeletal order of mathematics but life itself and the
clear vague world of drama and music.

In Marcel’s philosophy, man’s embodiment is not simply a datum alongside other data but
the primary datum that is the starting point and basis of any philosophical reflection.16 Descartes’
failure, according to Marcel, lies in the imprisonment of his methodic doubt which aspires for
mathematics-like truth. This way of thinking is on the level of primary reflection. In this kind of
reflection, I place myself outside of the thing that I am inquiring on. An objectum (“thrown in
front”). It has nothing to do with myself nor do I have anything to do with it. I take each of the
parts (analysis), study their ordering (systematize) and arrive at some clear and fixed ideas

12
Ibid., Laws, XII, 961.
13
Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), pp. 13-25.
14
Letters to Regis, Arnauld and Princess Elizabeth; and replies to the fourth, fifth and sixth objections.
15
Letter to Princess Elizabeth, 28 June 1643.
16
Marcel summarizes his discussions on the body in Chapters 5 and 6 of The Mystery of Being, I Reflection and
Mystery, translated by G.S. Fraser (Chicago: Henry Regency,
1960).
regarding the thing itself (conceptualize). But in this manner, the body studied in primary reflection
is no longer my body but a body. “A body” is an objective idea apart from me; I have nothing to
do with it nor does it have anything to do with my life. This is the body talked about in anatomy,
physiology and the other sciences. Because this is an objective and universal idea, this can be the
body of anybody else, and consequently, of nobody.

There is a particular value in primary reflection on the body (Medicine, for example, would
not progress without the sciences that study the human body), but this is not the whole truth. In
order to come closer to any understanding of the totality of all that exists (and isn't this the primary
aim of philosophy?) we have to go back and root our reflection on the concrete experience of my
body. We have to enter into the level of secondary reflection. In this kind of reflection, I recognize
that I am part of the thing I am investigating, and therefore, my discussion is sub-jective (“thrown
beneath”). I have something to do with it and it has something to do with me. Because I participate
in the thing, I cannot tear it apart into clear and fixed ideas; I have to describe and bring to light its
unique wholeness in my concrete experience. In using secondary reflection, we discover that what
exists is not “a body” but “my body”—a body full of life, eating, sleeping, happy, afflicted, etc.,
my body that is uniquely mine alone.

Marcel’s philosophy of the body is an inquiry on the meaning of the experience of my body.

If we use secondary reflection and recognize the experience of my body as the starting
point and foundation of our inquiry, we can see that it does not make sense to separate the I and
the body and to ask, “What is the relation of the I to the body?” The reason is because the body
referred to here is no longer “my body’ but the abstract “a body.”

But what is meant by my in “my body?” Is it the my of possession (avoir) that I refer to
when I talk of “my ballpen” or “my dog”? Is the logic of “I have a body” the same as “I have a
dog”?

Marcel shows that in order for me to possess a dog, we must have an inter-relationship with
each other. I must have a claim, for instance, on the dog: I decide when it will stay, and I take care
of it or have it taken care of. Likewise, the dog must recognize my claim over it: it follows me, it
loves or fears me, etc. In short, I must have responsibility and control over what I possess.

At first glance, it seems that this is also the relationship I have with the body. First, like
having my dog, my body is mine and mine alone. Even in societies where slavery exists and the
masters own the body of their slaves, the slaves experience that this is unjust and violates their
rights as human beings. If they do not realize this, then we can say their humanity is destroyed.
Secondly, I have a responsibility over my body, and I take care of it; I nourish it and let is sleep,
bathe it, give it pleasure, etc. The limit of these examples is the ascetic who evades whatever
pleasures of the body; it is difficult to say if he is still included in the experience of “my body.”
Thirdly, I have control over my body. It can do whatever I want to do if it can—sit, walk, go out
of the room, drink Uncola, talk, etc.—if I so desire.

There is validity in linking “I have my body” to “I have my dog,” but there is also a
limitation. Even if I am intimate with my dog, I cannot deny that our lives are still separate. It can
be in the house while I am in the movie house; it was born while I was in my teens, it may die
earlier than I. This is not the case with my body: our location and history are inseparable. Where I
am, there also is my body, and wherever my body is, there I am too.

Upon reconsideration of secondary reflection, it does not make sense too to consider the
relation with my body as only an instrument. If I say I own my body, I treat it like an instrument
that I possess and use in order to possess and use other things in the world. Only by means of my
body, for instance, can I possess and use this ballpen, this table, this car, this building and others.
Is my body then an instrument?

An instrument is an extension or a reinforcing of a power or part of my body. The

eyeglasses reinforce my sense of sight; the car extends the “ability” of my feet to travel; the clothes
and building extend our skin; and the hammer further reinforces my hand, the computer our brain,
and so on. If my body were an instrument, it would need some other body that extends and
reinforces, and this body would also need another body, and thus we would arrive at an unending
series of bodies ad infinitum. Clearly this is an absurdity that is contrary to our experience.

For Marcel, the body that I can say I have is a body-object, “a body” that I or anybody can
use. This is the body studied by primary reflection of the sciences. But if I treat my body as only
a possession, its being mine loses its meaning. The experience of my body is the experience of I-
body (bodysubject). Here secondary reflection recuperates and states that there is no gap between
me and my body. In short, I am my body.

If I say I am my body, this does not imply that I am the body that is the object for others,
the body seen, touched, felt by others. Like the dualism of Descartes, this materialistic view is
imprisoned in the Procrustean bed of primary reflection and reduces the experience of my body to
the idea of “a body.” “I am my body” has only a negative meaning. It simply states that I cannot
separate myself from my body. My being in-the-world is not the bodily life alone nor the spiritual
life alone but the life of an embodied spirit (‘etre incarnee’).

Marcel admits that it is difficult to conceive of this experience of “my body” in a clear and
distinct manner. Thinking involves making use of ideas that mediate the experience or thing itself
investigated. But the experience of “my body” is what Marcel calls a “non-instrumental
communion.” My body cannot be framed in an instrumentalist idea, and if I only think of it. I have
not really reached the essence of the experience. My body is a unity sui generis and this unity is
inconceptualizable. I do not think of my body; I feel it. This feeling that makes known my body is
termed by Marcel as “sympathetic meditation.” If we want out thinking to be faithful to experience,
we need to use concepts that point to this feeling (directional concepts.) And this can be fulfilled
only if we enter into secondary reflection and humbly return to the experienced reality of ordinary
life.

The Life of Embodied Spirit

We begin our reflection on the experience of my body by recognizing its paradoxical

character. On one hand, I cannot detach my body from myself; they are not two things that happen
by chance to be together. Rather, my self is absolutely embodied. Likewise, on the other hand, I
cannot reduce myself to my body: I also experience myself as an I—spirit and will that can never
be imprisoned in my flesh and bones. That is why we can say there are two faces shown in the
experience of my body: “I have my body” and “I am my body.”

It is very tempting for any erudite person, philosopher or scientist, to forget this paradox
and fix his attention to only one side of the experience. This precisely is the danger of any primary
reflection: our inquiry becomes clear and distinct, but we get farther away from real experience.
The paradox is the experience itself and this should be the one described by philosophy by means
of secondary reflection.

The body as intermediary. I experience myself as being-in-the-world through my body.

My body acts as the intermediary between the self or subject and the world.17

When we use the term intermediary, we refer to one of two conflicting meanings. If I say,
“X is the intermediary of Y and Z,” I may mean that because X, Y and Z encounter or become
closer to each other or come to an agreement. Let us take this example from the story of Macario
Pineda titled, “Kung Baga sa Pamumulaklak.” A young father named Desto wants to win the hand
of the illustrious young lady named Tesang. However, he cannot just present himself directly to
the lady of his affection to tell her of his feelings. He first approaches his uncle Mang Tibo who is
the kumpare of Tesang’s parents so he can act as intermediary between him and Tesang’s parents.
Only then do Tesang’s parents allow Desto to court her. In this situation the intermediary serves
as the “bridge” for the union of the young man and the lady.

On the other hand, I can also mean the opposite. I can say that because X, Y and Z are
separated. Still with the example of courting, the parents pf the girl may stand between our
affection and prevent our being sweethearts. In the old films of Virgo Productions, often Lolita
Rodriguez plays the role of the “other woman” who stand between the beautiful relationship of the
couple Eddie Rodriguez and Marlene Dauden. Here, the intermediary is not a bridge but an
obstacle.

Now, when I say my body is the intermediary between my self and the world, I refer to the
two meanings of intermediary. On the one hand, because of my body, an encounter and agreement
occur between my self and the world. In reality, the encounter of the experience of my self and the
experience of the world can only take place in the experience of the body. Because of my body, I
experience the world as my world and we are familiar to each other. Because of my body, the chair
I am sitting on is hard, the sunset is as rose as red, the effect of the lambanog on my empty stomach
is strong, the smell of the Pacwood factory in San Pedro, Laguna, is like hell. Because of my body,
I have an experience of “near” and “far,” “up” and “below” and many other relations in space. The
world of man is different from the “world” of the fly because their bodies have different
frameworks. My body is by nature international (directed to the world), and creates and discovers
meaning that I am conscious of in my existence. Thus, because of my body, the whole universe
has and reveals a meaning for-me-and-for-man. Through my body, my subjectivity is openness to
the world and the world is opened to me; the world fills me, and I fill the world.

17
In this part, I am indebted to some ideas of William Lujipen in his Existential Phenomenology (Pittsburg:
Duquesne University Press, 1969), pp. 274-82.
 On the other hand, also because of my body, I experience the world as separate from me. I
am “not-world”, and the world is “not-I”. In the giving-of-meaning-to-the-world of my body, I
also experience the self as “outside” of the world, I am the one who sees, and who gives-name to
this or that. My body shows that I am not simply a thing among other things in nature. This oneness
and wholeness of my body is different from the oneness and wholeness of the world. If I did not
have this kind of distance from the world, I would become only a thing without any interiority;
and clearly this view is not
true to our experience of life. My body participates in the world but cannot be reduced to it.
The body in intersubjectivity. My body is not only an intermediary between me and the
world but also between me and others. I show myself to the other and the other also shows himself
to me through my body.

Because of my body, we interrelate with each other in many different ways—in our vision,
actions, attitude, in our rituals, signs, and speech. We face each other in anger, tenderness, sadness,
etc., because we have a body to present. If the other shows winkles on his forehead, he is indicating
dissatisfaction, confusion or disapproval of what I am saying. The wry and red appearance of my
face is my anger; my fixed-to-the-ground look and my sigh are my loneliness.18 The child does not
have to disobey his parent, a look from the parent is enough to prevent him. Every part and action
of my body says something of myself and my world. As what a poet says of an alluring young
woman:

There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits
look out
At every joint and motive of her body.19

The language of the body has its own grammar and rhetoric in expressing my interiority.
If I love Maria, I show this through my kisses, embrace, holding tenderly her hand, etc., and also
through exchanges of rings, daily telephone conversations, weekly visits. I respect my parents in
kissing their hands; I accept a new acquaintance in shaking his hand. Embodiment is not just an
additional or an external appearance; it is the gesture and appearance of what I truly feel inside. I
cannot say I love my brothers and sisters if I do not show this love to them. I cannot say I respect
my parents if my speech to them is not respectful. My faith is meaningless if I do not realize it in
my daily actions and life. In social life too, the great aspirations of the citizenry need to be
embodied in political, economic, cultural (etc.) framework for these to have an enduring
realization. As the apostle James says, “Whoever listens to the word but does not put it into practice
is like a man who looks in a mirror and sees himself as he is. He takes a good look at himself and
then goes away and at once forgets what he looks like.” (James 1, 22-23). The spirit and the word
is fulfilled in the actions and deeds of the body.

However, as we have seen, there are two facts to the body as intermediary. I cannot separate
my intersubjectivity from its embodiment, but I cannot also reduce it to its embodiment. The spirit

18
This is discussed in the chapters on the body in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962) and Jean Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (New York; Washington Square
Press, Inc., 1966.)
19
William Shakespeare, Toilus and Cressida, Act 4, scene 5.
needs to be expressed and realized in the body but my body cannot fully state all of my subjectivity.
I may truly love my family even if my body is far away from them. The fullness of my love for
the beloved cannot be said in exchange of rings or in daily telephone conversations. My
subjectivity transcends in expanse and depth its embodiment. Indeed my body shows myself, but
it can also be a mask that hides what I truly think or feel. I can smile in the company of my friends
while suffer inside of frustration (as they say, “laughing in the outside but crying in the inside”).
The paradox of “I have my body” and “I am my body” also applies to my inter-relationship with
others.

The value of the body. As the appearance and expression of my subjectivity, my body has
a unique value and dignity. It directs me not only to the world and to others but also to God. St.
Paul says in the first letter to the Corinthians: “You know that your bodies are parts of the body of
Christ. Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who
was given to you by God. You do not belong to yourselves but to God, he bought you for a price.
So use your bodies for God’s glory. (1 Corinthians 6, 15-18).

Guide Questions:

1. How do you see a human as an embodied spirit?

2. What is implied in the thought “you are your body”?
3. What is implied in the thought “you have your body”?
4. How should one understand the concept of the self?
5. What is the role of the will in forming one’s character?
6. Is the experience of my body may differ from the experience of the self? Why?
7. How is the body becomes an intermediary between the self and others?
8. How can man transcend his embodied situation?
9. What values foster the human spirit?
10. How does valuing the body lead to one’s transcendence?