The paper explores the transformation of phenomenological inquiry which took place in the early Merleau-Ponty, and shows what role the lived human body plays in it. The position of Merleau-Ponty not only brings new items of knowledge on the functioning of human body but it also shows what are the starting points of different types of investigations of the body. In an effort to grasp the particular activity of body, Merleau-Ponty suspends the presumption of atomic data, which does not explain the emergence of consciousness of the object perceived. At the same time, he denies the philosophy of consciousness, which is not able to conceptually discern the human body from other objects in the world. Merleau-Ponty’s main objection against Husserl’s conception of phenomenology consists in the principal opacity of the human body. The activity of the lived body in perceiving and projecting life space are not given to the inquiring consciousness as an object of consciousness, and so every investigation of corporeity is in danger of distorting its subject by applying its own categories. Merleau-Ponty does not try to evade this danger by invoking the certainty of mathematics, as the natural sciences do, or by reducing the object to its evident core, as Husserl suggests. In this paper, I shall show a new model of understanding hidden beneath the acceptance of the opacity of the human body for consciousness, and a new way of phenomenological inquiry in which the difference between the healthy and the sick body plays the central role.

Institute of Philosophy and Religious Studies Faculty of Arts Charles University Prague

Zdravé a nemocné tělo: hermeneutická metoda raného Merleau-Pontyho

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