dc.description.abstract |
Emmanuel Levinas calls suffering "the very bond of human subjectivity," that by
which we are most fundamentally connected. Albeit irrefutable in its own right, properly
accounting for human suffering and pain resists explanation almost as much as accounts
of the nature of the human body do, and it is the opacity of the latter, I hope to show, that
belies the clarity of the former. Undoubtedly, there is hardly a more consequential subject
than one's understanding of the human body, for it (in)forms one's understanding of the
world, one's Weltverständthnism from the most "theoretic" and far-ranging human beliefs,
such as those in religion, philosophy, and the sciences, to the most "mundane" and
everyday beliefs, such as one's attitude towards bodily consumption. In an effort to
address these topics, this thesis begins with Martin Heidegger's Being and Time and the
compelling account it gives of human being-in-the-world. Then, on the way to a
phenomenology of suffering, it both critiques and augments Heidegger's treatment of the
body, eventually working towards an interpretation which understands the body as leiben,
as the body -ing of Dasein. I will argue that bodying is an existential—that is, a
constitutive factor of Dasein's ontological structure. This means, in turn, that the bodying
of Dasein is ontologically definitive for, is an existential structuring of, the being of
every being encountered by it, including itself. Lastly, the phenomenology of suffering
presented will, where successful, substantiate and extend the arguments given within the
context of Heidegger's work, with the final suggestion that the conception of the bodying
developed herein has extensive implications for medicine, ethics, and politics. |
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