Special contribution to the debate

Mildred Bakan

pp. 219-226

in: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed), The crisis of culture, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1976

Abstract

There is a sense in which we may speak of the mind of the body. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the lived-body is, in effect, a concept of the body as mind. Something very much like the concept of the lived-body, divorced from Merleau-Ponty’s epistemological concern, is developed by Adolph Portmann, the German biologist and others who share his approach.1 This concept was worked out in a biological context to characterize a living body. Central to Portmann’s concept are two key expressions: (1)‘Selbstdarstellung’ — ‘self-presentation’, or ‘display’ and (2) ‘Weltbe-ziehung durch Innerlichkeif’ — usually rendered as ‘centeredness’, but literally, ‘World relation through inwardness’. ‘Display’ refers to the appearance of a living body to other living bodies; ‘centeredness’ refers to the regulation of the body’s relation to its environment by its internal organization, which must be maintained if the organism is to remain alive. Portmann — along with Plessner and Buitendijck — emphasizes the role of the body boundary in maintaining the separation of the organism from its environment. The body boundary controls the access of the environment to the internal organization of the organism. Its body boundary is also the way an organism is presented — displayed — to its environment.

Cited authors

Merleau-Ponty Maurice