The body as a system of concordance and the perceptual world

Ignacio de los Reyes Melero

pp. 105-120

in: Dermot Moran (ed), The phenomenology of embodied subjectivity, Berlin, Springer, 2013

Abstract

Following the line of Husserl's phenomenology, I reflect on the body as a system of concordance, that is, an organic unit thanks to which the world is presented in experience in a coherent and ordered manner. I examine the way in which systems of concordant experience connect, and how they relate to discordances. Such discordances can be either disillusions with respect to worldly content, or pathological affections of the body itself. Discordances always appear in relation to a normal order which is necessary in order to experience the world. The apparent contingency of such normal orders and their possible corrections will lead me to raise a question about the sense in which normal orders can be replaced by orders that are not normal: Can one accept that the things given in concordant experiences may not really be as they appear to be? I argue that Husserl's view of the relation between concordance, intersubjectivity and objectivity rules out the possibility of a world of experience that is not, at least to a minimum degree, continuous with ours.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund