Alterity and otherness

the problem of the body in the cartesian meditations

pp. 8-37

in: James Dodd, Idealism and corporeity, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstract

The problem of the body in the Cartesian Meditations is integrated in a more general analysis that is not limited to the phenomenon of the "lived body." The chief concerns of this analysis lie elsewhere, namely (1) to give an account of the constitution of "objective" nature, the "world" of the natural attitude that is made up of persons, things, and the relations between them. The "thesis of the natural standpoint," which had been bracketed, set aside, will now be taken up again, but from a perspective that is supposedly able to give an account of its foundations, of the sources of its legitimacy. The second concern (2) is to demonstrate that phenomenology, understood in a "Cartesian" fashion (where all analysis of structure, of the rationality of experience is carried out as an "egology"), is sensitive to the manifold senses of "otherness," "alterity" and "difference" operative in the thesis of the natural standpoint in general, as well as the particular being-senses of phenomena such as "thing" or "person."