I will start off by saying that Paul Ricoeur writes like an absolute mofo. I’m not even sure that he understands what he is saying, let alone me, so excuse me if my interpretation of his work is totally wrong.
Right. Paul Ricoeur. I was hoping to find some snazzy document or blog post out there on the Net to back up my ramblings here, but I could not, because it seems that no one else is nuts enough to tackle the subject. I jotted down a few notes as I was reading, but I’m really not sure what kind of use they will be…
Ricoeur straddles the dichotomy between Cartesian dualism and the perception that the mind and body are not only inherently linked, but that they have an affect upon each other. He writes:
The priority given to bodies is of the highest importance for the reason of person. For, if it is true, as we shall state later, that the concept of person is a notion no less primitive than that of the body, this is to evoke not a second referent, distinct from the body, such as the Cartesian soul, but in a manner yet to be determined, a single referent possessing two series of predicates: physical predicates and mental predicates. The fact that persons are bodies too is a possibility that is held in reserve in the general definition of basic particulars, according to which the latter are bodies or possess bodies. Possessing bodies is precisely what person do indeed do, or rather what they actually are. [Ricoeur 1992, 33].
Can we interpret Ricoeur as arguing for the body, given that traditionally the mind has been privileged over the flesh? The Cartesian mind/body split ties in well with early Internet studies work, harking back to a time when the Internet was well and truly regarded a non-physical space (oh, how times have changed!). Ricoeur seems to arguing that, instead of insisting upon a privileged mind that is in control of a body, we would be better off thinking of a privileged personhood which encapsulates elements both of mentality and physicality – “predicates” that allow the mind and body to work together to create a dynamic whole (the individual). People – with the psyche/personality being labeled property of the “mind” – inhabit bodies, and thus our phsyical presence is implicit and unavoidable.
To be honest, I didn’t read a lot of the Ricoeur I have on hand, though I will definitely revisit it when I’ve been doing some more reading (and when it’s more relevant to my current research – this fits in with a much later chapter). However, his discussion of spatiotemporal bodies in society is deliciously relevant to my own work, so I will attempt to consider some of his argument in real-person words. Ricoeur asks us to consider not only the way that we, as individuals, engage with the spatio-temporal setting that our bodies inhabit in a singular sense (i.e., how we ‘fit into’ our bodies), but also how we as bodies fit in to the world around us – “to attack the problem of the person by way of that of objective bodies situated in one and the same spatiotemporal framework” [1992, 34]. He states that “the question of our own body returns to the forefront, no longer simply in terms of our belonging to a single spatiotemporal schema, but in terms of the relation of our own body to the objective world of bodies” [1992, 34].
This reasoning would see bodies interpreted as material, and therefore as objects – but this confuses me, as wouldn’t the interpretation of the body as an objective material item (rather than a being) mean that Cartesian dualism is here employed? Can we regard other bodies as objects and yet still acknowledge that they possess a degree of subjectivity – one that we do not engage with unless compelled to do so? Is a person (and thus a body) operating in space, simply another object until turned into subject? Ricoeur seems to answer this challenge somewhat, proposing that “one does not see how the property of selfhood could be placed in a list of predicates ascribed to an entity, even one as original as the person” [1992, 34]. Perhaps, then, I am to interpret Ricoeur here as saying that it is our lack of comfort in thinking of other human beings as objective entities and subjective individuals, depending on the setting, that inhibits us of thinking of human beings as bodies in space that are simultaneously also subjective individuals.
Reference:
Ricoeur, P. 1992. Oneself as another [trans. Kathleen Blamey]. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, pp.33-35
