Foundations: Subjectivity and life

Abstract

‘Foundations: subjectivity and life’ develops the concept of embodied subjectivity, initially grounded in the phenomenology of bodily existence. A central concept for the investigation is the dual aspect of the living person as a dialectical unity of the subjective body and the physical body. The mind–brain problem is therefore reformulated as the ‘subject body–object body problem’ (Leib–Körper problem). Subsequently, an ecological conception of the living organism is developed. This focuses, on the one hand, on a living being’s self-organization and subjectivity and, on the other hand, on its relationship to the environment with reference to metabolism and the sensorimotor cycle. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the specific, circular causality of living systems. This incorporates the concept of capacity as a living being’s holistic, dispositional property, by means of which it becomes the cause of its own enactments of life.