The Body in its Animal Being

Abstract

Aristotle defined human being as the Philosophical efforts to understand what is human have had an overwhelming tendency to focus upon side of equation-in other words, what makes us different from animal. Even such widely divergent views as transcendental idealism and cognitive science are united in their focus upon rational: latter painting reason as constituting principle of experience and former modeling our consciousness upon logical operations of a computer program. To one we are God, to other we are machine, and to neither are we an animal. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological philosophy, which centers upon body, may be seen as a return to animal side of rational For just as it is our rationality which sets us apart from our evolutionary cousins and great-uncles, it is our embodied nature which unites us with them, for this much we have in common. Both to eidetic eye of phenomenologist and to scientist with his prying scalpel and microscope, flesh of man is akin to that of beast. And those human actions and qualities which we associate with body are those which we consider to be more animalistic: qualities such as sexuality, actions such as eating. Our animal being is our bodily being and vice versa. Despite this, Merleau-Ponty has surprisingly little to say about animals or about animal in man. Only in Nature lectures does he deal with animals at any length and even here his remarks are obscure and in need of interpretation. Even more troubling is his approach to topic in lectures. Here he eschews phenomenological approach in favor of analysis of scientific theory and research. Although his goal is ostensibly to speak from within a wild, Nature, his approach to animals follows that of natural scientist, treating them as objects to be observed, manipulated, and theorized about. As Elizabeth A. Behnke points out, the working or companion animals we share our Umwelt with on an everyday basis are seldom mentioned, and then only in passing-typically, in contexts significantly different from those of our everyday commerce with them. Similarly, question of human-animal relation is treated only ontologically, and there is only fleeting reference to human-animal sociality.' If our goal is to retrieve this brute and savage mind beneath all cultural material that is given,2 then ought we not to seek it in a real and genuine encounter with brute? In other words, we should look to our lived relations with working and companion animals that share our lives. Therefore, my goal in this essay will be to perform a phenomenological study of such an animal, situated in context of MerleauPonty's philosophy. It is my intent to study an animal with which I possess as close a relationship as possible. This will allow me to bring all my perceptual powers into play, including those which operate on what we may call a bodily level, and which are normally effaced by scientific methods of inquiry. I have chosen domestic cat as subject of my inquiry. Cats are very nearly ubiquitous in Western world. For this reason my readers will very likely be familiar with animals and with situations I describe and therefore better able to ground my phenomenological reflections in their own lived experiences. Moreover, there has already been some phenomenological work on cats which draws upon MerleauPonty's philosophy: Elizabeth A. Behke's article From Merleau-Ponty's Concept of Nature to an Interspecies Practice of Peace. Now Behnke's goals differ significantly from mine. Her primary goal is to exhibit what she calls her intercorporeal/interspecies practice of peace. Mine is to explore what MerleauPonty calls pre-objective or pre-reflective as it exists in both human and non-human animals. Nevertheless, our projects overlap to some extent, and I will be making reference to her article, both to draw upon her work and to point out where mine can be of help to hers. …