What is My Relationship

to My Body?
Our Bodies
There are times when we pay attention to our bodies rather than simply moving about
doing day-to-day activities. When you have a toothache so painful that you become
aware of how something so small can have pain so massive, you end up being sorry
for all your bad life choices. Most usual time when we notice our bodies, is when we
find that we cannot do something, either due to injury, illness, or to sheer inability.
You realize just how hard it is to take a bath on your own when your arm is in a cast.

But because our bodies are in time and space, we function in accordance with natural
laws. Our bodies are subject to the laws of physics, involving mass, inertia, torque and
other things. Our bodies also work in accordance with the laws of biology and
chemistry, and our abilities are also determined by our anatomy as a species which
has continually evolved throughout time.

In short, we can talk about the body not only in terms of the mind-body problem, but
also in terms of the meaning and experience involved whenever we use the phrase,
my body. This is because my body can mean the body that I have, in the same way
that i also have a mind and a will; and it can also mean that I am my body, because
whatever it is that my body goes through, I go through. This chapter clarifies the
meaning of my body following a phenomological reflection.
Having Bodies

Philosophers throughout history have also talked

about the body, although when they do so, they
do so within the discussion of their very diverse
philosopical systems. The french philosopher and
mathematician Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is
usually credited as the thinker who systemically
articulated the modern dualism between the
mind and the body, although his main concerns
were how we come to know, inspired by the
clarity and distinctive accuracy of the physical
and mathematical sciences. Rene Descartes is
considered to be the father of both modern and
analytic geometry.
Dualism somewhat coincides with Plato, a little more than a
thousand years before Descartes time, also believed. In man,
this dualism occurs as the essential difference between the
body and the soul. For Plato, the soul has three parts. The
appetitive part, the spirited part and the rational part. An
excellent, virtous man has a very well-ordered soul, meaning
that each of these parts do their respective goals without
interferring with the other parts and functions. Such a man is
contemplative, for it is in contemplation that we reach of the
good. For Plato, it is the soul, and not the body, which has the
access to the ideal forms, being of the same nature as them.
Man thus essentially a soul with a corruptible, mortal body,
and in bodily death the bodys distractions and imprisonment
no longer apply to him. Aristotle , however, disagreed with
some of his teachers ideas, claiming that the form is
inseperable from the matter of substance. This means that
man is the entirety of his body and his soul. For Aristotle, you
cannot ask wether a statue is its structure or its material
Being Bodies