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I. Actuality of the problem as the question of man's self-understanding
The classic body-soul problem formulates unaltered a key philosophical problem. The experience of being a citizen of two worlds, existing in the corporeal world while at the same time living a life of the mind ("Leben des Geistes"),1 persistently disturbs our self-understanding. Who is man, what relation has his thinking to corporeality? Is "soul" merely an archaic name for "mind," or does the soul possess a reality of its own? Can the assumption of an immaterial world be reconciled with scientific, technical reality? Can present-day brain research offer us solutions to these questions2 whereby man proves himself to be an electrochemically controlled mechanism? Or is psychology the science which has to probe and examine our emotional and cognitive faculties? These are questions which affect our existence. But scientists do not determine what science means;3 and whether body, soul, mind are even accessible to scientific investigation becomes ever more questionable. The question of man's being remains in its anthropological constraint without significant answer.
The experience of the otherness of mind, played out in the traditional hierarchy of world, man, and God, which tempted the modern age into subjectivity,4 is at the same time the experience of the powerlessness of the mind, of its inherent dependence on the senses: without body there is no mind, without world, no body.5 In order to know how man is we must learn what constitutes his world. The anthropological body-soul problem refers compellingly to ontology. The philosophical treatment of this problem is thus characterized in the past and present by an evident proximity to fundamental ontological determinations. Whether the world is perceived as monistic or dualistic, whether the unity of all beings is stressed or the difference intoned, has immediate effect on the body-soul problem. There is however no obligation. The monist can argue materialistically or idealistically; the advocates of dualism are locked in hopeless dispute.6
The ontological background is, however, by no means without implications. On the contrary, it decisively determines the manner in which man understands himself and his behavior in the world. A dualistic division of the world is the necessary condition for human dominance, justification of the exploitation of nature and fellow-man. Even if the ontological dualism vaguer acknowledges a prior unity of being,7 it expresses a human claim to order which divides body and soul. Man is no longer one with the cosmos, but forms a center of his own, understanding himself at best in interaction with the nonhuman.8 Then the foreignness of things begins. and their misuse as in significant objects at our disposal. Modern instrumental science would be inconceivable without Descartes' dualistic ontology. his division of though — and corporeal world. But this dualism which made man proud and free is responsible for our fatal incapacity to understand the present destruction of the world as human self-destruction. That which the body experiences daily and which our mind declares not relevant to itself. can only then be carnally present and become comprehensible when the unity of the world reveals itself as horizon of the phenomena. We live and die in one single world.
II. Ontological and methodological monism: Husserl versus Spinoza
The body-soul problem is the problem of our self-cognition. It is a matter of the quality of our insight into the universal coherence of the cosmos. Does this prescribe an ontological monism? Certainly not in the sense of a mono causal interpretation — ideologic in character 9 — of the world, but perhaps a concentrated "seeing" (Blick) into the essential being which endures an( which first of all renders particularity possible. This meditative thinking does not seek ideas which differ from the matter (Sache). but rather follows the sense of being. If it loses sight of beings at first, it is only to recover their unity and proportion within the context of beings (Sachverhalt)10. Our point of departure must be our self — the only phenomenon about which we can make an authentic statement. The cosmic unity proves itself through the human way of existence, in body and soul. Spinoza's amor Dei intellectualis and Husserl's epoche are tried and tested methods of approach to this monistic evidence (Aufwets). They accomplish the same task. Nevertheless there an differences not only in the two thinkers' terminology and in their description of the body-soul relationship. Their respective concepts of monism are essentially different.
Husserl turns away from Spinoza's ontological understanding of unity. He does not discuss the "what" of the world, decisive for us is the "how." The shaking up of traditional ontology takes effect in Husserl's thought, lead to a human self-restriction which Kant anticipated.11 The unity of method springs from the unity of being. But Husserl's methodological monism12 could not be sustained. The phenomenologists who followed him are characterized by a remarkable hunger for world. Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre fill out Husserl's transcendental structure with Dasein, bodiliness, society. Husserl's conception of Lebenswelt, emergent in his later works, unintentionally gave this development yet another name pregnant with meaning. The world in and around us returns powerful in the determination of man's being. The ontological element which Husserl's phenomenological reduction excludes becomes anew the determining element. But upon closer inspection this phenomenological ontology shows itself to be neither a return to Spinoza nor a dissent from Husserl. Instead it signifies a necessary passage through to an operative knowledge in which truth and method form no antithesis. The dualistic predisposition of modern metaphysics, the separation of body and soul which occurs epistemologically as subject-object division, is what the critics of the present so fatally dominant thought want to overcome. Spinoza, Husserl, and the phenomenological movement deny themselves in this respect the all two simple solution of taking sides: either to name everything mind or matter. The experience of the difference must not be allowed to be explained away by the necessity of comprehending the world as unity.
III. The body-soul problem against ii s ontological
background
1 . Spinoza's Certainty of Being
Spinoza, Descartes' contemporary, student and exemplary critic, designated thought and extension as the two modi of the undivided cosmos which we human beings alone are able to comprehend through our body and our mind.13 Spinoza's presentation of the relationship of body and soul in his Ethics carefully traces the phenomenological experience without metaphysically distorting such through interpretation. Everything the mind knows it knows through the body. The mind has, however, no possibility of causally effecting the body — a statement made by Spinoza14 which Husserl as well accepted.15 Yet body and soul always cooperate. The well-being of the body heightens the thinking power of the mind and vice versa. This is more than merely a claim of psychophysical unity,16 for man develops a more adequate attitude. Only the desire of knowledge, of the amor Dei intellectuallis accords with the most realized bodiliness. Of course, the mind comprehends, not the body, but the mind's delight in the adequate idea encourages the body toward attaining its own appropriate bodiliness. Spinoza's Ethics can be read as the phenomenology of such cooperation between body and soul which brings forth humanness. Psychophysical solidarity which constitutes human life is, however, founded alone in the one substance which is both nature and God. Without this ontological background, Spinoza's presentation of the body-soul relationship would remain arbitrary and the contended cooperation, coincidental. Spinoza's ontology of substance is nevertheless not to be understood as dogmatic positing, but rather, as the Ethics progresses, it verifies itself as indispensable. The principle of universalization makes the particular case possible, admits of the individuality of body and soul. For neither one could ever fall out of the substance and become irresponsible towards the whole. This would then, according to Spinoza, contradict selfpreservation common to all beings in which cosmic unity most evidently expresses itself.17 In other words: an irresponsible attitude in theory and praxis condemns to death without fail. Humanity repudiates the ontological judgment but will have to endure it nonetheless.
2. Husserl 's Critique of Belief in the World
Spinoza's serene certainty of being which he contrasted with the Cartesian humanization of the world, was to Husserl a rationalism whose system had in the meantime collapsed.18 Spinoza's apparently immutable substance was shaken by the modern experience of historicity; in any case, 'hat is how we see it. The world alters itself with our interpretation: how then can adequate knowledge — certainty in thought and action — assert itself?19
Descartes' universal doubt is the modern principle. Husserl tests his conclusions on Descartes, not on Spinoza. His phenomenological reduction suffices this doubt, but avoids Descartes' two-substance doctrine with its weighty consequences and the resulting subject-object division as well.20 Husserl reacts to the historical shaking up of ontology by entirely pulling the ground out from under it. The mundane attitude, without which a relevant discourse on being 21 is impossible, is restricted. The question of "what" proves to be empty, despite the excess of answers; exact knowledge can be found only in "how." Phenomenologically man experiences himself as intentional being. The undivided structure of intentionality is his transcendental ego to which each empirical subject responds.22 Body and soul show themselves to be differing attitudes whose constitutions are precisely definable.
Husserl differentiates between body, soul (psyche), and spirit. In the relevant passages of the second book of his Ideen 23 he determines at the outset the traditional "Doppelrealität" (p. 342) of man, his "induktiv-reale psychophysische Einheit" (p. 353). Body and soul are distinct from and yet dependent upon one another in their unity. The "Einheit des seelischen Seins und Lebens," according to Husserl, is "verknüpft … mit dem Leib als Einheit des leiblichen Seinsstromes, der seinerseits Glied der Natur ist" (p. 343). Occurrences experienced by the soul belong to the "sinnlichen Sphäre" (p. 339). The empirical ego is "das Ich der leibseelischen Natur …. Es ist nicht selbst leibseelische Einheit, sondern lebt in ihr" (p. 339). This naturalist attitude must be supplemented by the personalist (cf. pp. 281 ff.). The soul reveals itself as "Untergrund des Geistes" (p. 334). This spirit comprises "Ich-Mensch" and culture as objectified spirit. "Zum reinen Wesen der Seele gehört die Ich-Polarisierung" as well as the "Notwendigkeit einer Entwicklung, in der sich das Ich zur Person und als Person entwickelt" (p. 350). According to Husserl, only as mind-person does man comprehend himself in complete concretion, "als Subjekt der Intentionalität" (p. 355). Mind sustains itself as body and soul in the structure of intentionality; this becomes self-manifest to the mind above all. Husserl's universal intentionality succeeds to the place of Spinoza's substance, and yet the historicity which acts destructively upon substance is integrated as the hermeneutics of Dasein — at least by Heidegger. Body, soul, and mind accomplish assignments which can be authenticated. Husserl's transcendental idealism need not yet be objectionable, rather it is to be understood more as the delimitation of an area of investigation than as ideology.
IV. The ontological theme in the phenomenology
movement after husserl
Yet Husserl's evidencing (Aufweis) of the monistic structure of intentionality and of the precedence of the unity-promoting mind he emphatically advocated, in no way ended the body-soul discussion. Husserl started a movement whose phenomenological interpretation of man happens upon ontological questions. The further development, revision, or falsification — construed according to standpoint — of the Husserlian phenomenology begins with his determination of man. It was too well-known that Husserl's radical point of departure passed over certain elements of human life not to be relinquished. Are we then primarily spirit-being, consciousness, intentionality? Can the excluding of that which after all constitutes our world be allowed? Should our knowledge merely view coldly and foreignly that which we live through in love and hate? The world in which we live is not a stage play, for in this world we also die. A spectator does not live, for living means changing. Such objections, however, apply to Husserl only to a certain extent. His extensive investigations are in no way intended to hinder man from life, but rather to allow him to comprehend better how he lives his daily as well as scientific life. The full correlation ego-cogito-cogitatum appears in just such an interpretation for the first time. Erroneous paths, subjectivistic as well as objectivistic can now be avoided. Husserl does not construct a world-for-us in the manner of a theorist, but rather analytically descriptively evidences its constitution. That which has been set by "I" is then no longer product, but correlate; the intentional object plays the role of the transcendental guide." Absolute cognition of the world can perhaps be realized as strict science in the phenomenological attitude of the viewer.25 But Husserl's radically theoretical attitude does have certain consequences which subsequent philosophers, also phenomenologically oriented, were not willing to accept: (1) the thorough transformation of sense perception into categorical perception; (2) the presenting of a consciousness which lives entirely in the present; (3) a misapprehending of historical existence which occurs only as past and not as finiteness. 26
The phenomenological Blick of man's being-in-the-world ("In-der-Welt-sein") shows, according to Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, that theory itself must be comprehended as descendent attitude. In contrast, our knowledge must be understood in an existentially, bodily, socially involved manner. As "geworfener Entwurf" (Heidegger) man becomes transformer of the world and establisher of unity in one. Dasein holds together what belongs together, being and time.27 Husserl's intentionality completely fills itself to a way of life. Dasein itself is intentional achievement (Heidegger), as body I have world (Merleau-Ponty) and bring world to totality in a dialectic of "I" and "We" (Sartre). Those elements of being — coming to ripeness, ambiguity, limit, negation — absolutely excluded by Husserl, return. The event of which man partakes is finite.28 The inconceivable concealment of emerging (entbergenden) being reveals itself conclusively in event technology, which can keep us alive, but whose distortion in the form of science-technology leads the human race instead toward certain destruction.29
V. Summary; truth as technology
Husserl's phenomenological Blick, which intended to clarify even up to the absolute streaming, has been broken by the experience of its invalidity (Nichtigkeit). Nevertheless, the evidencing of nothingness (Nichts) only strengthened the unity of being. Indeed, the insight into the finiteness of man hinders us from traditional ontology, but intentionally, existentially, bodily, and socially we constantly manifest a unity which accords with that of the cosmos. Precisely in failure and loss is this unity most evident. Monism is not an intellectual construction which must be secured in dogmata. It expresses the simple experience of aliveness — the fundamental experience of body and soul Through interpretation it is merely misplaced (verstellt). Husserl's decisive step forward would be forgotten if one attempted to define the monistic experience with regard to its content. In its enduring continuity universal unity shows itself to be of diverse, particular elements. We constantly lay claim to them." But it can be neither theoretically" as Husserl assumed — nor practically — as Sartre hoped — guaranteed that we affect the unity of body and soul. Praxis acknowledges only power, and theory wants to be without responsibility. Both forms of life are anthropocentrically false and have been for some time. But we refuse to comprehend truth as technology, which gives reliable information through failed or successful operation. Thus the dying human rase sees sentence passed daily on its technology of life. The instrumental technology which dominates our planet, together with its science, realizes with great efficiency our fall from unity of being. In accord with the remaining spirit is the poisoned body and the decayed soul. This constitutes the body-soul problem of our time.
Translated by Virginia Cutrufelli
NOTES
1 Cf. H. Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 2 vols. (New York, 1978).
2 Cf. J. C. Eccles and K. R. Popper, The Self and its Brain (New York, 1977).
3 Cf. M. Heidegger, 'Science and Reflection,' in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, by Heidegger, trans. W. Lovitt (New York, 1977), pp. 155-82.
4 Cf. W. Schulz, Ich und Welt: Philosophie der Subjektivität (Pfullingen, 1979).
5 Cf. R. M. Zaner, The Problem of Embodiment (The Hague, 1964).
6 Cf. J. Seifert, Das Leib Seele-Problem in der gegenwärtigen philosophischen Diskussion (Darmstadt, 1979), pp. 126-30.
7 Ibid., p. 127.
8 Cf. K. Löwith,Aufsätze und Vorträge (Stuttgart, 1971 ).
9 Cf. Seifert's critical notes, pp. 54ff.
10 Cf. M. Heidegger, On Time and Being, trans. J. Stambaugh (New York, 1972), pp. 4 ff.
11 Cf. E. Fink, 'Die Idee der Transzendentalphilosophie hei Kant und in der Phänomenologie,' in Nähe und Distanz, by Fink. ed. F. Schwarz Freihurg, 1976), pp. 7- 44.
12 Cf. E. Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, Husserliana, vol. 1 (The Hague, 1963), pp. 15f.
13 Cf. Spinoza, Ethics, pt. 2, scholia 23.
14 Ibid., pt. 3, scholia 2.
15 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, bk. 2, ed. M. Biemen, Husserliana, vol. 4 (The Hague, 1952), p. 283.
16 Ibid., pp. 355ff.
17 Spinoza, Ethics, pt. 5, scholia 10.
18 Cf. E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, ed. E. Ströker (Hamburg, 1977), pp. 70ff.
19 Cf. K. Hammacher, 'Spinoza,' in Grundprobleme der grossen Philosophen: PhilosophieI der Neuzeit I, ed. J. Speck (Göttingen, 1979), pp. 101-38.
20 Cf. E. Husserl, Krisis, secs. 10ff.
21 Cf. the articles of A. Lingis, U. Claesges, and J. N. Mohanty in Analecta Husserliana, vol. 1, ed. A-T. Tymieniecka (Dordrecht, 1971).
22 Cf. P. Aubenque, Le Probleme de L'Etre chez Aristote (Paris, 1966).
23 E. Husserl, Ideen, Beilagen I-XIV.
24 Cf. L. Landgrebe, Der Weg der Phänomenologie (Gütersloh, 1967), pp. 9-39.
25 Cf. E. Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger (Berlin, 1967), secs. 8ff.
26 Cf. H. G. Gadamer, 'Die phänomenologische Bewegung,' in Kleine Schriften, vol. 3 (Tübingen, 1972).
27 Cf. M. Heidegger, On Time and Being, p. 4.
28 Ibid., p. 54.
29 Cf. W. Schirmacher, Ereignis Technik: Heidegger und die Frage nach der Technik (Hamburg, 1980).
30 Cf. Y. Nitta's article in this volume.
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