From the Embodied Self to the Embodied Person

On the Constitution of One’s Own Personal Expressive Style

Abstract

In this paper, I will focus on the process of constitution of oneself as an embodied being and, more precisely, on the specific way in which one can experience oneself not just as an embodied self, but rather as the actual embodied person he/she is. I will start by describing the most basic way in which our embodied self is constituted, that is as a felt-feeling body and as the zero-point of orientation of all our sensations and perceptions. Then, I will show how our body can be constituted for us also as an instrument for action, leading to the experience of what Husserl called “I-can” (Husserl 1952, 159-160). I will argue that, even though in this latter form of body awareness we can experience some traits of our own personality, a further dimension of our embodied life – that is, the expressive one – allows us to have a more defined experience of the specific embodied persons we are. I will describe what “person” specifically means in my framework and, on this basis, I will show how the expressive dimension of our body can account for my experience of myself not just as an embodied self, but as the embodied person I am.