SEVEN PAPERS ON EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS ... - Wagner College

eyes. That reflection gives me the first glimpses of what I am, yet any mirror image of myself will
always be only a chilly unreal eidolon (the alter ego) of what I am, since the body I see in the
mirror reveals only the body I have and only part of it. My face is the first part of the body I have
of which I am consciousness, and as a result throughout life my face exemplifies my body.
The other validates my existence in the way he looks at me, as well as in the way he
touches me, and by the tone, quality, and manner of the way he speaks to me (7). What is said
matters little at first, even though the content of the speech becomes increasingly important for
what I will be. Its tone quality is significant from the start. Similarly, later in life, someone speaking
to me in a language I do not understand will still validate my existence, even though the
experience may also bring into sharper relief for me what I am.
D. The Body I Am and the Body I Have
I have made a distinction between the body one has and the body one is. What, more
precisely, is meant by this distinction? The parts of my body that I can see and touch with my
own hands and especially my hands themselves, which do the touching, comprise the body I
have. The parts of my body that are hidden from direct view but which can be palpated by me,
or are brought to life in interior feelings of pleasure and pain are also included in the Gestalt of
the body I have. This is the body that has a certain physiognomy and a past.
The body I have is the body I exercise to certain proportions I have envisaged. It is the
body I feed and costume. Finally, it is the body that is scarred and wrinkled, pale or tinted,
made over with cosmetics or reconstructed by surgery. It is the body that is so tall and so heavy,
the body that senses. It eludes my inspection, whether in the reflected image on the surface of a
mirror or on the two-dimensional superfices of a portrait painting or photographic or electronic
image.
The body I have feels what touches it. I am disturbed at the body I have and feel pain or
pleasure there. Pain caused by outside forces as well as endogenous pain are experienced as
attacks "against" the body I have. Occasionally, I may surprise myself and touch a part of the
body I have with a part of the body I am (for example, when I reach for something but
absentmindedly and accidentally grab onto my own arm). In spite of the temporary dislocation,
I immediately revert to being only the body I have (8). In such rare and peculiar perceptions, I
am briefly made aware of my dual body, and therefore implicitly grasp the difference between
what I am and my existence, yet usually the experience does not last long enough to "make a
difference," and, typically, I overlook anomalous perceptions. It was a perceptual error, I say to
myself. If I try to repeat it, in order to verify it, I cannot and feel relieved by the outcome of the
test (9).
What I sense falls into place at once in what I am. It finds a place in my past, a past I am
continually revising. If it is a powerful or otherwise significant. sensation, I may even retrace vast
ranges of my past, looking for where the sensation has a place or context, and in that case the
reorganization of my past that is always determining its possible future will be especially
dramatic.
What I register of what I have sensed must also "make sense" for what I am as the future
my past has. When I cannot organize what I sense with respect to that future, I experience
panic. The ontological anxiety of human living organizes what is sensed with respect to the
future my past has. Heidegger has described this anxiety as one of the equally basic dimensions
of being human.
As we have said, I do not sense my existence. I do not have direct access to my own
existence. Only an other has such access. My existence is nothing I can be, but I can know
about it. I can reflect on my existence "after the fact," so to speak. In reflection, I can form an
image of my presence. As something imagined, pieced together from my encounters with