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effort if this effort gives rise to it. A movement without the least withdrawal, an actionthat compresses itself proportionately to its dynamism, the effort is the reality of the self.The being of the “self” is the action through which I endlessly transform the world; hence,the cogito does not mean I think, but I can (“je peux”). 47 The body is a fascinatingillustration of what Michel Henry calls a double presence: “The body first presents itselfto us in the world and is immediately interpreted as an object of the world, something thatis visible, that I can see, touch, feel. But this is only the apparent body. The real body isthe living body, the body in which I am placed, that I never see and that is a cluster ofpowers – I can, I take with my hand – and I develop this power from within, outside theworld. It is a metaphysically fascinating reality because I have two bodies: visible andinvisible. The inner body that I am and is my real body is the living body, and it is withthis body that I actually walk, take, embrace, am with others.” 48 The being of the body issubjective, is absolute immanence, and is absolute transparency. 49 The division of actioncorresponds to the division of the body: on the one hand, the body in the truth of theworld (the real body, the visible body, the body-object comparable to all objects becauseit shares in their essence, the res extensa; on the other, the body in the Truth of Life, theinvisible body, the living body. 50 Therefore, the body is placed beside the subject sincethe experience of the subjective movement prevents its reduction to the condition ofobject: the being of this movement, this action and this power is that of a cogito. 51 Inother words, the body is a subjective reality, it is not an instrument. The experience wehave of the body, in the sensing of the effort, is not a simple experience that reveals anobject whose being is an “outside” of itself, in such a way that the body could be unveiled,for example, from the exterior. The movement, the effort, is physical, 52 and thebeing of this power is that of immanence which, while moving-itself, is ex-pression: Thebody moves itself and, in this way, it becomes mobile and enters the world to ex-press,to ex-pose itself as mobile; the world, in turn, impresses itself on the body in immanence,therefore it is an originary impression that itself originates in mobility; that is, the worldpenetrates immanence as a legitimate extension of the moved-oneself of the subjectivebody. The movement is not an intermediary between the ego and the world: it is the egoitself, and its being is effort, and it is for this reason that we make our movements withoutthinking about them. Motor functions are, therefore, the condition for the possibility oftranscendence itself 53 : this pure immanence that the effort reveals and accomplishes impliesthat the transcendental inner experience is always, too, a transcendent experience:the feeling of the effort is necessarily the revelation of a term that resists it. This resistingterm is not an object which would reveal itself to be somehow liable to oppose the effort,which would lead to the separation of consciousness from its own movement. On thecontrary, the movement is a form of specific and originary givenness which does notdepend on any representation, and resistance is correlatively the modality according to47Ibid., 73.48Ibid., 156.49Ibid., 79, 165.50Henry, C’est moi la Vérité, 301.51The profundity of this conclusion “ne réside pas dans le fait d’avoir déterminé le cogito commeun ‘je peux’, comme une action et comme un mouvement, elle consiste dans l’affirmation que l’être dece mouvement, de cette action et de ce pouvoir, est précisément celui d’un cogito.” Ibid., 74.52“Notre corps est l’ensemble des pouvoirs que nous avons sur le monde.” Ibid., 80.53Merleau-Ponty in Visible et invisible, insists on the contrary, on the dimension of belonging thatis implicit in motor functions: as intentional, it is phenomenalizing, but as motor functionality it is on theside of the transcendence that it phenomenalizes.160