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selves from themselves, from their Self, their pain or their suffering. If in the world’soutside of itself, which is the place of the separation, our own body cannot place itselfoutside itself, even if it is stretched out and its parts are external to each other, it isbecause this body, far from defining our real body – our invisible and indivisible flesh –is only its external representation.” 77This questioning and crisis of the body are accompanied by the growth crisis of contemporaryindividualism, i.e., that of a narcissistic sensitivity. The value crisis problematizesthe relationship with the world, and it is in this context that the body becomes a havenand an ultimate value of youth, seduction, vitality, “best friend,” a “capital” that one needsto manage with the best resources, prime value property, an object for great attention, careand treatment: “A ruse of modernity passes off as “liberation” what is no more than praisefor the young, healthy, slender, spotless, seductive body. The fashioning of appearance,the cult of form, the imperative of good health, induces a careful, often strict, relation tothe self. The key values of modernity … are those of youth, health, vitality, seduction andhygiene. They are the cornerstones of the modern discourse on the body.” 78 The individualis reduced to his organic physicality (corporéité) to such an extent that, when it deteriorates(old age, illness) he believes that he has lost his dignity: “The weakness of lifeconsists of its will to escape itself – and this is an ever-present temptation. … The impossibilityof breaking up the string that attaches life to itself, which is to say to escape itssuffering, increases the latter, exasperates the will to escape it and, in turn, simultaneously,the feeling of its helplessness, the feeling of Oneself as an original impossibility of escapingoneself, a feeling which finally reaches its peak and resolves itself in anguish.” 79 Oldage and illness mark the progressive reduction of subjectivity to its organic body, reflectingthe moment when this very body is exposed to the gaze, but without the other’s lenienceon a not too favorable day. 80 The temptation to “recycle” 81 the body in the denial ofits relationship with pathos, with pain, with anguish, is the reflection of the new representationof a body-object capable of being “dismounted” and “rearticulated” down to its lastrecess. The notion of perfect health is subsidiary to the notion of body-object since, likeit, health has been objectified and defined as absence of illness, pain and suffering,dispossessing therefore the own-body from what defines it: its experiences, pain andsuffering (pathos) as originary affection, hence non-objectifiable or representable. Illnessis what becomes opaque, hidden, it is the stalemate and obstacle to the originary experienceof human authenticity. Illness is the diffuse perception of the tension of a distance(alienation) between the self and the oneself that expresses itself throughout an entirehuman life. 82 Like practical experience, the experience of suffering, the state of healthis not objectifiable despite it having been made a sector of appearances.77Michel Henry, Phénoménologie de l’Incarnation (Paris: Seuil, 2000), 247-252.78David le Breton, “À la recherche du secret perdu,” Revue Le groupe familial, no. 141(October/December 1993): 6-7.79Henry, La Barbarie, 128.80Cf. Le Breton, “À la recherche du secret perdu,” 8.81Cf. Gilles Lipovetski, L’ère du vide (Paris: Gallimard, 1983).82In this context Georges Canguilhem says: “s’agissant de la maladie, l’homme normal est celui quivit l’assurance de pouvoir enrayer sur lui ce qui, chez un autre, irait à bout de course. Il faut donc àl’homme normal, pour qu’il puisse se croire et se dire tel, non pas l’avant-goût de la maladie, mais sonombre portée.” Georges Canguilhem, Essai sur quelques problèmes concernant le normal et le pathologique(Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1950).165