The pursuit of health, strongly reinforc<strong>ed</strong> by post-war socio-economic and scientificculturalpolicies, be<strong>com</strong>es a social certainty/celebratory liturgy, 83 m<strong>ed</strong>iat<strong>ed</strong> and instrumentaliz<strong>ed</strong>by technical, social and cultural aspects; technical with the therapeutic synergy thatparadoxically engenders new diseases; social for the existential uprooting and anguish thatthe diagnosis effects, 84 haunting the patient, the elderly, the handicapp<strong>ed</strong>, the dying;cultural with the promise of progress embodi<strong>ed</strong> in the idea of “amortality” (Illich), and theconsequent refusal of the precarious, fallible and suffering (pathetic) condition of man.The symbolic institution of modern culture turn<strong>ed</strong>, therefore, the notion of health into asocial metaphor, setting it off against the notion of “salvation” (salut), and turning itspursuit into the prevailing “pathogenic” (pathogène) 85 factor. Health and disease be<strong>com</strong>ecrossing points of systems of probability curves organiz<strong>ed</strong> in a specific clinical setting.The body, as an imprint of its natural and social environment, is an integral part of thissymbolic institutionalization process -- the institution of its identity and the identity ofsubjects -- and is under permanent conceptualization both as a biological being and as acultural product. 86 Like the multiple techniques of the body 87 (Marcel Mauss), the notionof health is itself symbolically institutionaliz<strong>ed</strong>, in terms of what objective science, particularlythe biological sciences institutionaliz<strong>ed</strong> as questions to be solv<strong>ed</strong>, but then again asan escape from the questions of meaning and excess. To think of this excess means tocontemplate the body from within, as a subjective body, as a living body (chair), no longerbiological. What the conception and knowl<strong>ed</strong>ge of the biological body show<strong>ed</strong> is that itsperspective from outside, as an objective system, institutes the body as a “wholeness”without inside. 88 As historical beings, men maintain an original relationship with this83“Pour parler de la santé en 1999, il faut <strong>com</strong>prendre la recherche de la santé <strong>com</strong>me l’inverse decelle du salut, il faut la <strong>com</strong>prendre <strong>com</strong>me une liturgie sociétaire au service d’une idole qui éteint lesujet.” See Ivan Illich in “L’obsession de la santé parfaite,” Le Monde Diplomatique (1999): 29.84“Plus l’offre de la pléthore clinique est le résultat d’un engagement politique de la population, plusintensément est ressenti le manque de santé. En d’autres termes, l’angoisse mesure le niveau de modernisation,et encore plus celui de politisation. L’acceptation sociale du diagnostic «objectif» est devenu pathogèneau sens subjectif.” Illich, La perte des sens, 331.85Ibid., 330. “Vers le milieu du XXe siècle, ce qu’implique la notion d’une ‘recherche de la santé’avait un sens tout autre que de nos jours. Selon la notion qui s’affirme aujourd’hui, l’être humain qui abesoin de santé est considéré <strong>com</strong>me un sous-système de la biosphère, un système immunitaire qu’il fautcontrôler, régler, optimiser, <strong>com</strong>me ‘une vie’. … Pour sa réduction à une vie, le sujet tombe dans un videqui l’étouffe.” Illich, “L’obsession de la santé parfaite,” 29.86Manufactur<strong>ed</strong> and consequently artificial, as François Jacob’s theory of the do-it-yourself of formsproposes: “Comme tout organisme vivant, l’être humain est génétiquement programmé et programmé pourapprendre. Tout un éventail de possibilités est offert par la nature au moment de la naissance. Ce qui estactualisé se construit peu à peu pendant la vie par l’interaction avec le milieu.” in Le jeu des possibles(Paris: Fayard, 1981), 126. In this matter, on the other hand, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the fact that theanatomic organization of the body leaves open-end<strong>ed</strong> behavioral possibilities for the creation ofsignifications transcendent to itself, yet immanent to behavior as such: “Il est impossible de superposerchez l’homme une première couche de <strong>com</strong>portements que l’on appellerait ‘naturels’ et un monde spirituelet culturel fabriqué. Tout est fabriqué et tout est naturel chez l’homme <strong>com</strong>me on voudra dire, en ce sensque pas un mot, pas une conduite qui ne doive quelque chose à l’être simplement biologique, et qui enmême temps ne se dérobe à la simplicité de la vie animale, ne détourne de leur sens les conduites vitales,par une sorte d’échappement et par un génie de l’équivoque qui pourrait servir à définir l’homme.”Maurice Merleau-Ponty, La phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), 220-221.87Cf. Marcel Mauss, “Les techniques du corps,” in idem, Sociologie et anthropologie (Paris: Puf,1983), 378-379.88“Ou sans ‘d<strong>ed</strong>ans’ autre que le d<strong>ed</strong>ans d’un sac que l’on peut ouvrir chirurgicalement pourintervenir ou observer, donc un d<strong>ed</strong>ans qui peut toujours lui-même être converti en dehors, à savoir unfaux d<strong>ed</strong>ans, un d<strong>ed</strong>ans seulement empirique que rien, sinon la limite factuelle de la peau, des muscleset des os ne teint en son d<strong>ed</strong>ans.” Marc Richir, Le corps. Essai sur l’intériorité (Paris: Hatier, 1993), 28.166
iological body, since <strong>com</strong>mon-sense concepts eventually assimilate the representationsof science reasonably quickly: “It is not that a science like biology can offer us any enlightenmentabout it; on the contrary, it is on such knowl<strong>ed</strong>ge that it itself is found<strong>ed</strong>; itcannot be suppos<strong>ed</strong> to explain what it presupposes as its condition for possibility, as theontological horizon inside which it can find its objects, offer its explanations and, aboveall else, pose its problems.” 89The chimeric longing for eternal health results from the modern observation of theprecariousness of human existence: illness (and insanity) draws this same limit in whichhealth is vital illusion, a time outside all temporality, the finish<strong>ed</strong> good of the human asthe incarnation of health, constituting itself a posteriori as the space of a human <strong>com</strong>munityunifi<strong>ed</strong> in a normative practice of life as a natural social value. The body is object,a useful vector, indispensable to life. In its way it be<strong>com</strong>es the practice of the modernmodus vivendi, and the connection with this notion of health is situat<strong>ed</strong> there: a lifetechnique that enables the body to live on, in spite of everything. Definitely and radicallybiologiz<strong>ed</strong>, the human subject integrates itself in the order of treatment techniques, i.e.,in the generaliz<strong>ed</strong>, <strong>com</strong>pulsive recourse to m<strong>ed</strong>icine, it is the whole life of man that is partof a social-therapeutic project to normalize everyday life, a sort of negation of the sensus<strong>com</strong>munis 90 : ultimately, the figure of the physician emerges as the constitution of a newpower or authority on life and death, henceforth dictating norms to the symbolic andcultural system (sensus <strong>com</strong>munis). The biological body is the <strong>com</strong>monplace of the scientificdeterminations that make it up, 91 and therefore it cannot constitute itself into originaryground since it is already a product of human reflection: “It is not that a science likebiology can offer us any enlightenment about it; on the contrary, it is on such knowl<strong>ed</strong>gethat it itself is found<strong>ed</strong>.” 92The contribution of Henryian reflection to the range of an idea of “health” versusillness was derivatively prolific for the emphasis put on the idea of originally pathic selfgivenness(auto-affection) of all transcendental ipseity in the self-generation of Life 93 andon that of subjective body despite the implicit Husserlian legacy of an epoché of theworld. If Life never ceases to be liv<strong>ed</strong>, to be reveal<strong>ed</strong>, to summon the living to live and(re)turn to life (of which insanity, attempt<strong>ed</strong> suicide, euthanasia, etc., are examples), thetrue cure supposes a rebirth of ipseity, the resurrection from this life which for a giventime seems to withdraw from itself, to self-deny itself. Modern culture has not only r<strong>ed</strong>uc<strong>ed</strong>knowl<strong>ed</strong>ge by scientifying it, but also extend<strong>ed</strong> the self-denial of life and the pathos(this originary suffering) that sustains it 94 to the world and to societies: “Curative worksubordinates constantly cognitive progress to the destiny of the affect and, revealing thetrue nature of all concrete inter-subjectivity, the relationship between the analysis and theanalyser is situat<strong>ed</strong>, or rather play<strong>ed</strong>, as a confrontation of forces immers<strong>ed</strong> in themselves,89Henry, Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps, 5.90Culture is a plurality of systems of action on which basis individuals and social groups can expresstheir capacity to be and do, to think and live.91Ibid., 8.92Ibid., 5.93Archi-Ipseity of a First Living, of an Archi-Son: “le Christ <strong>com</strong>me la condition transcendantal<strong>ed</strong>e tout moi possible, moi lui-même <strong>com</strong>pris <strong>com</strong>me moi transcendantal vivant.” Henry, C’est moi laVérité, 143.94“En fin de <strong>com</strong>pte l’autonégation de la vie s’ac<strong>com</strong>plit de deux façons: sur le plan théorique, aveccette affirmation qu’il n’y a pas d’autre savoir que le savoir scientifique; sur le plan pratique, partout oùse réalise, d’une ou de l’autre, la négation pratique de la vie. … Mais la science n’est pas la seule négationpratique de la vie. Dans la signification pathétique, en tant que mise á l’écart par le savant de sa proprevie, elle offre le prototype d’un <strong>com</strong>portement qui précipite la ‘culture’ moderne tout entière dans labarbarie.” Henry, La Barbarie, 130.167
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various forms of idealist philosoph
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self-givenness (Selbstgegebenheit)
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It must be admitted in this regard
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down and all the way back.” 51 Fo
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Heidegger characterized his own pro
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Heidegger’s transcendental-existe
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perceived world” (PP, 25), Merlea
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in the unreflected, in “perceptio
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Nor would Merleau-Ponty have had an
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a way that we do not all crash into
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“I think” but in “the dialogu
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in existence a “super-abundance o
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crucial “other” in our becoming
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to its being grounded in terms of b
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(“History is this quasi-‘thing
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manner (statistical or regression a
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and they are such, precisely becaus
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interpreted the world, and that the
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is not rationalist or idealist in t
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title Herbert Spiegelberg gave to h
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II.TOWARD A TELOS OF SIGNIFYING COM
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published in Being and Having. 12 T
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inside me which makes me able to re
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or is not existence something that
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ReflectionPhilosophical thought is
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attempt at unification, the reflect
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thereof. And an ethical aspect: tha
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According to Ricoeur, “It is here
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the most meaningful contemporary sw
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ival hermeneutics that we perceive
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more pronounced recoil whereby the
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these structures throughout the who
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By seeking a deeper unity of Dasein
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folds a pre-given set of possibilit
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of experience is correlated to a pa
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explanations of causal events in th
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accept one argument over another. A
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a subtle dialectic between argument
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or warrant an assertion. Such fulfi
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the assertive vehemence of the hist
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positions of the subject. For memor
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attestation slips a plurality, most
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What confidence in the word of othe
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From where, perhaps, the place of t
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Sans le correctif du commandement d
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life), Rembrandt proposes an interp
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only as a place made for oneself as
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III.THE HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGY O
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consolidated by terming it an “un
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if we have two persons, a master an
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V.THE ARCHEOLOGY OF HERMENEUTIC PHE
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cosmic world, and Nietzschean nihil
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absolute lawgiver to any possible
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solitude.” 26 If there is a “hi
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of reason, as far as the single hum
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transcendental reason, 46 pure rati
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and properties of sensible phenomen
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In clear distantiation from his own
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2. HISTORY AS THE OTHER -- NOTES ON
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precisely the accomplishment of phe
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ought as such into the present, it
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educed state. As soon as the reflec
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explicitly in the Vienna lecture, w
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the task and the very environment o
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stood “from itself.” As a resul
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makes possible the further interpre
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of Being -- already grown into Bein
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the Husserlian idea of phenomenolog
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into the openness of Being, it diff
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We now need to quote a second, well
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“knowledge about the world.” In
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Husserl’s ConversionsTheological
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And this proved, probably, to be a
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Husserl’s Reflective Phenomenolog
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to beings of the same nature. But t
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worldlessness of Husserl’s intent
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According to Aristotle, intellectio
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6. RIGOR AND ORIGINARITY: THE TRANS
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The latter, the nonessential princi
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that, for Husserl, every act is ind
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not forget what Husserl meant by a-
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things, we shall comprehend by intu
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something,’ is not merely there (
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epoché in Husserl become a hermene
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When Heidegger characterizes world-