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Body and CoenaesthesisThe starting point of Marcel’s way of thinking, broadly conceived, is a reflection aboutbody. In fact, if we want to be concrete, we cannot leave this out of consideration. Inorder to clarify the relationship between me and my body, we have to use the notion ofCoenaesthesis. Coenaesthesis is the common sensation of general and immediate perceptionof our body, an elementary form of bodily awareness. Coenaesthesis is the internal sensationof one’s body: in fact, the body is continuously perceived as one’s body by theperson who lives it. 20What does constitute my identity? In other words, it seems necessary to understand“what connection my being – and by ‘my being’ I mean here just what I would mean by‘my way of existence’ – has with what I call my body.” 21This connection is, according to Marcel, incarnation. If “I am my body,” as Marcelwrites, “then existence is first of all incarnation.” Marcel explains: “the term ‘incarnation’. . . applies solely and exclusively in our present context to the situation of a being whoappears to himself to be linked fundamentally and not accidentally to his or her body.” 22If Coenaesthesis is the perception of my body as mine, incarnation is the consciousnessthat I cannot see the world but with my eyes, through my eyes. I can never “jumpout of what I am.” 23 My body is the insuperable border which distinguishes me and therest of the world.It is clear that the starting point of Marcel’s way of thinking is very different from thephenomenological approach. As Ricoeur stresses, “Husserl’s first philosophical gesture isreduction. Marcel’s is diametrically opposed. . . . Marcel embarks on his itinerary by introducingthe idea of ‘situation.’ . . . First and fundamentally, being implied or involvedexcluded both the distance characteristic of reduction and the promotion of a ‘disinterestedspectator,’ the very subject of phenomenology.” 24The next step should be to analyze our consciousness. But this is not possible, accordingto Marcel, because to develop a real analysis, our consciousness should be more than whatit wants to analyze. This is not the case, because the subject of this analysis is consciousness,and the object is consciousness itself. Marcel writes: “we must be wary of the tendencythat leads us to place ourselves as it were outside consciousness in order torepresent it to ourselves (here, as a mirror), for all this can only be an illusory advance,since it is an intrinsic quality of consciousness that it cannot be detached, contemplated,and considered in this way.” 25If on one hand we cannot understand our consciousness -- or, better, we cannot use our“objective reason” to grasp it -- and on the other hand we develop consciousness, it is afact indeed. So, how do we develop it? We develop it as we perceive that there is somethingoutside us. In other words, I understand that there is an “inside us” because thereis an “outside us.” 26 It is the perception of the “rest of the world,” of all which is beyondmy body -- the body which I am -- that allows me to understand that there is something20Franco Riva, “Dall’autonomia alla disponibilità. Paul Ricoeur e Gabriel Marcel,” in Franco Riva,ed., Per un’etica dell’alterità. Sei colloqui (Roma: Edizioni Lavoro, 1998).21Marcel, The Mystery of Being, I, 103.22Ibid., 101.23Gabriel Marcel, Journal métaphysique (Paris: Gallimard, 1927, 1935); idem, Metaphysical Journal,trans. Bernard Wall (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1952), December 8, 1921.24Ricoeur, “Gabriel Marcel and Phenomenology,” 476.25Marcel, The Mystery of Being, 1: 51.26“The existence of the other appears then as that which transgresses the sphere of personalbelonging, like an irruption of otherness within the circle of sameness, constituted by the insular relationthat I form with my vécu, my experience, my world.” Ricoeur, “Gabriel Marcel and Phenomenology,” 482.58