Body & Society 2005 Aho 1 23

The Missing Dialogue betweenHeidegger and Merleau-Ponty: On theImportance of the Zollikon Seminars

KEVIN A. AHO

In September 1959, Heidegger began a series of lectures with physicians andpsychiatrists at the University of Zurichs medical clinic, Burghlzli. The austere,technological appearance of the new auditorium was not to Heideggers liking,and the seminars moved to the house of one of Heideggers close friends andcolleagues, Medard Boss, who lived in Zollikon. These seminars continued formore than a decade, and it is during this period that Heidegger, for the first time,rigorously addressed French critics who had attacked his failure to offer athematic account of the body in Being and Time (1962). Strangely, Heideggerscritical response is primarily directed at Jean-Paul Sartre and makes no referenceto Merleau-Ponty. This is frustrating given the fact that Heideggers account ofthe body in the Zollikon Seminars (2001) is strikingly similar to Merleau-Pontys.1

It is unfortunate that no productive exchange took place between the twobecause Merleau-Ponty reveals an alleged mis-step in Heideggers early work byaddressing the fundamental role that the body plays in spatially orienting ourworldly acts and practices. In Being and Time, there is no acknowledgment of

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the lived-body (Leib) that pre-reflectively negotiates its way through the world,a body that is already oriented in terms of directionality as it reaches out andfaces the various tools and others that are encountered every day. Heideggermerely offers the following remark:

Daseins spatialization in its bodily nature is likewise marked out in accordance with thesedirections. (This bodily nature hides a whole problematic of its own, though we shall not treatit here.) (1962: 108, my emphasis)

The goal of this article is to draw on the parallels of the recently translated ZollikonSeminars and Merleau-Pontys phenomenology in order to see how Heideggersneglect of the body affects his early project of fundamental ontology and to deter-mine whether or not an account of the body is necessary to complete the project.

My argument is fourfold. First, I explain why giving an account of thetraditional materialistic conception of the body (Krper) is irrelevant toHeideggers core concern, which is the question of being (Seinsfrage). Second,I explore the significance of Merleau-Pontys criticism in order to see howHeideggers analysis of everydayness takes for granted the pre-reflective know-how of the lived-body. Third, I introduce the relevance of the ZollikonSeminars, which provide the account of embodiment that is missing in Being andTime. Finally, I suggest that the apparent similarity to Merleau-Ponty in theseseminars is not crucial to Heideggers overall project. I argue that, for Heidegger,any analysis of the body is regional and ontic because it deals strictly with thecharacteristics and capacities of beings (Seiendes). The primary goal of Being andTime is an inquiry into the being (Sein) of beings. In this work, Heideggerattempts to gain access to the essential structures of the disclosive space, clearing(Lichtung) or there (Da) that determines in advance the way that anything cancome into being, including the body. Indeed, from the perspective of funda-mental ontology, all of the current philosophical debates concerning the problemof the body that is, the social construction of sexuality and gender; the politicsand symbolic representation of the body; the cultural and historical formation ofsickness and health are already pre-shaped by Dasein.2 It is by means of thisopen space of intelligibility that things can emerge-into-presence as the kinds ofthings that they are, making it possible for one to begin regional investigationsinto the problem of the body in the first place.

The Absence of the Body in Being and Time

Heideggers reluctance to offer an account of the body in Being and Time shouldnot be surprising if we understand his motivation for undermining a fundamental

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assumption in Western philosophy. According to Heidegger, the philosophictradition, beginning with Plato, uncritically assumes the substance ontology, 3the view that the being of anything that exists must be understood in terms ofsubstance of some sort. Such ontology interprets all things trees, animals,sounds, numbers, ideas, humans in terms of substance, where substance refersto that which endures or remains the same through any change in properties.Substance is the basic, elemental stuff, the being-ness of beings, the what-nessthat is constitutive or essential to all beings as beings. This substance ontologytook its definitive modern form with Descartes bifurcation betweenmind/thinking substance (res cogitans) and body/extended substance (resextensa). Today, the importance of the immaterial mind has diminished and main-stream philosophers have, for the most part, adopted the standpoint of material-ism, that everything that exists is a physical substance of one kind or another.

The dominant picture of the body that we inherit from the Cartesian traditioncan only be understood in terms of its opposition to the mind; it is a materialsubstance that has several essential qualities. First, the body occupies a particu-lar location in a spatial container, thus the body has determinate boundaries andcan be at only one place at a time, here and not there (Heidegger, 2001: 120).Second, the body has observable, quantifiable measurements in terms of mass,shape, size and motion. Third, the body is regarded as an object in the Latin senseof ob-jectum; it is something that is set before and re-presented by the theoriz-ing subject. For Heidegger, interrogating the objective, material what-ness ofhuman beings is not crucial to his program, as he reminds us in his 1925 Marburglectures.

Whether [Dasein] is composed of the physical, psychic, and spiritual and how these realitiesare to be determined is here left completely unquestioned. We place ourselves in principleoutside of these experiential and interrogative horizons outlined by the definition of the mostcustomary name for this entity man: homo animal rational. What is to be determined is not anoutward appearance of this entity but from the outset and throughout its way to be, not thewhat of that of which it is composed but the how of its being and the characters of this how.(1985: 154)

Undoing the assumptions of modern materialism is one of the goals of Beingand Time. Here Heidegger is not concerned with focusing on the properties ofpresent-at-hand objects that are theoretically examined by the detached subject.Rather, Heidegger wants to turn our attention to the ordinary activity of humanexistence itself that underlies and makes possible any and all theorizing. Accord-ing to Heidegger, we are always already (immer schon) thrown into a sharedsocio-historical world, and in the course of our workaday lives, there is noinner/outer relation, no subjective mental intention that affects an independent,

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material world of objects. For instance, I am not thematically aware of thehandy (zuhanden) things that I use as I go through my day: I open doors, drivecars, type on computers, without a reflective act of consciousness. Any detached,theoretical awareness of the objective properties of things is derivative, alreadytaking place against a social background of practical awareness, of pre-reflectiveknow-how. Heideggers analysis of everyday activity reveals that in the flow ofmy working life I am not a subject theoretically set over and against objectsrather, as being-in-the-world, I am ex-static: I stand outside myself because Iam always already interwoven with things in terms of a tacit, practical famili-arity with a public world.

Heidegger departs from the tradition by referring to humans not in terms ofa being, a self-enclosed mind or a bounded material body, but as Dasein: aunique self-interpreting, self-understanding way of being. The analytic ofDasein begins phenomenologically, by describing humans as we are every dayand for the most part, already involved in/with cultural equipment, engaged in aworld understood as an interconnected context (Zusammenhang) of sharedinstitutions, habits, customs, moods, practices and languages. Thus I am in theworld not in terms of occupying a spatial location in a three-dimensional coordi-nate system, rather being-in (In-sein) is to be interpreted in the existentialsense of involvement, such as being in love, in school, or in the army. It isfor this reason that the essence or being-ness of Dasein is not to be found inits what-ness or that-ness, in the enduring characteristics of a substance.Rather, the essence of Dasein lies in its existence (1962: 42).

Existence is not interpreted in the traditional sense, as a static objectivepresence (Anwesenheit). For Heidegger, existence is the dynamic temporalmovement (Bewegung) or happening (Geschehen) of an understanding ofbeing that unfolds in a concrete historical world. Dasein is this happening ofunderstanding, and existence refers to the unique way that a human being under-stands or interprets her life within a shared social context. Thus, to exist is essen-tially . . . to understand (1982: 276). I have a pre-theoretical or pre-ontologicalunderstanding of a background of social acts and practices. I am not born withthis understanding; I grow into it through a process of socialization whereby Iacquire the ability to interpret myself, to take a stand on my life. My acts andpractices take place within a public space or clearing of intelligibility on the basisof which I make sense of my life and things show up for me as the kinds of thingsthat they are. This context of intelligibility governs any possible interpretationthat I can have of myself (1985: 246).

So, from Heideggers perspective, Dasein is not a self, a pure I (reinen Ich)or consciousness that is separate and distinct from surrounding objects. Human


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beings are not disengaged spectators but are being-in-the-world (In-der-welt-sein), always already engaged in a public situation, a common environmentalwhole (1985: 188). Hence, Dasein is more like a mass term that captures theway that human activity is always shared and communal; being-in-the-world,Heidegger says, is already being-with-others (1962: 116). And, as a public wayof being, Dasein is properly understood in terms of what it does, going aboutits daily life, handling equipment, talking to friends, going to work, and so forth.As Heidegger puts it, For the most part, everyday Dasein understands itself interms of that which it is customarily concerned. One is what one does (1962:239). In short, I am engaged in the acts and practices that Anyone (das Man) isengaged in. And, if I am what I do, then I am an indistinguishable Anyone.[The anyone] is the realist subject of everydayness (1962: 128). In myworkaday life, I am a teacher, a husband, a father or a consumer because I havebeen absorbed (aufgehen) and dispersed (zerstreuen) into the public roles,habits and gestures of others. Others assign meaning to my social goals, plans,and projects. They make me who I am. Thus, Dasein is existentially or struc-turally being-with-others, a They-self (1962: 118). But who are They?Heidegger explains:

The who is not this one, not that one, not oneself [man selbst], not some people [einige], andnot the sum of them all. The who is the neuter, the Anyone. (1962: 126)

The anonymous They or Anyone refers to a world, a totality of intercon-nected relations: customs, occupations, practices and cultural institutions, as theyare embodied in gestures, artifacts, monuments and so forth. This nexus ofrelations is the source of meaning and intelligibility; it is on the basis of this nexusthat things show up or count for me in determinate ways. Thus, Anyone deter-mines in advance the possible ways that I can understand myself or make senseof things.

Dasein is for the sake of the they in an everyday manner, and the they itself articulates thereferential context of significance. (1962: 129)

Interpreting Dasein in terms of the anonymous Anyone helps to explain whyHeidegger rarely speaks of a Dasein. Dasein indicates a public space, a Spielraum,or there on the basis of which things show up as such and such. In the courseof my own individual acts and practices, I am a crossing point or place holderin an interconnected network of cultural relations (Guignon, 1983: 86, 104).Pierre Bourdieu explains Heideggers point from the perspective of culturalanthropology, arguing that individual acts and practices are simply structuralvariants of a background network of relations, a public habitus.


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Since the history of the individual is never anything other than a certain specification of thecollective history of his group or class, each individual system of dispositions may be seen asa structural variant of all the other group or class habitus. (1977: 87)

My activities are an embodiment of the Anyone because I have grown into andbecome familiar with a public context. Thus, in my everyday doing and acting, Itake on roles, deal with others, and use equipment in a meaningful way becauseDasein, the Anyone, has opened up a meaningful network of cultural relations,a space of intelligibility into which I have been absorbed.

It is important to note an apparent tension that emerges here in Heideggersdistinction between two modes of Dasein: (a) Dasein as the inauthentic Anyoneand (b) Dasein as the authentic individuated I. Much can be said about thisdistinction that is beyond the scope of this article; however, it is important torealize that inauthenticity is not some sort of deficient mode of being or some-thing that can be avoided altogether. [The] inauthenticity of Dasein does notsignify any less Being or a lower degree of Being (1962: 43). Rather, inau-thenticity, as the mode of being of the Anyone, is an essential structure ofDasein itself, what Heidegger refers to as an existentiale. The they is an exis-tentiale; and as a primordial phenomenon, it belongs to Daseins positive consti-tution (1962: 129, italics in original). The authentic awareness of our ownthrownness and finitude is only a derivate, existentiell mode of our essentialway of being as a they-self.4 Heidegger says, Authentic Being-ones-self doesnot rest upon an exceptional condition of the subject, a condition that has beendetached from the Anyone; it is rather an existentiell modification of the Anyone of the Anyone as an essential existential (1962: 130, italics in original).5 In short,it is only on the basis of our being thrown into a public space of intelligibility,of taking over the everyday social roles and practices of the Anyone, that beingscan emerge-into-presence in their being.6

Recently, critics have argued that what is missing from Heideggers account ofeveryday doing and acting is an inquiry into the phenomenon of embodimentitself, an analysis of the moving body that is always already spatially oriented andinvolved in/with things, that handles the various tools and performs the mundanetasks of everydayness. Michel Haar puts the problem this way: Can onephenomenologically and ontologically justify placing the body in a secondaryposition in the existential analytic? [In Heidegger], there are barely a few allusions without any really explicit reference to the hand that handles tools(1993: 34). And David Cerbone says:

The body would seem to be immediately implicated in [Heideggers] phenomenology of everydayactivity. . . . For this activity involves the manipulation of concrete items such as hammers, pens,doorknobs, and the like, and those manipulations are effected by means of a body. (2000: 210)


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Heidegger appears to take for granted the fact that the human body is alwaysalready alive, handling, sensing and perceiving intra-worldly things in a particu-lar way.

The lived-body (Leib) is not a bounded, material substance (Krper) that isextended in space, and it cannot be scientifically observed from a distance,because it is already spatially involved, maneuvering through rooms, handlingequipment, sensing who or what is in front or behind and so forth. The body isalready in my way as the original source of all practical comportment (Carman,1999: 207). Because of his failure to discuss the role of the lived-body in oureveryday acts and practices, critics have asserted that Heideggers account ofworldly involvement is unsatisfying (Dreyfus, 1991: 137), even disembodied(Chanter, 2001: 80). Alphonse De Waelhans writes:

Heidegger always situates himself at a level of complexity which permits imagining that theproblem which concerns us here is resolved. For it is at the level of perception and the sensiblethat this problem must receive its decisive treatment. But the projects which, according toBeing and Time, engender the intelligibility of the real for us already presuppose that thesubject of daily existence raises his arm, since he hammers and builds; that he orients himself,since he drives an automobile. That a human existent can accomplish these different tasks raisesno difficulty once his capacity to act and move his body, once his faculty of perceiving, havebeen judged evident. . . . But in Being and Time one does not find thirty lines concerning theproblem of perception; one does not find ten concerning that of the body. (1963: xviiixix)

At this point, we can turn to the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty in order tosee how the lived-body is already assumed in Heideggers account of spatiality.

The Merleau-Pontyian Critique: The Body and the Problem of Spatiality

In section 23 of Being and Time, Heidegger reminds us that it is a mistake tointerpret the being-in of humans in terms of a being located in a particular place.My location is not to be regarded as a static spatial position that I currentlyoccupy. Rather, it is to be understood in terms of my own existentiell involve-ment with things at hand, things that I bring near in my daily activities.

Dasein is in the world in the sense that it deals with entities encountered within-the-world,and does so concernfully and with familiarity. So if spatiality belongs to it in any way, that ispossible only because of this being-in. (1962: 105)

In my concrete involvements, I bring things into a handy equipmental nexus,things that are near as I reach for the door, grab the telephone, or look atthe clock on the wall (1962: 1067). Thus, equipment does not occupy an objec-tive place at a measurable distance from other equipment; distance is understoodin the context of familiar accessibility, where equipment is near or far in terms


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of being to hand (zur Hand), available for use (1962: 102). During the courseof my everyday life, I am already familiar with where things are; the phone is not5 feet away, it is over there, and the remote control is close by.

Every entity that is to hand has a different nearness, which is not to be ascertained bymeasuring distances. This nearness regulates itself in terms of circumspectively calculativemanipulating and using. (1962: 102)

Consequently, I am located in a regional nexus by being actively involved withaccessible things. I am here or there only because I am currently engaged in apublic, equipmental space (1962: 1078). My accessibility to things is constantlychanging as I go about my daily tasks, but the fact that I dwell in a familiar lived-space, involved with handy things that are nearby and far away remainsconstant. I am always engaged in a spatial horizon, and this horizon is itselfconstituted by my concrete involvements. Without such involvements, thingscould not be encountered spatially; thus, in my everyday life, I am always alreadyspatial.

Space is not to be found in the subject, nor does the subject observe the world as if that worldwere in a space; but the subject (Dasein), if well understood ontologically, is spatial. (1962: 111)

As spatial, I encounter things in terms of orientation, in terms of directions ofright/left, front/back and up/down. It is out of this orientation, Heidegger says,[that] arise the fixed directions of right and left. Dasein constantly takes thesedirections along with it . . . (1962: 108). In my everyday dealings, I am alwaysalready oriented in the world because I have grown into an understanding of ashared region of involvement. I already know my way around. However,Heideggers analysis does not account for the bodys role in this spatial orien-tation. It is the body that has been habitually interwoven to a familiar region,automatically knowing what is to the left and to the right. The body walks me,half asleep, to the kitchen in the middle of the night when I need a drink of water.The body already knows where the door is, where the refrigerator is, where thelight switch is and so on. According to Merleau-Ponty, our everyday doing andacting is made possible only on the basis of the pre-reflective know-how of thehabit body (corps habituel).

For Merleau-Ponty, our worldly involvements require a pre-personal body,a habit-body that is already habitually geared to intra-worldly things in aspecific way (1962: 84). The bodys engagements are pre-personal or pre-rational because they require neither inner mental intentions that constitute theworld (as the rationalist tradition contends) nor a subjective consciousnessreceiving sense impressions from external objects (as the empiricist traditioncontends). The body already has a tacit knowledge of its place in the world


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because it has been habitually interwoven to a familiar concrete situation. Thehabit body is already bound to a phenomenal field prior to thematic inner/outerdistinctions. This field is the familiar concrete setting where intra-worldly thingsand embodied perceptions intersect.

The phenomenological world is not pure being, but the sense which is revealed where the pathsof my various experiences intersect, and also where my own and other peoples intersect andengage each other like gears. (1962: xx)

And the bodys tacit knowledge is always prior to an objective awareness ofthings.

Our bodily experience of movement . . . provides us with a way of access to the world and theobject, with a praktognosia [practical knowledge], which has to be recognized as original andperhaps primary. My body has its world, or understands its world, without having to make useof my symbolic or objectifying function. (1962: 1401)

According to Merleau-Ponty, in my everyday practices, my lived-body is anactive, dynamic synthesis of pre-reflective intentions as I move through a roomor hail a cab from a crowded sidewalk. My body has a kinesthetic understand-ing for seamlessly maneuvering through the world, already knowing what is tothe left and to the right, what is behind and in front. This is because the percep-tions of my body are already situated, already oriented, and this orientation isinseparable from my everyday involvement. For Merleau-Ponty, the bodyspre-thematic orienting capacity which forms an interconnected system withthe surrounding world is an essential and necessary condition for worldlyactivity.

Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible spectacle alive;it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system. (1962: 115)

Human existence requires a body that already knows how to move through theworld. Hence, The possession of the body [already] implies the ability tounderstand space (1962: 251).

Heideggers analysis in Being and Time completely overlooks the role that thebody plays in our everyday acts and practices. He fails to see that our ability toknow our way around a concrete situation depends on a body, revealing why wemust face things in order to meaningfully deal with them in the first place(Dreyfus, 1991: 137). To maneuver through a world depends upon the bodyspraktognosia of spatial directionality and orientation, of where it is within anexus of relations.


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The Importance of the Zollikon Seminars

In the Zollikon Seminars, which begin 33 years after the publication of Being andTime, Heidegger responds to this problem by turning his attention to Frenchcritics, primarily Jean-Paul Sartre, who wondered why [Heidegger] only wrotesix lines on the body in the whole of Being and Time (Heidegger, 2001: 231).Sartre was particularly suspicious of Heideggers neglect of the bodys role ineveryday social practices, leaving him wholly unconvinced (1956: 498).7Heidegger responds by arguing that Sartres conception of the body is still caughtwithin the Cartesian/Galilean tradition, regarding the body exclusively as anobjective material thing with measurable properties. Heidegger contends that thisis due to the fact that the French have no word whatsoever for the body, butonly a term for a corporeal thing, namely, le corps (2001: 89). For Heidegger,corporeality merely indicates that the body is physically present (krperhaft). Itfails to see the phenomenological problem of the body, namely that we are therein a bodily (leibhaft) manner.8

For Heidegger, interpreting the body in terms of Krper rather than Leiboverlooks the everyday way that humans are already embodied, already spatiallyinvolved with things. In speaking to medical doctors at the University of Zurich,Heidegger explains that this bodily way of being is obscured by the objectiveaccounts of the body offered by the natural sciences, and our everyday laymandescriptions are actually closer to capturing the phenomenon:

When you have back pains, are they of a spatial nature? What kind of spatiality is peculiar tothe pain spreading across your back? Can it be equated with the surface extension of a materialthing? The diffusion of pain certainly exhibits the character of extension, but this does notinvolve a surface. Of course, one can also examine the body as a corporeal thing [Krper].Because you are educated in anatomy and physiology as doctors, that is, with a focus on theexamination of bodies, you probably look at the states of the body in a different way than thelayman does. Yet, a laymans experience is probably closer to the phenomenon of pain as itinvolves our bodylines, even if it can hardly be described with the aid of our usual intuition ofspace. (2001: 84)

Heidegger wants to make it clear that the body, understood phenomenologically,is not a bounded corporeal thing that is present-at-hand, rather it is alreadystretching beyond its own skin, actively directed towards and interwoven withthe world. Heidegger refers to the intentionality of our bodily nature as the bodying forth (Leiben) of the body (2001: 86). And it is here that Heideggermakes contact with Merleau-Ponty.

For both thinkers, space is not to be understood in the traditional sense, as acontainer within which objects of experience reside. This view continues toregard the body as a corporeal thing that is disengaged from the world. For


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Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, the body, as it is lived, is always already engagedin a particular concrete situation. Consequently, the boundaries of Leib extendbeyond Krper. Heidegger explains:

The difference between the limits of the corporeal thing and the body consists in the fact thatthe bodily limit is extended beyond the corporeal limit. Thus the difference between the limitsis a quantitative one. But if we look at the matter in this way, we will misunderstand the veryphenomenon of the body and of bodily limit. The bodily limit and the corporeal limit are notquantitative but rather qualitatively different from each other. The corporeal thing, ascorporeal, cannot have a limit which is similar to the body at all. (2001: 86)

For Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, the spatial world is not a receptacle, ratherthe body constitutes spatiality in its everyday movements.

I walk by occupying space. The table does not occupy space in the same way. The human beingmakes space for himself. He allows space to be. An example: When I move, the horizonrecedes. The human being moves within a horizon. This does not only mean to transport onesbody. (Heidegger, 2001: 16)

I allow space to be because I am already involved in/with a shared, familiarenvironment, already engaged with what is around.

Even if we deny that Dasein has any insideness [Inwendigkeit] in a spatial receptacle, thisdoes not in principle exclude it from having any spatiality at all, but merely keeps open theway for seeing the kind of spatiality which is constitutive of Dasein. . . . We must show howthe aroundness of the environment . . . is not present-at-hand in space. (1962: 101)

I encounter things spatially because my body is already perceptually interwovenwith the world; I am already an embodied way of being. Merleau-Ponty agreeswith Heidegger by touting the primacy of perception.

[One] can convey the idea of space only if already involved in it, and if it is already known.Since perception is initiation into the world, and since, as has been said with insight, there isnothing anterior to it which is mind, we cannot put into it objective relationships which arenot yet constituted at its level. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962: 257)

For Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, the body is not a material thing thatoccupies a current position in space, rather it indicates a range or horizon withinwhich a nexus of things is encountered. Heidegger writes:

The here of [Daseins] current factical situation never signifies a position in space, but signifiesrather the leeway [Spielraum] of the range of that equipmental whole with which it is mostclosely concerned. (1962: 369)

Bodily perception stretches beyond the corporeal by constituting the horizonwithin which human beings are already oriented.

The corporeal limit . . . cannot ever become a bodily limit itself. When pointing with my fingertoward the crossbar of the window over there, I [as body] do not end at my fingertips. Where


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then is the limit of the body? Each body is my body. As such, the proposition is nonsensi-cal. (2001: 86)

This bodily limit, the horizon constituted by perception, is constantly changingas we body-forth, as we maneuver through familiar situations in our everydaydealings, while the corporeal limit remains the same.

The limit of bodying forth (the body is only as it is bodying forth: body) is the horizon ofbeing within which I sojourn [aufhalten]. Therefore, the limit of bodying forth changesconstantly through the change in the reach of my sojourn. In contrast, the limit of the corporalthing usually does not change. (2001: 87)

The constant changing of our practical horizon occurs while the body main-tains its perceptual grip on the world; this is because the body is always alreadysituated. For Merleau-Ponty, this explains how we are able to constantly keepour balance as we walk into new settings; the perceptual body is fastened to theworld and continues to encounter intra-worldly things in terms of front/back,right/left and up/down. Things are encountered pre-reflectively by bodying-forth not in terms of objective distance (i.e. the table is 10 feet away) or geo-metrical measurements (i.e. the door is 5 feet wide). Rather, they are initiallyencountered in terms of regional familiarity. Distance is not an external relation-ship between things; rather it is already understood in terms of pre-objective,everyday involvement, in terms of the constant dialectical interplay between thebodying-forth of the body and the things that it encounters. The standpoint ofthe natural sciences presupposes this tacit understanding of measurement anddistance.

The natural scientist as such is not only unable to make a distinction between the psychical andthe somatic regarding their measurability or unmeasurability. He can make no distinctions ofthis kind whatsoever. He can only distinguish among objects, the measurements of which aredifferent in degree [quantity]. For he can only measure, and thereby he always already presup-poses measurability. (2001: 199)

Although this tacit understanding is measurably imprecise and variable it iswholly intelligible within an already familiar social context (1962: 1056). Inorder to explain the objective properties, size or dimensions of things, there mustbe a momentary breakdown or disturbance in the perceptual, bodily grip thatmakes the skillful flow of everyday activity possible. The immediate and directcontact that the body has with the world must come to an end in order for theobjective size, properties and dimensions of things to appear. For example, in theflow of my everyday life, I use a key to open my car door. It is only when Imistakenly use the wrong key that this flow breaks down and I actually becomeaware of my hands, the size of my keys, and the location of the door handle. I


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quickly look at my hands, deliberately sift through my key chain, insert theproper key and drive away. In this momentary breakdown, I am forced toconsciously de-contextualize or isolate things from their relational nexus ofinvolvement, and it is only in doing so that the objective qualities of thingsemerge. To this end, any act of conscious deliberation is always derivative fromthe practical, pre-thematic bond between body and world.

Here, a related point of contact between Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger isrevealed in the way the two interpret bodily movements, gestures and expres-sions as always already understood in terms of a meaningful social nexus. Ourembodied social habits immediately inform us of what is going on in concretesituations before we can begin to consciously reflect on them. For example, theconfused expression on ones face in a philosophy class does not directly revealthe objective presence of a nervous systems impulse, rather what is revealed isan embodied look of consternation, indicating that a difficult philosophical topicis being explored by the professor. Heidegger says:

I just saw Dr K. was passing his hand over his forehead. And yet I did not observe a changeof location and position of one of his hands, but I immediately noticed that he was thinkingof something difficult. (2001: 88)

The context of social familiarity within which embodied engagements are experi-enced allows for a meaning or intelligibility to emerge that is prior to mentaldeliberations.

So we see that Heideggers Zollikon Seminars succeed in filling out the accountof embodied agency implied in Being and Time and reveal a kinship withMerleau-Ponty on several key points. First, the self is not regarded, fundamen-tally, as an enclosed consciousness that constitutes and sustains the world bymeans of inner, mental activity. Rather, in the course of our everyday doing andacting, we are already standing outside ourselves by being practically engagedin a concrete situation. Second, intra-worldly beings are not understood as objec-tified material substance with measurable locations, properties and character-istics, but as entities that the embodied agent is already amidst in terms ofpractical orientation and familiarity. And, third, our bodily being should not beinterpreted in terms of bounded material. In our everyday dealings, our bodilybeing stretches beyond the skin to the things that we are currently concernedwith. For example, as I work in my office, my body is interwoven to a particu-lar spatial region of concern, the glasses on my face, the computer on the desk,the coffee cup, the landscape that appears through my office window and soforth.9

What Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty offer is a phenomenological description


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of embodied spatiality and orientation that applies to human acts and practicesgenerally, as we live them proximally and for the most part in average every-dayness (Heidegger, 1962: 16, italics in original). However, what is not addressedin their analyses is the way in which particular social practices guide and pre-shape lived-space. For instance, a current debate among feminist philosophersand social theorists addresses how spatiality and motility are experienced differ-ently along gender lines, that there are masculine and feminine comportmentsand orientations. Iris Marion Young writes:

The young girl acquires many subtle habits of feminine body comportment walking like agirl, tilting her head like a girl, standing and sitting like a girl, gesturing like a girl, and so on.The girl learns to hamper her movements. She is told that she must be careful not to get hurt,not to get dirty, not to tear her clothes. . . . The more a girl assumes her status as feminine, themore she takes herself to be fragile and immobile and the more she actively enacts her ownbody inhibition. (1990: 154)

This gendered difference is evident in the way the man walks upright, makessteady eye contact, has a firm handshake, speaks loudly and dominates a circle ofconversation, while the woman lowers her head, has a soft handshake, does nottalk but smiles, listens and nods attentively. Thus it can be argued that lateral spaceshrinks or expands in terms of a tacit domination in the social order.10 As children,we grow into and master the social practices unique to age, class, gender, ethnic-ity, disability, sexuality and these practices, in turn, guide the ways in which wecomport ourselves and move through the world. Pierre Bourdieu suggests that wecan simply observe the actions of men and women dining at a fine restaurant foran example of this social order. A man should [eat] with his whole mouth [andbody] wholeheartedly, and not, like women, just with the lips, that is half-heartedly, with reservation and restraint (1990: 70). The act of public diningreveals the way that man embodies an orientation in space that is expansive anduninhibited, while the woman embodies spatial inhibition, holding her armsclose to herself, sitting a certain way and chewing her food quietly.

Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger contend that the lived-body should beconceived not as an object with measurable properties, but rather as the originalspatial openness onto the world that underlies subject/object distinctions. Thebody is pure presence to the world and openness to its possibilities (Merleau-Ponty, 1962: 148). However, bodily movements, gestures and expressions alsoindicate a social position and identity that may not represent pure openness, butrather a form of immanence. Indeed, there are inhibiting social practices thatclose off and restrict lived space, where one comes to interpret oneself as Krper,as a mere body or thing, an object of anothers intentions. Young makes the casein terms of sexual difference:


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An essential part of the situation of being a woman is that of living the ever-present possibilitythat one will be gazed upon as a mere body, as shape and flesh that presents itself as thepotential object of another subjects intentions and manipulations, rather than as a living mani-festation of action and intention. The source of this objectified bodily existence is in theattitude of others regarding her, but the woman herself often actively takes up her body as amere thing. She gazes at it in the mirror, worries about how it looks to others, prunes it, shapesit, molds it, decorates [it]. (1990: 155)

Introducing variations of social difference to the discussion of spatiality candeepen the original insights of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Certainly, thebody is to be understood, at the deepest level, in terms of Leib, as concretelyengaged in the norms, customs and habits of a surrounding world, but the socialworld that we grow into can also confine and restrict the way lived-space isexperienced. Thus it can be argued that investigations into how the body andspatiality meaningfully show up in terms of specific cultural and historical prac-tices are crucial to research into the problem of embodiment. However, I wantto suggest that such investigations have nothing to do with Heideggers coreconcern, which is fundamental ontology. At this point, I can begin to discuss themotivations and goals that separate Merleau-Pontys project from Heideggersand this, in turn, will enable us to (a) see the contribution of the ZollikonSeminars in its proper light and (b) recognize that the project of fundamentalontology is more original than any analysis of the body.

The Limits of Merleau-Pontys Relation to Heidegger: Ontic or Ontological?

For Heidegger, the Zollikon Seminars serve a particular purpose, namely toengage the medical sciences, primarily psychiatry and psychology, from theperspective of Dasein. Heidegger argues that these disciplines have adopted atraditional Cartesian interpretation of the self and uncritically assume the eventof being-in-the-world. As for the French [psychologists], says Heidegger, Iam always disturbed by [their] misinterpretation of being-in-the-world; it isconceived either as being present-at-hand or as the intentionality of subjectiveconsciousness (2001: 272). Heideggers analysis of the body in these seminars isas an attempt to undo the prevailing naturalistic account of the body as objectivematerial presence in order to come to grips with bodily being as it is lived.

The human beings bodily being can never, fundamentally, be considered merely as somethingpresent-at-hand if one wants to consider it in an appropriate way. If I postulate human bodilybeing as something present-at-hand, I have already beforehand destroyed the body as body.(2001: 170)

The question, for our purposes, is whether this analysis of the body is neededto complete the project of fundamental ontology, that is, whether such a project


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is insufficient or incomplete without such an account. I want to suggest that theanalysis of the body in the Zollikon Seminars is an ontic-existentiell inquiry,describing the concrete activities and perceptions of a factical individual.Merleau-Pontys Phenomenology of Perception is a similar kind of inquiry, wherethe body is still my body. But the primary goal of Being and Time is to identifythe essential ontological-existential structures that determine the being ofbeings, the conditions that make it possible for us to make sense of things andourselves. These structures constitute the Da, the disclosive site in which anyentity whatsoever can show up as such and such. This is why Heidegger claimsthat it is a mistake to interpret Dasein as tre-l as some French critics contend that is, as a being in a determinate place, here and not there (2001: 120).

Da-sein is understood differently in Being and Time. . . . The Da in Being and Time does notmean a statement of place for a being, but rather it should designate the openness where beingscan be present for the human being, and the human being also for himself. The Da of [Daseins]being distinguishes the humanness of the human being. (2001: 120)

Keeping this distinction between ontic and ontological in mind, I will introducefour overlapping points of departure that separate Heideggers project fromMerleau-Pontys.

First, Merleau-Ponty is primarily focused on reawakening the pre-reflectivebond between body and world that has been passed over by the bifurcatedsubject/object models that philosophy has inherited from rationalism andempiricism. According to Merleau-Ponty, the body is inseparable from the worldbecause the world is simply what my body perceives, and the objects that Iperceive are always perceived in reference to my body. Embodied perceptionorients me in the world, making it possible for me to project myself towardthings, to open doors, handle tools, shake the hand of a colleague and so forth.It is on the basis of this tacit, bodily intentionality that a unified horizon isopened up between incarnate subject and worldly object. Thus Merleau-Pontysconception of tre-au-monde is perhaps best translated as being-towards-the-world rather than being-in-the-world. The body-subject is always pointingbeyond itself because it is already perceptually bound to worldly objects.

Heideggers conception of Dasein as being-in-the-world (In-der-welt-sein) isa radical departure from tre-au-monde. For Heidegger, Dasein is not a subjectthat is perceptually bound to worldly objects. Dasein is the world, the Anyone,the public web of meaningful relations, the nexus of customs, habits, norms andinstitutions on the basis of which things show up as such in embodied comport-ments. Dasein, as the shared referential context, is already there, prior to bodilyperception. It is the condition for the possibility of any meaningful perceptionwhatsoever. Because I ek-sist within this disclosive clearing I do not perceive


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things in isolation. I perceive them in terms of a holistic context that I am alreadyfamiliar with. I interpret myself as a student, a teacher or a husband because I amfamiliar with certain public practices, gestures, institutions and equipment thatenable me to make sense of my life. My individual activities are simply crossingpoints in the coherent social patterns and relations of the Anyone, and theAnyone makes intelligible activities and perceptions possible.

Second, it can be argued that what is presupposed by Merleau-Ponty is aninquiry into the conditions for the possibility of meaning itself which wouldexplain how and why the perceptions of the body-subject make sense or are intel-ligible. Merleau-Ponty introduces terms such as field, background, horizon,fabric and world that hint at Heideggers conception of Dasein as a disclosivespace or clearing of intelligibility. For instance, Merleau-Ponty writes:

Perception is not a science of the world, it is not even an act, a deliberate taking up of aposition; it is the background from which all acts stand out, and is presupposed by them. Theworld is not an object such that I have in my possession the law of its making; it is the naturalsetting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perception . . . [the] Sinngebung,or active meaning-giving operation which may be said to define consciousness, so . . . the worldis nothing but world-as-meaning. (1962: xi, italics added)

Yet, Merleau-Ponty never explains world-as-meaning. Is Merleau-Ponty refer-ring to a cultural world, historical world, natural world, physical world, etc.? Isthe cultural world also a natural setting? And, if so, how does this world givemeaning? These questions remain unanswered in Phenomenology of Perception(1962) and, because Merleau-Ponty holds on to a conception of subjectivity, oneis left to wonder if meaning is, as it is for Husserl, ultimately discovered andconstituted in me, in incarnate consciousness (1962: xiii).

For Heidegger, the source of meaning is always already out there in theshared public background that human beings grow into. Heideggers account ofthe background of intelligibility as the origin or source of meaning is whatMerleau-Pontys phenomenology passes by. Monica Langer explains:

In a very real sense, Merleau-Pontys phenomenological description of perception starts fromthe everyday world of already acquired meanings and from the consciousness of an established,meaningful world. . . . The actual birth of meaning thus remains largely unexplored. (1989: 159,italics added)

According to Heidegger, human beings stand outside themselves by taking overmeaningful public patterns of comportment that are prescribed by Anyone.There is no I, no body-subject when describing the clearing of intelligibility. Inmy everyday activities, I am already being-with-others; I am Anyone.

Proximally, it is not I, in the sense of my own self, that am, but rather the Others, whoseway is that of the they. In terms of the they and as the they, I am given proximally to


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myself [mir selbst]. Proximally Dasein is they, and for the most part it remains so. . . . Withthis interpretation of being-with and being-ones self in the they, the question of the who ofeverydayness of being-with-one-another is answered. (1962: 129, italics added)

The anonymous Anyone has not only decided in advance what roles, occu-pations and norms I can take over; the Anyone has also determined the meaningof my own embodied perceptions. My perceptions can only make sense to me ifI am already familiar with a public context of intelligibility. For example, hearingas the perception of sounds is not primordially regarded as a pure sensation,rather tones and sounds are already understood on the basis of a public clearing,allowing me to hear tones and sounds as such. Heidegger says, what we first hearis never noises or complexes of sounds, but the creaking of a wagon, the motor-cycle. We hear the column on the march, the north wind, the woodpeckertapping, the fire crackling (1962: 163).

Third, Merleau-Ponty gives primacy to perception as the foundation for anymeaningful experience whatsoever. There would be no world without percep-tion.

Without any perception of the whole we would not think of noticing the resemblance or thecontiguity of its elements, but literally that they would not be part of the same world andwould not exist at all. . . . All disclosure of the implicit and all cross-checking performed byperception vindicated in short, a realm of truth, a world. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962: 16)

Although Merleau-Ponty is unclear on this point, there is a sense that culturalmeanings emerge out of the natural perceptual contact between body andworld, and that the layer of culture and history can somehow be suspended orbracketed out in order to describe the essential structure of perception (Langer,1989: 173). Heidegger, on the other hand, points out that perception is alwaysalready saturated with cultural and historical meaning. Human beings are social-ized into a public network of relations, and it is on the basis of these relationsthat perceptions make sense. The clearing of intelligibility is already laid out inadvance, enabling me to hear the creaking wagon or the din of the motorcycle.Thus embodied perception is already determined by the primacy of Dasein.Without a shared clearing that endows our perceptions with meaning and intel-ligibility, all that I encounter are naked sounds and shapes.11

Fourth, because Merleau-Pontys phenomenology focuses on the pre-reflective perceptual connection that exists now between bodily being andworld, his project necessarily privileges the temporal dimension of the present.All other dimensions of time are therefore seen as deriving from the spontaneitycharacteristic of the present. It is always in the present that we are centered, saysMerleau-Ponty, and our decisions start from there (1962: 427, my emphasis).


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Merleau-Ponty privileges the temporality of the present because he focusesexclusively on the nature of perception as the pre-objective starting point of allmodes of comportment.

The solution of all problems of transcendence is to be sought in the thickness of the pre-objectivepresent, in which we find our bodily being, our social being, and the pre-existence of the world,that is, the starting point of explanations, in so far as they are legitimate. (1962: 433, myemphasis)

Against this view, Heidegger argues that our comportment in the present isderived from and made possible by a more primordial temporal structure thatcannot be understood in terms of perception. For Heidegger, any perception isalready pre-shaped by the past and the future, by the temporal structures of situ-atedness (Befindlichkeit) and projection (Entwurf). Situatedness captures thesense in which we are always already thrown into a shared world, with a sharedhistory, revealing the way that things publicly count and matter in determinateways. Projection captures the sense in which our lives are always already on theway (unterwegs) as we ceaselessly press into future possibilities that guide anddefine our identities.

In our everyday lives, we stretch backward, bringing our history with us aswe move forward, engaging in various self-defining goals and projects, towardour ultimate possibility or completion (Ergnzung), death. For Heidegger,human existence is defined in terms of thrown projection (1962: 199), and it isonly on the basis of this twofold movement that our present bodily perceptionsare intelligible and make sense to us. As the movement or happening of humanlife, time is not something that we belong to once we are born as Merleau-Pontysuggests (1962: 140, 427). Rather, Dasein is temporality, and it is temporality thatprovides the scaffolding or frame of reference that makes it possible for things toemerge on the scene as the kinds of things that they are. Because Merleau-Pontyseeks to revive the living, pre-thematic bond between body-subject and worldlyobject he overlooks the ontological fact that our present perceptions are renderedmeaningful not by incarnate consciousness but by the prior horizon of tempo-rality.

In conclusion, I want to suggest that Merleau-Pontys phenomenology doesnot go far enough to overcome Cartesian subjectivity. In his later Working Notes(1968), Merleau-Ponty admits, The problems posed in Phenomenology ofPerception are insoluble because I start there from the consciousnessobjectdistinction (1968: 233). By focusing on the perception, spatiality and motility ofincarnate consciousness, Merleau-Ponty is unable to give an account of theconditions for the possibility of meaning and intelligibility.12 For Heidegger,


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Dasein, as the temporally structured clearing of intelligibility, is always alreadythere, prior to the appearance of the body-subject.

As his own Zollikon Seminars suggest, Heidegger does not dismiss the valueof phenomenological investigations of the body, but we now know that this is aregional, ontic investigation that is not crucial to fundamental ontology. In Beingand Time, Heidegger proposes that the phenomena of the body (1962: 108),life (1962: 50) and consciousness (1962: 115) are all areas of regional inquirythat are worthy of a phenomenological investigation in their own right, but suchinvestigations are rendered intelligible only on the basis of Dasein. It is by meansof an already opened space of meaning that the body shows up as it does for theresearcher, allowing regional disciplines such as cultural anthropology, feministstudies and social theory to get under way. Thus, fundamental ontology theinquiry into the meaning of being in general that culminates in the existentialanalytic of Dasein is more original than any analysis of the body.

NotesPortions of this article have been presented at the Thirty-Eighth Annual North American HeideggerConference (University of New Orleans, LA, May 2004), the American Philosophical AssociationCentral Division Meetings (Chicago, IL, April 2004), the Forty-Ninth Annual Conference of theFlorida Philosophical Association (Eckerd College, St Petersburg, FL, November 2003) and the Thir-teenth Annual Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture Conference (SUNY Binghamton, NY, April2003).

1. Richard Askay, who co-translated the Zollikon Seminars, recognizes important points ofconvergence between Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. He writes:

Heideggers lack of reference is all the more interesting given that Merleau-Pontys account ofthe body came the closest (among the French existentialist phenomenologists) to his owndescriptions in the Zollikon Seminars. Some of their similarities included: their analysis ofbodily being viz. (a) gesture and expression (b) bodily being and spatiality (c) refusing to seethe body as merely a corporeal, self-contained object and (d) the phantom limb analysis.(1999: 31)

2. Consider Bryan Turners (1996) article concerning current research on the body.3. This is a term borrowed from Dorothea Frede (1993: 46).4. One should not associate authentic Daseins awareness of being-towards-death with the

physiological or bodily demise of a being. In the physiological sense, Dasein never perishes (1962:247). For Heidegger, death is an essential structure of Dasein, revealing the way that we invariablymove towards our own completion or fulfillment during the course of our lives even though suchcompletion is impossible. Authenticity requires awareness that our existence is penetrated by unset-tledness and contingency, that as long as we exist our life is always on the way (unterwegs) or aheadof itself. It is for this reason that Heidegger interprets Dasein as a not yet, a no-thing (1962: 233).We are structurally incomplete or unfinished because we are a potentiality that can never attainwholeness (1962: 236). We only become something when we are no longer, when we can no longerpress forward into future social possibilities.


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5. Heidegger appears to confuse the issue when he later says: It has been shown proximally andfor the most part [that] Dasein is not itself but is lost in the they-self, which is an existentiell modifi-cation of the authentic Self (1962: 317). See Charles Guignon (1984, 2004).

6. Authenticity does not involve an existential rebellion or detachment from a fallen (verfallen)conformist world. Rather, authenticity provides a more primordial awareness of the self as Dasein orbeing-in-the-world, as a finite, historically shaped space of meaning.

Resoluteness, as authentic Being-ones Self, does not detach Dasein from its world, nor does itisolate it so that it becomes a free-floating I. And how should it, when resoluteness as authenticdisclosedness, is authentically nothing else than Being-in-the-World? Resoluteness brings the Self rightinto its current concernful Being-alongside what is ready-to-hand, and pushes it into solicitous Being-with-Others (1962: 298).

7. Sartre writes, Heidegger does not make the slightest allusion to [the body] in his existentialanalytic with the result that his Dasein appears to us as asexual (1956: 498). Of course asexuality isprecisely the way Heidegger would characterize Dasein. Dasein does not refer to the embodiments ofman or woman with specific biological attributes. Dasein is already there prior to the determinatecharacteristics of beings like man or woman and should therefore be interpreted as neutral, asneither of the two sexes (1984: 1367). However, Luce Irigaray points out that Dasein, as world, issexed in terms of a patriarchal order. Because the shared customs, norms and practices that consti-tute Dasein are fundamentally patriarchal, the woman historically comes to interpret herself in termsof certain restrictions and silences, where she is forced to see herself through the totalizing lens of theman and cannot speak and act as a woman. Irigaray says the following:

The language of . . . patriarchal culture [has] reduced the value of the feminine to such adegree that their reality and their description of the world are incorrect. Thus, instead ofremaining a different gender, the feminine has become, in our language, the non-masculine,that is to say an abstract, nonexistent reality. . . . [It] defines her as an object in relation tothe male subject. This accounts for the fact that women find it so difficult to speak and beheard as women. They are excluded and denied by the patriarchal order. They cannot bewomen and speak in a sensible, coherent manner. (1993: 20)

8. Heidegger began to explore the problem of the dominant naturalistic interpretation of thehuman body as early as 19367 in his Nietzsche lectures. Here Heidegger writes:

We do not have a body in the way we carry a knife in a sheath. Neither is the body a naturalbody that merely accompanies us and which we can establish, expressly or not, as being alsoat hand. We do not have a body; rather, we are bodily. . . . Our being embodied is essen-tially other than merely being encumbered with an organism. Most of what we know fromthe natural sciences about the body and the way it embodies are specifications based on theestablished misinterpretation of the body as a mere natural body. (1979: 98100)

9. These similarities between Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty are worked out at length in anarticle, co-authored with Charles Guignon, portions of which have been presented at the Thirty-Eighth Annual North American Heidegger Conference (University of New Orleans, Louisiana, May2004).

10. Bourdieu describes how these workaday bodily movements already imply social dominationand submission.

Male, upward movements and female, downward movements, uprightness versus bending,the will to be on top, to overcome, versus submission the fundamental oppositions of thesocial order are always sexually overdetermined, as if the body language of sexual domi-nation and submission had provided the fundamental principles of both the body languageand the verbal language of social domination and submission. (1990: 72)


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11. Heidegger is helpful in his Heraclitus seminars (19667) when he says the following:

[M]an can hear wrongly insofar as he does not catch what is essential. If the ears do notbelong directly to proper hearing, in the sense of hearkening, then hearing and the ears arein a special situation. We do not hear because we have ears. We have ears, i.e. our bodies areequipped with ears, because we hear. Mortals hear the thunder of the heavens, the rustlingof woods, the gurgling of fountains, the ringing of plucked strings, the rumbling of motors,the noises of the city only and only so far as they already in some way belong to them.(1975: 656, my emphasis)

12. Bryan Turner confirms this point from the perspective of sociology.

The phenomenology of the body offered by . . . Merleau-Ponty is an individualistic accountof embodiment from the point of view of the subject; it is consequently an account largelydevoid of historical and sociological content. From a sociological point of view, the bodyis socially constructed and socially experienced. (1984: 54)

ReferencesAskay, Richard (1999) Heidegger, the Body, and the French Philosophers, Continental Philosophy

Review 32: 2935.Bourdieu, Pierre (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Bourdieu, Pierre (1990) The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University

Press.Carman, Taylor (1999) The Body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, Philosophical Topics 27(2): 20525.Cerbone, David (2000) Heidegger and Daseins Bodily Nature: What is the Hidden Problematic?,

International Journal of Philosophical Studies 8(2): 20930.Chanter, Tina (2001) The Problematic Normative Assumptions of Heideggers Ontology, in Nancy

Holland and Patricia Huntington (eds) Feminist Interpretations of Martin Heidegger. New York:Routledge.

De Waelhans, Alphonse (1963) The Philosophy of the Ambiguous, trans. Alden L. Fisher, Forewordto 2nd French edn of Maurice Merleau-Pontys The Structure of Behavior. Boston, MA: BeaconPress.

Dreyfus, Hubert (1991) Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heideggers Being and Time, DivisionI. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Frede, Dorothea (1993) The Question of Being: Heideggers Project, in Charles Guignon (ed.) TheCambridge Companion to Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Guignon, Charles (1983) Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.Guignon, Charles (1984) Heideggers Authenticity Revisited, Review of Metaphysics 38: 32139.Guignon, Charles (2004) Becoming a Self: The Role of Authenticity in Being and Time, in Charles

Guignon (ed.) The Existentialists: Critical Essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre.New York: Littlefield Publishers.

Haar, Michel (1993) The Song of the Earth: Heidegger and the Grounds of the History of Being, trans.Reginald Lilly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Heidegger, Martin (1962) Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford:Blackwell Press. Citations are from the original German pagination.

Heidegger, Martin (1975) Early Greek Thinking, trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi.New York: Harper and Row.

Heidegger, Martin (1979) Nietzsche, Vol. 1: The Will to Power as Art, trans. David Krell. New York:Harper and Row.


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Heidegger, Martin (1982) Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Alfred Hofstadter. Bloomington:Indiana University Press.

Heidegger, Martin (1984) Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, trans. Michael Heim. Bloomington:Indiana University Press.

Heidegger, Martin (1985) History of the Concept of Time, trans. Theodore Kisiel. Bloomington:Indiana University Press.

Heidegger, Martin (2001) Zollikon Seminars, trans. Franz Mayr and Richard Askay. Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press.

Irigaray, Luce (1993) Je, Tu, Nous: Toward a Culture of Difference, trans. Allison Martin. New York:Routledge.

Krell, David Farrell (1992) Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life Philosophy. Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press.

Langer, Monica (1989) Merleau-Pontys Phenomenology of Perception: A Guide and Commentary.Tallahassee: Florida State University Press.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1962) Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith. New York:Routledge Press.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1968) The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes, trans.Alphonso Lingis. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Sartre, Jean-Paul (1956) Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes. New York: Washington SquarePress.

Turner, Bryan (1984) The Body and Society: Exploration in Social Theory. New York: Basil Blackwell.Turner, Bryan (1996) An Outline of a General Sociology of the Body, in Bryan Turner (ed.) The

Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.Young, Iris Marion (1990) Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social

Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Kevin A. Aho (PhD University of South Florida) is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy atFlorida Gulf Coast University. His current research interests include topics in contemporaryEuropean philosophy, specifically the role of the body in phenomenology in general and inHeideggers early work in particular.


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