Well I didn't mean to kill the conversation! But perhaps I could have made
my point more clearly.
It's tempting to view the body as a possession of the person. I 'have' a
body. But occasions like the ones I described - and other more mundane ones
like falling asleep, but they're much less fun to write about - show that
the body can continue while the person disappears. The body is a condition
for the possibility of the person, not vice versa. The body 'has' a person;
or 'supports' a person, perhaps it would be more accurate to say.
Except that each of us is able to achieve some degree of control over our
body. Its determinations never completely disappear, but we gain some degree
of will-power, of voluntary mastery of its powers. I can decide how to treat
my body. So the dependency becomes more of a two-way street. But this
freedom is bounded and temporary. One comes into the world a body (a neonate
is a body not a person, although at times sparklingly sensate), and one
leaves the same way.
Martin
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Received on Tue Jul 10 15:41 PDT 2007
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