Bring Up the Bodies

This paper attempts to resituate the concept of embodiment within Fichte’s Jena-era Wissenschaftslehre, by reading Fichte as a proto-Merleau-Pontean on the topics of embodiment and intersubjectivity. In so doing, I argue that embodiment on Fichte’s account serves a mediating role between the I as Tathandlung [f/act], absolute self-consciousness, and the I as intersubjectively constituted. I highlight the ways in which Fichte echoes Merleau-Ponty’s intertwined notions of the ‘Body Schema’ [schéma corporel] and the tacit cogito to suggest that Fichte’s notion of the body is at the same time an intersubjective ‘site’ of intentionality, the active ‘being towards’ other rational beings, and the phenomenal experience of the checked activity of the subject. The body is, as such, the subject’s lived experience of the Fichtean Anstoß [check/impetus], an argument that is, perhaps surprisingly, bolstered, rather than hindered, by spotlighting the areas in which Fichte anticipates Merleau-Ponty.