The spiritual deconstruction of the Self. Merleau-Ponty’s ambigous ontology of flesh

Abstract

The human body is the focus of several bioethical issues, requiring a clarification of the ontological and axiological sense of human corporeality due to their intrinsic moral conundrum. The human body always stands ambiguously on the edge between to be and to have, which adds to the complexity of bioethical practices, whose moral core is typically defined by different anthropological approaches. Just as ambiguously, the meaning of the concept of body risks to be confused with the notion of flesh. The former, whose origins are rooted in Greek and biblical anthropology, has been philosophically radicalized into the ontology of flesh of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. As a category to approach both the human sphere and the world, it could be meant to replace the notion of body. Yet, consistently with I am my body, might one as well claim I am my flesh? The aim of this article is to explore the relationships between human person, body and flesh, so as to point out the common ecological horizon somehow established by the ontology of flesh, where the self and the world converge into a common ontological family. On the other hand, the notion of flesh still turns out to be problematic because it corrumps anthropology by opening up to a rift of anonymity and generality, thus involving a paradigm of the impersonal which prevents the acknowledgement of the spiritual specificity of the human person and his corporeality.