Is There a Body without Flesh?

 In this paper I investigate the theme of sense and nonsense as it pertains to the phenomenological problem of "flesh". My remarks here also respond to the two-fold, intellectual invitation Emmanuel Falque has extended to philosophy to embark into theological territory and to engage without polemic or fear in a combat amoureux over the things that matter - the things themselves. Struggle can be loving only if the work itself is motivated by a love, and a love of what we can still dare to call truth. It is in this same spirit, which I recognize and esteem in Falque, that I wish to address here the question of body and flesh that is central to his work, as it is for many others.

I will raise two main sets of questions that have been the subject of historical debate, and Falque knows them well, because they are also his questions: 1) How should we describe and understand the relationship of flesh [Leib] to body [Körper] and body to flesh? Can we give legitimate status to the materiality of the corporeal condition while maintaining the phenomenological privilege of flesh and life? Or, alternatively, should we deny the privilege of flesh in favor of a more moderate "balance" of flesh and body, and so rescue material embodiment from the oblivion to which a naive priority of flesh would consign it? 2) By extension, how should we describe and understand the relationship of flesh and body, in their phenomenality, to the theological reality of the Incarnation of the Word? How is the passage into theology effected in phenomenology when it is a question of body and flesh?

In a way that has not yet been acknowledged adequately, these questions bear on the relationship of phenomenology and the sciences, which also deal with "bodies," perhaps exclusively and with greater rigor than phenomenology. What do we gain from recognizing this bearing? It is explicitly against what he perceives to be rampant Western materialism and its unilateral science that Michel Henry frames the phenomenology of life. It is also in the name of material, embodied reality that Falque objects to Henry's approach. For reasons I will spell out in detail, and while I recognize his theological hesitations and share his theological commitments, I think Falque's objections misconstrue Henry's position. We have good reason to doubt that the phenomenality of incarnation, in either its philosophical or theological senses, can be adequately described by a phenomenology in which perception is ultimate.