Page 106 - Contribution To Phenomenology

THE BODY AS PAN-CULTURAL UNIVERSAL 99

experiences I hope show, animate form is aheady meaningful. Our own
eyes are meaningful in and of themselves. They are archetypally
meaningful as windows onto two worlds, as centers of Ught and dark, as
entrances to a tactile-kinesthetic world, our own and that of others. They
are archetypally meaningful as circles, as I will presently show in a more
developed manner. These meanings can be and are reworked—amplified
or suppressed—in diverse metaphysical and epistemological ways from
culture to culture. Rather than directly setting forth these ways, I will
attempt to demonstrate archetypal meanings of eyes in the context of
actual disciplinary practices, including the disciplinary practice of
philosphy. I will do this by pursuing the notion of animate form—first
with reference to its general semantic import, and then with specific
reference to its morphologicaWisual import.

IV

Paleoanthropology (not to mention other disciplines closer to home—if
not home itself) misses the semantic dimension of animate form because
it fails to recognize the corporeaUty and intercorporeality of life as
something other than mere anatomy on the one hand and mere behavior
on the other, and fails as well to take seriously the actual ways in which
anatomy is destiny.^^ Not dissimilar oversights are apparent in experimen-
tal primatological studies and in studies in the philosophy of mind. The
consistent problem is first, that bodies—animate forms—are not
acknowledged and understood and second, that descriptive analyses of
what is actually there are passed over in favor of explanatory hypotheses
of what is there. With respect to the latter problem—and to gloss on a
comment of Joseph Campbell—"If you haven't had the experience, how
can you explain what is going on?'*^® With respect to the first problem,

^^ Freud is reputedly the source of this notion. It is ironic then that, credited
with such a rich insight, he actually left the body behind and unattended: he
developed the idea that anatomy is destiny only in terms of a single bodily organ.
Indeed, he never mined his initial insight that, in his own words, "The ego is first
and foremost a bodily ego." (Standard Edition XIX, translated by James Strachey
[London: Hogarth Press, 1955], 26. The phrase is repeated on p. 27.) The
ontogenetical corporeal psychoanalytic ego is phenomenologically related to the
phylogenetic heritage of the body as semantic template.
i« Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 61: "If
you haven't had the experience, how can you know what it is?"