Page 108 - Contribution To Phenomenology

THE BODY AS PAN-CULTURAL UNIVERSAL 101

renditions of experience, that is, were they to eschew mere explanatory
accounts of behavior in favor of both descriptive and explanatory
renderings of experience, they would have the possibility of uncovering
those fundamental morphologicaWisual relationships that are the
corporeal foundation of our intercorporeality. In both broader and
summary terms, attentiveness to what is actually there in corporeal
experience would afford them the possibiUty of discovering those
fundamental ties that bind animate form to animate sensibilities and that
in so doing entwine creatures in an intercommunal life.
Though not described in quite such terms, a remarkable description
of the intercorporeal import of morphologicaWisual relationships is
presented by Swiss biologist Adolph Portmann in his book Animal Forms
and Patterns}^ Of particular moment is Portmann's description of
inwardness as a basic biological character, a character common to all
creatures who see one another and who mutually express what he calls
"psychical processes," that is, moods and feelings by way of postures,
colorations, and other bodily markers. Marjorie Grene, in an article on
Portmann's biology, translated Portmann's phrase for inwardness—literally,
"relation to the environment through inwardness"—by the word "centric-
ity." "'Inwardness' alone" she said, "is too exclusively subjective and fails
to convey the relatedness that Portmann's concept entails."" Because
important difficulties as well as insights are to be found in Grene's essay,
I will briefly indicate them and consider their adverse effect upon an
understanding of corporeal archetypes and an intercorporeal semantics.
I hope in this way to exemplify the hazards as well as the benefits of
reflecting philosophically on a non-philosophical discipline and to show
that philosophical reflections must themselves be validated.
Grene notes that Portmann's concept acknowledges a quality of life
that is itself acknowledged only "at the boundary of science,"^ that is, it
acknowledges a subject of existence. Her general point in the beginning
is that "Portmann's reflections about living things cannot be contained
within the frame of Galilean science."^ In her initial discussion of

^^ Animal Forms and Patterns, translated by Hella Czech (New York: Schocken
Books, 1967).
" Marjorie Grene, "The Characters of Living Things, I," in The Understanding
of Nature: Essays in the Philosophy of Biology (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1974), 272-73.
^ Ibid,, 273.
^ Ibid,, lis.