Embodiment

A person's body may be defined as the centre through which that person interacts with the world, the means by which he is in the world and by which the world around him is presented for thought and action. It is only through experiencing the body that anything else in the world may be experienced; and it is through the body that the person's desires, feelings, ideas, and so on, are expressed to others. The relationship of a person to the bodily organism in which and by which that person lives is a complex metaphysical issue. A body is referred to as "my body" and thus belongs to "me"; yet in another sense "my body" is "me". Although the person may be said to govern the body he is also subject to it - damage to the body is experienced as "I" am injured. Mind and body somehow interact. As Pascal pointed out, we understand neither the body, nor the mind, nor, even more, how the body can be united to the mind; this is our very being, to be both body and mind and therefore opaque to ourselves. Spinoza posited body and mind as attributes of the unitary self, each being essential to the other, the body mirrored in the mind as its idea; later writers have also essayed the problem, but all admit a fundamental opacity or ambiguity intrinsic to the union between person and embodying organism.