ABSTRACT
In the third chapter, I reckon with the theme of embodied subjectivity in Benjamin’s thought, an aspect known as anthropological materialism. The chapter focuses on one of the richest and yet most undertreated works of Benjamin’s early philosophy, ‘Outlines of a Psychophysical Problem,’ in which he develops a trichotomy between the mind, body (Leib) and corporeal substance (Körper), effectively arguing that there are two aspects to human physicality. He defines the two aspects of human physicality in distinction to each other, but also in their integral relation to the mind. The human body is for Benjamin a thoroughly historical and political entity, shaped by the material, worldly pursuit of physical happiness. The body includes not only the organs and limbs but also all of those technologies that we make an extension of ourselves through our labor, as it is the medium of collective, progressive labor to fulfill human needs, and is in a constant state of becoming where the individual merges with the human species. To this notion of body, Benjamin also opposes the aspect of human experience that is radically individual and solitary, as typified in the experience of suffering, which he calls corporeal substance. While the body ties us to the human species collectively, the corporeal substance makes us dependent on God as individuals. His notion of body provides the material basis for his progressive attitude to technology as a way of enlarging our framework of experience, but only when instantiated within a non-egocentric political framework. By contrast, his notion of the corporeal provides a material basis for his idiosyncratic ethic of cultivating differentiated modes of experience.
