The Body as an Epistemological_Metaphor.pdf (original) (raw)

Interpréter -c'est avoir un corps, être perspective 2 . Éric Blondel 1. "The Eye of the Mind" and "The Eye of the Body". From Descartes to Nietzsche Refl ecting on the genesis of the crisis of the traditional power of vision, Martin Jay asserted that the epoch of modernism is distinguished by the phenomenon of "the return to the body" (Jay 295-330). His opinion corresponds with the perception that modernist literature and philosophy, by focusing on the problem of corporeality, simultaneously diagnose the discovery of chaos within human nature and beyond it, undertake refl ection on human cognitive capabilities, and recognize humanity's complicated situation in the world. However, Jay's enigmatic observation inclines one to refl ect on what this return consists of and how it came to take place. Richard Sheppard, referring to Hugo Ball's theoretical work, the pillars of which are ideas of Nietzsche's, has distinguished three aspects in which the modernist "transvaluation of all values" can be seen. These are: 1) a changing sense of reality; 2) a transformation of the understanding up to now of human nature; and 3) a transformation of the relations between reality and the human being (92). In Sheppard's view, the fi rst change was linked to the scientifi c revision of the convictions that applied to physical reality and remained in accordance with Newton's mechanistic picture of the world.