Abstract

This thesis is an interdisciplinary investigation into the irreducible difference that resides at the heart of our experience of corporeality--the fact that one experiences one's body as both something that one is and something that one has. The first half of the thesis explains how Gabriel Marcel came to use the distinction between being and having to investigate the nature of bodily reality in his existential philosophy and how he came to deploy the concept of my body as the fulcrum of his thought. This portion of the thesis also examines in detail the concepts of corporeity and absolute possession that Marcel used to refer to this difference between being and having that informs our experience of our own embodiment. The second half of the thesis is an interdisciplinary investigation into the work of three different twentieth century thinkers of corporeity . In the case of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the thesis demonstrates how he uses the distinction between being and having to organize his first major philosophical work, The Structure of Behavior , and how it informs his highly original re-working of the concept of perspective. The next chapter investigates the narrative of possession and dispossession that Jacques Derrida traces through the work of Antonin Artaud and argues against Derrida's presentation of Artaud's thought as being informed by a metaphysics of presence by looking at how Artaud uses the distinction between being and having in his writings. Lastly, the thesis addresses the work of American architect John Hejduk and speculates on the relationship between architecture and corporeity . Hejduk's work is presented by way of an investigation into Marcel's concepts of hospitality and receptivity--concepts that inform his ontological musings on interpersonal relations--that looks at the difference between the experience of corporeity and that of being at home.