ALLE ORIGINI DELLA FENOMENOLOGIA DELLA CORPOREITÀ: SCHELER E LA PSICHICITÀ DEL CORPO VIVO (LEIB)

The aim of this paper is to analyze the primary novelties and characteristics of the concept of psychic body elaborated in Scheler’s phenomenology of corporeality. The first part of the paper, which is devoted to an examination of the origin of the distinction between the living body (Leib) and the physical body (Körper) in Husserl and Scheler, demonstrates that, contrary to what is asserted in the major writings on the topic, the first edited text in which this distinction appears explicitly is not by Husserl but by Scheler, more precisely an essay entitled Über Selbsttäuschungen (1912). Subsequently, the specific characteristics of Scheler’s concept of the living body are highlighted through a confrontation with the theses of Husserl and Uexküll. Furthermore, the hitherto completely unexplored influence of Schelling’s concept of “original duplicity” on the psychic dimension of Scheler’s “living body” is considered. Finally, the development impressed on Scheler’s phenomenology of corporeality in 1926 through the introduction of the concept of “body schema” is analyzed.