The Adventures of the Body. Towards a “new ontology” with Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

The present paper analyses the process of reassessing the body's topic, which began at the beginning of the nineteenth century and has developed along a ridge up to the present day. It is an essential process because the awareness that the body reveals, in an unprejudiced analysis, overturns a series of past categories, starting with a classic idea of "subject". The author who, more than any other, offers fundamental contributions in this sense is Merleau-Ponty, for whom the "rehabilitation of the sensitive", produced by reflection on the body, “upsets the usual idea of the world and leads to a "new ontology".