Leiblichkeit

The body is everywhere. As an object of exhibition, availability or seduction, the body permeates all aspects of our daily experience. It was only a question of time until a corporeal (or body) turn was also proclaimed in the game of alternating turns in sciences and humanities. In this process, the subject of investigation of the mentioned term is often reduced to the »physical body«, in German called »Körper«: a physical substrate which can be described as a thing among things. Against this terminological abbreviation, the concept of »lived body« (Leib) represents, at the latest since Edmund Husserl, a precise theoretical intervention in the scientific and philosophical discussion concerning the physical body and corporeality: The objectively observable body, which we have, contrasts the lived body, which we are. The contributors to this volume deal with this »lived body«, its history, its variations and its promise.