Concepts about my body only signify, never deliver, its lived self-alienation

Evidence

Objectivating empirical knowledge, which presently surpasses the Illness suffered toward the stomach named, is the knowing of a certain objective nature possessed by the stomach. I know that it has the shape of a bagpipe, that is is a sack, that it produces juices, and enzymes, that it is inclosed by a muscular tunica with smooth fibres, etc. I can also know—because a physician has told me—that the stomach has an ulcer, and again I can more or less clearly picture the ulcer to myself. I can imagine it as a redness, a slight internal putrescence; I can conceive of it by means of analogy with abscesses, fever blisters, pus, canker sores, etc. All this on principle stems from bits of knowledge which I have acquired from Others or from such knowledge as Others have of me. In any case all this can constitute my Illness, not as I enjoy possession of it, but as it escapes me. The stomach and the ulcer become directions of flight, perspectives of alienation from the object which I possess. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 919 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The Illness which I suffer I can aim at in its In-itself; that is, precisely in its being-for-others. At this moment I know it; that is, I aim at it in its dimension of being which escapes me, at the face which it turns toward Others, and my aim is impregnated with the wisdom which language has brought to me;—i.e., I utilize instrumental concepts which come to me from the Other, and which I should in no case have been able to form by myself or think of directing upon my body. It is by means of the Other’s concepts that I know my body. But it follows that even in reflection I assume the Other’s point of view on my body; I try to apprehend it as if I were the Other in relation to it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 919 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: My Ego-as-seen is structurally inaccessible to me, only lived in shame or pride; All empirical knowledge of one’s own body derives from the Other and alienates it — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 919; Even first-person knowledge of my own body is mediated by the Other’s concepts — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 919 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• All empirical knowledge of one’s own body derives from the Other and alienates it #corroborates (0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 919
• Even first-person knowledge of my own body is mediated by the Other’s concepts #expands (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 919
• The Other’s perspective reveals my own body as merely worldly #corroborates (0.80)
• Perceiving one’s own body as an object converts its lived possibilities into dead-possibilities #exemplifies (0.80)
• Females uniquely experience their own bodies as alienated otherness #qualifies (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 110