Everyday bodily actions resist full description yet come to us effortlessly
Evidence
These actions are almost impossible to describe or understand fully — yet most of us perform them with the greatest of ease, day after day. This is the real mystery of existence. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 727
Categorization
- DEFINE: Crisply frames Merleau-Ponty’s central question: not anguish but the mystery of ordinary embodied action.
- XREF: connects to: Language resists self-knowledge exactly as the body does; Repeated bodily practices form the self rather than merely express it — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival…, 1022; Bodily practice endows subjects with capacities to act in the world — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival…, 965 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Sensation and action cannot be cleanly separated in bodily experience
#expands(0.80) - Habit converts learned subjection into free action
#expands(0.78) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 404 - Repeated bodily practices form the self rather than merely express it
#expands(0.75) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 1022 - Bodily practice endows subjects with capacities to act in the world
#expands(0.72) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 965 - Extreme slow walking reveals subtle bodily energies normally masked
#exemplifies(0.72) — Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, 235 - Veiling and ritual bodily acts train the self into piety
#exemplifies(0.70)