The body is primarily known as the Other’s body, not one’s own

Evidence

Our perceptions also tend to be accompanied by that strange sense called ‘proprioception’ - the sense that tells us whether our legs are crossed or our head is cocked to one side. My own body is not an object like others; it is me. If I sit down with my knitting, says Merleau-Ponty, I might have to hunt for my knitting needles but I don’t hunt for my hands and fingers. And if I rest my arm on the table, ‘I will never think to say that it is next to the ashtray in the same way that the ashtray is next to the telephone.’ Our proprioception is exquisitely sensitive and complex: If I stand in front of my desk and lean on it with both hands, only my hands are accentuated and my whole body trails behind them like a comet’s tail. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 733 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

We must note in addition that this appearance of the body does not give us the body as it acts and perceives but only as it is acted on and perceived. In short, as we remarked at the beginning of this chapter, it would be possible to conceive of a system of visual organs such that it would allow one eye to see the other. But the seen eye would be seen as a thing, not as a being of reference. Similarly the hand which I grasp with my other hand is not apprehended as a hand which is grasping but as an apprehensible object. Thus the nature of our body for us entirely escapes us to the extent that we can take upon it the Other’s point of view. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 923 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The body seen from another’s viewpoint is a thing, not lived — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 923; The Other’s body is ontologically identical to the Other-for-me; The other’s body is originally given as being-in-situation (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• One’s own body is lived as self, not experienced as an object. #contradicts (0.95) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 733
• The body seen from another’s viewpoint is a thing, not lived #expands (0.92) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 923
• Perceiving another person’s body differs fundamentally from perceiving objects #corroborates (0.90)
• Body-for-others is studied through the identity of my-being-for-the-Other structures #expands (0.88)
• The other’s body is originally given as being-in-situation #expands (0.85)
• In Islamic tradition the body is not individually owned but bound by collective obligations #complicates (0.85) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 443
• The Other’s body is ontologically identical to the Other-for-me #expands (0.80)