The body is revealed to us by instrumental things, not by itself

Evidence

We have given up the idea of first endowing ourselves with a body in order to study second the way in which we apprehend or modify the world through the body. Instead we have laid down as the foundation of the revelation of the body as such our original relation to the world—that is, our very upsurge into the midst of being. Far from the body being first for us and revealing things to us, it is the instrumental-things which in their original appearance indicate our body to us. The body is not a screen between things and ourselves; it manifests only the individuality and the contingency of our original relation to instrumental-things. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 867

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is Sartre’s redefinition of the body’s place in ontology: body-as-for-itself is knowable only as manifested through the world of tools.
• XREF: Directly sets up the body’s role in Beauvoir’s ethics — the body as situation rather than object. — connects to: The body cannot be simultaneously an object and the subject that reveals the world — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 826; The body is the instrument that cannot be used like other instruments; The body is primarily known as the Other’s body, not one’s own (+4 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: This inverts the naive body-first epistemology: our own body is the last thing we encounter, given only by a reflux of world toward facticity — a genuinely paradigm-nudging inversion.

Broader Connections

• The body is primarily known as the Other’s body, not one’s own #expands (0.85)
• One’s own body is lived as self, not experienced as an object. #contradicts (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 733
• The body seen from another’s viewpoint is a thing, not lived #exemplifies (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 923
• The being of everyday objects is veiled by their instrumental function #complicates (0.80)
• Desiring perception treats objects as flesh that reveals one’s own body #corroborates (0.75)