Varieties of Distancing Experience

Abstract

The pandemic of COVID-19 has actualized the problem of body self-perception during lockdowns, social distancing and working from home. The aim of this chapter is to describe the distancing experience through the concepts and techniques of proprioception and somatic introspection. We believe that we currently witness the shift of philosophy towards the ecological conception of ego (ecology to be understood in the broad sense as specific – natural, social, cultural, economic – placement of ego) and at the same time return to earlier, pre-Husserlian developments of phenomenology, like William James’s radical empiricism. The chapter consists of two main parts. The first section is devoted to the body positioning in the place and movement in relation to the surrounding objects (proprioception, according to M. Merleau-Ponty). How to approach my personal experience of distance? Is it unique or co-constituted? The second section concentrates upon the internal perception (body scan, according to W. James). Although a concept of somatic or bodily experience does not lie at the heart of James’s psychological and philosophical investigations, we can still find in there explications relevant to the current theme, especially the ones related to his interpretation of the ‘pure experience’ and ‘stream of thought’.

The world experienced comes at all times with our body as its center, center of vision, center of action, center of interest.

—William James