INCARNATION ET EXISTENCE
LES TRANSFORMATIONS DE LA CHAIR CHEZ RICOEUR ET DERRIDA

Rafael Lima Barros De Oliveira

In this article, I try to reconstruct the critical reception of the notion of “flesh” (Leib) in the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, and Jacques Derrida. I argue that this concept plays a key role in the transformation set forth by those two authors regarding phenomenological heritage. On the one hand, the tension between the voluntary and the involuntary within Ricoeurian analytics of human action produces the substitution of Husserlian dualism of perspectives – body-object (Körper) versus lived-body (Leib) – in favor of the mystery of incarnation; on the other hand, Derridian analysis of the sign and of the mechanism of signification brings upon a reversal of the balance of power between orality and writing, following the lead of material traces in expression. Both philosophers signal towards the insufficiency of the phenomenological descriptive method to deal with incarnation and the lived, making a move towards ontological understanding of existential anchorage.