Pathic Perception or Sensing of One's Own Body? An Alternative to New Phenomenology

In both traditional and contemporary philosophical discussion perception is usually considered to be a sensory knowing. Thus, it is overlooked that to perceive something also means to suffer the effect of what is being perceived, which is being experienced as pleasant or unpleasant. Contrary, New phenomenology attempts to value precisely this overlooked pathic dimension by placing subject's affective struckness into the centre of attention. While most of the approaches dealing with the philosophy of perception ignore the fact that the experience of object can be pleasant or unpleasant, New phenomenology examines this eventful characteristic, however, it is primarily understood as merely sensing one's own body. In other words, what is happening with body becomes severed from any relation towards the world, both in epistemically-oriented philosophy of perception and body-oriented New phenomenology. This study presents an opposing project in which pleasant or unpleasant perception is examined from the perspective of pre-reflexive relation towards the world. In such a way we can demonstrate to what degree the experience of the world is not just bodily but vice versa also, that is, to what degree the experience of the self and body is mediated by the relation to the world.