The belonging. On a geographical ontology

Abstract

As much as it is a central theme of phenomenology, the question of the body has not been treated so far satisfactorily. The difficulty comes from the fact that the body is a response much more than a question, answer to a problem that has never been posed and whose treatment is the only way to access the sense of being of that body. This problem is that of belonging. What can it mean, in a minimal and rigorous way, to have (or be) a body but to belong to the world? Belonging defines the way of being from the body. Therefore, it is necessary to reverse the terms of the problem and stop judging as being obvious the fact that I belong to the world because I have a body. In reality, it is not because we have a body that we belong to the world but, on the contrary, it is insofar as we belong to the world that we have a body. It is a question of trying to deepen the sense of belonging and to develop some consequences of this new starting point.