To say that we are embodied subjects is to affirm that we are both extended and conscious: both
a part of the material world and a place where that world comes to presence. The ambiguity
inherent in our being both can be put in terms of a double being in. Thus while it is true
that the world is in consciousness taken as a place of appearing it is equally true that
taken as embodied consciousness is in the world. How can our selfhood support both
descriptions? Starting with Husserl's late manuscripts on birth and death James Mensch traces
out the effects of this paradox on phenomenology. What does it mean to consider the self as
determined by its embodiment? How does this affect our social and political relations
including those marked by violence? How does our embodiment affect our sense of transcendence
including that of the divine? In the course of these inquiries such questions are shown to
transform the very sense of phenomenology.
