Abstract

The touching-touched does not only originate with Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. It also has its source in the debate between Condillac and Maine de Biran, around the famous example of the marble statue. Rooted in Aristotle’s question of touch, this discussion about the “first man” (Buffon) takes on particular importance when it comes to the question of whether everything comes from me (proper body) or whether there is something foreign in me (improper body). This confrontation between Condillac and Maine de Biran is not confined to auto-affection or the flesh (Michel Henry), but endeavors to show that I am sometimes hetero-affected, or even outside myself. In this way, the entire history of philosophy will be read differently, beginning with Maine de Biran, in the notion of an “outside-in-itself,” that gives rise to a new image of the thinker of Bergerac.