Embodiment, disembodiment, and overembodiment: Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, and Augustine on the significance of sexuality in human life

We live in a time when the body is given a relevance, even a symbolic relevance, which it may never have had in human history. But how tight is the link between body and personal identity? How much does our contingent body weigh on our sense of self? My paper’s aim is to reflect on the role of the body in shaping people’s identities by taking human sex life as a suitable example of the kind of energetic presence with which humans must come to terms in their lives. My argument begins with Merleau-Ponty’s take on sexuality in his Phenomenology of Perception, it uses Foucault’s investigation into the changes of sexual ethics in early Christianity as a counterpoint, and finally focuses on the asymmetrical dialogue between Foucault and Augustine in the fourth, posthumous volume of The History of Sexuality: Confessions of the Flesh. The end goal of this quick journey is to clarify what is at stake when a special value is attached to sexual intimacy nowadays and to see if this “axiophany” can be interpreted as a modern kind of “hierophany.”