Modalization of movement: The problem of sensus communis and the limits of phenomenology

Abstract

One of the most persistent problems in accounting for the constitution of subjective experience is the question of the unity of consciousness. In the phenomenological tradition this question is often approached through concepts such as ipseity, pre-reflective consciousness, ownership, and first-person perspective. Since Aristotle, the question of unity in an experiencing subject has been associated with the notion of “common sensibles” and the concept of “sensus communis” as that which joins the proper sense modalities in a single center. In this article it is argued that both the classical and the phenomenological solutions to the problem of unity point to the central challenge of how to account for the experience of movement and it is questioned whether a phenomenology of movement gets us closer to an understanding of sensus communis as a primordial relational force in the body–world formation.