

























Abstract
This paper argues that the classical, traditional Western 
notions of the human body is bifurcated, and plays down 
the conception of the human person. It misrepresents and 
trivializes the importance of the body. This has led to 
polarities in human relations and as such, the devaluation 
of the human body increased bodily humiliation such as 
the practice of capital punishment and to a large extent 
stands as an opposition to ascertain the role of the body in 
the promotion of human dignity.  Hence, despite the 1948 
universal declaration of human rights, the rate of human 
bodily abuses and attacks on the dignity of a person keeps 
on increasing. The crime indexes keep going high 
manifesting in various kinds of assorts on the human 
person. This is a direct indication that the notion of the 
human body in the classical traditional Western 
philosophy needs revision in order to situate appropriate 
conceptions of the human body; this is the objective of this 
essay. This is important because appropriate knowledge 
of the human body will improve human social relations 
and other bodily transactions. It is in the recent modern 
period that there are important philosophical interests of 
the body, but more needs to be done in this regard 
particularly from non-Western, African perspectives.  

THE HUMAN BODY AS EPISTEMIC 
ROUTE TO UNDERSTANDING REALITY

Ucheoma OSUJI,  Ph. D.

Department of Philosophy Adekule Ajasin University,  
Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State, Nigeria.

ucheoma.osuji@aaua.edu.ng



This will enrich more ontological understanding of the 
human body, its relation to human persons, and its right of 
place in the world. This will be achieved using the 
postmodernist ontological inquiry.

 
Keywords: Epistemic, Human, Body, Phenomenology, Bodily 
representation, Postmodern, Ontology, Experience

Introduction
This work is a philosophical examination of the notion of the human 
body in classical western philosophy. It is anchored on a tripod of 
theme, problem, and methodology. The theme of the paper is on 
human bodies. The problem is bodily representations and meanings, 
and the methodology is postmodernist ontological inquiry. This 
tripod is further premised on the theoretical framework of inter-
subjectivity, which offers us the opportunity to explore the polarity in 
the classical works as regards men and women's bodies and open a 
new wave of knowledge from an African tilt. In this study of the 
human body, a critique of the place on our bodies in classical western 
philosophy from a postmodernist ontology offers us the following 
inquest;

(a.) The philosophy underpinning human bodies runs contrary to 
the basic assumption of the apostles of women's bodies about 
reality in relation to that of men.

(b.) The philosophical theorizations of human bodies are 
fundamentally awed by the negative effects and 
consequences of human relationships and development.

(c.) The emergence of universal morality and enforcing 
conformity to such single moral order resulted in a loop-sided 
dialectics on human relations, such that each sex will 
overthrow the other to rise. This means that human 
relationships have been built on the wrong assumption. This 
is evidence of a high rate of divorce, bodily abuse, pre-marital 
sex, indelity, single parenting, lesbian and homosexual, and 
same-sex marriages. 

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These societal imbalances, bodily crimes, and abuse are a direct 
reminder that the epistemological representations of our bodies 
(women and men's bodies) are in error. The knowledge of the human 
body is one-sided. Thus, the bodily crisis becomes inevitable, a crisis 
in the world. It is in the light of this that this work embarked on a 
postmodernist inquest on human bodies, in order to posit a pluralist 
platform that will inculcate a win-win temperament, hence acting as a 
basis for ameliorating the so much diversity among the sexes, thereby 
promoting the orientation of gender neutrality and human dignity at 
large. This paper is divided into ve sections; the rst is the 
introduction. In the second section, we are going to make a historical 
assertion of what the body is and its status in classical philosophy. 
The third emerged from the previous discussion and thus it shall 
examine the polarities and paradoxes cause by classical 
misinterpretation of the human body. After that, we shall examine the 
notion of the body in an African culture which shall lead our 
discussion into understanding the human body as an epistemic route 
for understanding reality, and then we draw our conclusions.

The Status of Human Body in Classical Western Philosophy
The status of the human body was relegated in western philosophy 
and as well excludes from truth, eternal, universal as well as 
intellectual discussions. Most western scholars have drawn the 
dichotomy between body and soul. This dates from Pythagoras, who 
tried to resolve the metaphysical questions of the immortality of the 
soul. In the later phases of this creed, a belief in the immortality of the 
soul became prominent and to ensure the salvation of the soul. The 
disciples of the creed were required to observe a strict diet, 
disciplined life, and ritual. Pythagoras' teachings show a preference 
for the soul over the body and the body was seen as an obstacle to 
attain eternal life, thus, to understand Pythagoras and the 
Pythagoreans there is a need to know the doctrines of a religious sect, 
Orphism. The Orphism believed that;

Man is a mixture of both divine and human elements. The 
soul is the divine element in man and is the essential 

The Human Body as Epistemic Route to Understanding Reality   | 181



aspect of man. It formerly lived in another world and was 
sent into this world as a punishment for an offence 
committed. Now in this world, the soul is imprisoned in 
that body. The body, in other words, is the prison of the 
soul. After death, the soul will transmigrate into another 
body; thus leaving from one prison to the other. The next 
prison may be worse because it may be the body of an 
animal for the soul could transmigrate from a human body 
to an animal body. For this reason, Orphism forbade the 
killing of any animal since it could be the reincarnated 
soul of a member of one's family or the soul of a friend. 
The soul is doomed to the endless process of 
transmigration and reincarnation unless and until it 
achieves liberation (or release) and this can be achieved 
through ritual purication and an ascetic way of life, 
which includes among other things, abstinence from 
eating any animal esh. If the soul is able to do this and it 
will, therefore, be released, it will go back to the world of 
the gods from which it came. That would be the end of 

1
transmigration and reincarnation for that soul.

Following the Pythagoras and Pythagoreans teaching, the human 
spirit is in a perpetual struggle to liberate itself from the bondage of 
the Human body. The depiction of the human body as taints, 
unworthy, material, and the tomb of the soul is one of the ways the 
human body has been shaped as no worthy of attaining excellence, 
and as such, the spirit was priors over the body. This gave them an aim 
in life, namely to cultivate the soul, shake off the taint of the body, and 
rejoin the universal soul of which their individual souls were in 

2essence parts.  Considering Pythagoras teachings of the 
transmigration of the soul, one can as well say that the soul will as 

1J. I. Omoregbe, cited in O. K. Jeje, A Short Account of the History of Western 
Philosophy (from Hesiod to Aristotle),Lagos: Prime Communications, 2003, 18-
19.
2Ejiogu E. Amaku, The Ontological Foundations of Human Dignity in the Thought 
of Thomas Aquinas, Enugu: Victojo Production Services, 2009,  120.

182 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



well return to another body after death (even though it could be 
animals or plants) but the body remains a criterion for the next life 
(rebirth). The body in order words is a criterion of excellence and 
liberation of the soul.
 In the Phaedo, Socrates in explaining the meaning of death 
gave the body a lower place than the soul, thus, 'death is the 
separation of the soul from the body, and the soul separated from the 

3
body exists by itself apart from the body.'   Plato's writing shows that 
the soul is more important than the body and the fear of the place of 
the soul afterlife was more in contemplation than that of the life we 
live here on earth. In the light of his philosophy, the soul was as the 
grasper of wisdom, reasoning, and intellectual strength while the 
body contaminates the soul. And as such, every lover of wisdom, or 
those practicing philosophy, are directing leaving their bodies, for 
they are in search of wisdom and truth which the body does not 
possess. In Plato's writings;

The soul reasons best when none of these senses disturb it, 
hearing or sight, pain, or pleasure. It reaches out and 
grasps that which really is when it is completely by itself 
and says goodbye to the body. 'From all these,' said 
Socrates, 'great philosophers must come to some such 
opinion as follows, so as to make one another statement 
such as a sort of direct path, so to speak seems to take us to 
the conclusion that so long as we have the body with us in 
our enquiry and our soul is mixed up with so great an evil, 
we shall never obtain sufciently what we desire and that, 
we say, is the truth. For the body provides thousands of 
busy distractions because of its necessary food, besides, if 
diseases fall upon us, they hinder us from the pursuit of 
the real. With love and desire and fears and all kinds of 
fancies and much rubbish, it infects us and really and truly 
makes us, as they say, unable to think one little bit about 

3Plato, 'Phaedo' in Great Dialogues, W. H. D. Rouse (trans.), New York: New 
American Library, 1956, 467.

The Human Body as Epistemic Route to Understanding Reality   | 183



anything at any time. Indeed wars and fractions and 
battles all come from the body and its desires from 

4nothing else.

Socrates speaking in Plato's writing thought that human desires 
emanate from bodily desires and as such those desires are evil. For 
example, the desire to get wealth and bring slaves to culture emanates 
from the body. He also believed that those desires cause confusion 
and disturbances and dazzle us so that it will not let us see that if we 
are ever to know anything purely we must get rid of it and examines 
the real things by the soul alone. Socrates believed that 'for the impure 

5
to grasp the pure is not, it seems, allowed.'
 For Aristotle, no affection of the soul is prevalent to itself. 
There seems to be no case in which the soul can act or can be acted 
upon without involving the body for example; anger courage, 
appetite, and sensation generally. Aristotle thought that;

the thinking seems the probable exception but if this too 
proves to be a form of imagination or to be impossible 
without imagination, it too requires a body as a condition 
of its existence. If there is any way of acting or being acted 
upon proper to the soul, the soul will be capable of its 
separate existence, if there is none, is separate existence is 

6
impossible.

Aristotle thereafter proposed that the study of the soul must fall 
within the science of nature since the soul is part of the faculty of a 
body. The Manicheans observed that there are two ultimate 
principles, they are good and evil. They postulated that the good is 
light, God, and the soul while the evil side is located in darkness, 
Satan, and the body. Ascetic life aimed to release light that has been 

4Ibid, 468-9.
5Ibid,   470.
6Aristotle, Psychology, W. D. Ross (trans.), Justin D. Kapln (ed.), New York: 
Washington Signet Press, 1958, 53.

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trapped from the body. Therefore, the goal of the Manicheans was to 
7 

teach on the rejection of the body as a guide to liberating the soul.
 The ancient philosophers and their teachings about the 
supremacy of the soul over the body inuenced philosophers of the 
middle ages. For instance, Saint Augustine was inuenced by the 
teachings of the Manicheans of corporeality as evil, and Plato's 
teaching of the supremacy of the body over the soul and carried these 
inuences in building his Christian doctrine. Saint Augustine was 
known to have taught that man was essentially made up of body and 

8soul and neither could exist without the other.  Thus, Platonism was 
for St Augustine a vehicle for expressing the superiority of the soul 
over the body, it was not the vehicle for excluding the body from the 
unity of human nature.
 From another perspective, Aquinas offered two major 
schools of thought; Platonic and peripatetic (Aristotelian) systems. 
Aquinas believed that just as the sculpture chooses the best materials 
for his work so is the human body given for the proper functioning of 
the soul, which informs it. Both are wisely chosen for each other and 
together they constitute the human person. The body is not evil, but 
an essential part of the human composite. Aquinas maintained that 
the body and matter are essentially good for God created both. The 
body is primarily good there is no reason for one to be ashamed of 

9
having a body.   Aquinas maintained that in the union of the soul and 
body, the superiority of the soul cannot be in doubt and this is from the 
order of functionality. The soul is the principle of life and it confers 
life in an organic body. It is the primary but on the other hand, it does 
not belittle the value of the body. The body is strictly part of the 

10
human person.  Two major issues could be seen in most classical 
thought; (a) the body is evil (b) the soul is imprisoned in this evil and 
the way out is the perpetual struggle of the soul to leave the body. 

7Ejiogu E. Amaku. The Ontological Foundations,  120.
8Aquinas T., Summa Theologica, Prima, Translated by Fathers of English 
Dominica, New York: Benzinger books Inc., 1947,  ST 1, q 84, art 5corpus.
 9Ibid, ST., 1, q85, art. 1Corpus.
 10Ibid,  ST. 1,  q85, art2 ad.2.

The Human Body as Epistemic Route to Understanding Reality   | 185



These teachings are taught to people in different parts of the world, 
different religious sects. The fact is when the soul leaves the body, the 
person will seize to be human, and again the body is an instrument of 
thought. If the body is evil, thought or reasoning are all components 
of the body that cannot exist in isolation. 
 More so in the modern period, Descartes saw the body as a 
material substance whose essence is essentially an extension. The 
mind, he identied as spiritual and that man is more of a spiritual 
being, a thinking being and as such essentially made of mind. 
Descartes admits that man has a body, but the body is not part of the 
essence of man. On the interaction between the body and mind, 
Descartes feels that the mind interacts with the body through the 
reactive process of what happens to the body. Descartes can be awed 
in his answer to the question of how can a spiritual substance interact 
with a material substance? He replied that the interaction takes place 
at the pineal gland, which is situated in the innermost part of the brain. 
It is here that the mind comes into contact with the body through the 
animal spirits. This answer was not satisfactory, even one of his 

11disciples rejected his response.  The problem is that Descartes' 
explanation of the interaction of the mind-body led him to run into a 
dualism in a bid to project the soul as superior to the body. One can 
see that the philosophical notion of the body was such that the body 
was relegated and as such what makes us human was made 
derogatory. Based on the above position of classical philosophy, one 
can see where the dignity of being human which is essentially on the 
human body was crucied. Now let us examine the products and 
paradoxes of these bodily distortions and delusions.

Bodily Misrepresentations and Polarity in Social Life
In as much as the human body is an essential component of being 
human, it accounts for a substantial part of human existence. As 

11Arnold Geulinex (1625 - 1689), rejected Descartes explanation while he said that 
the mind and body interacts through a theory he Occasionalism. According to him, 
it is God that moves the body on the occasion of the mind willing or desiring 
something.  But Descartes and his disciples' postulations are all obsolete.

186 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



Amaku noted;

Many scholars share the view that the devaluing attitude 
towards the human body began from the beliefs of some 
religious sects in the ancient world. Early Greek religious 
philosophic sects did not accord sufcient respect to the 
human body and matter in general. Their negative 
doctrines on human bodies became wild spread 
philosophico-theological heritage that has continued to 

12inuence our attitudes towards corporeality.

This means the outing of the human body as counting nothing 
amounts to a lot of polarities. This could lead to another problem of 
Misplaced Human Value. This misplaced human value has led to the 
increasing placing of wrong values on the human person in the 
twenty-rst century which has witnessed some of the most ferocious 
acts of barbarism and brutality against the human person, thus 
manifesting in racism, terrorism, feminism, sexism, caste systems, 
ethnicism, tribalism, kidnapping, siege taking, human trafcking and 
certain preference on human treatment.  Thus, with the rise in 
sophisticated empirical knowledge in our century as never been in 
previous centuries, we are more ignorant or at a loss as to what is 
knowledge and how to preserve human dignity since the foundations 
of human dignity has been misinterpreted. 
 The body which is the basis of human life, dignity, and 
knowledge has been given a lower place in human relations. This as 
well could account for the worse tragedies of the last two centuries 
which would not only be the manufacturing of nuclear weapon that 
devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nor even the holocaust and the 
gulags neither would it be the destruction of the twin towers in 
America nor the endless body conicts, some inimical political and 
social systems as well as large scale eugenic program designed to 
eradicate ethnic, religious and cultural groups.  Even though science 
and technology have elevated human life in this century but the 

12Ejiogu E. Amaku, The Ontological Foundations, 119.

The Human Body as Epistemic Route to Understanding Reality   | 187



negative and positive impacts from them notwithstanding have 
proved numerous problems and this is evident in the pressures of 
human cloning, abortion, articial insemination, fetus 
experimentation all to improve the lots of humans and yet overriding 
the sacredness and dignity of the human body.
 Considering human–to–human relations, the high rate of 
abduction, terrorism, trafcking, prostitution, single parenting, 
same-sex marriages, human trafcking, divorce, sexual harassment, 
and bodily abuses are all indexes suggesting that our bodies; the 
human bodies have been wrongly understood. This also contributes 
in terms of individual worth and personality evaluation. As a result of 
this, society sacriced integrity on the altar of individual bodily 
assessment. 
 There is a misunderstanding in dening the self and body. 
There are certain situations to observe that much of western 
philosophy has played a denite discomfort with the fact that human 
minds come in human bodies. In its widest meaning, philosophy 
itself is a product of the human body in as much as;
(a) Consciousness and the thought processes are as much as 

possible underlined as embodied in more or less gross matter.
(b) Personal identity, that is the 'I' which is the location of my 

consciousness nds its meaning in the body.
(c) The relationship between the physical world (our bodies) and 

how they relate to consciousness, thought, dreams and 
identity is essentially a bodily affair.

Philosophers not only questions the relationship but go to the extent 
of privileging the mental over the physical and the human body along 
with it to a secondary ontological status, counseling efforts to 
transcend the body in order to apprehend truth, even regarding the 
fact that mental events can cause physical events as miracles 
performed by God on daily basis. The views about our bodies, their 
meanings, and representations have been given several erroneous 
epistemological misinterpretations at the philosophical starting 
point. The fact is that it is due to the body's highly enriched 
epistemological capacities that the human body surpasses the body of 

188 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



the lower animals.
 Classical philosophy paid insufcient attention to the fact that 
the self is embodied and exists in a network of relations with others. 
This fault has led to racism and sexism (in so far as it has reinforced a 
masculinist notion of the self as autonomous, detached, and dominant 
over matter). From the above, we can come to two conclusions about 
the body:
(a)It suggests a hierarchical view of the belief and social systems.
(b) It is considered a top-down architectural form of epistemological 
organization, cognition, and representations.
 There is a need to change this orientation of our body being 
evil and change this hierarchical and top-down architectural 
representation of our body because they inform crimes, violence, and 
dehumanization. Moreso, these ideas are obsolete in as much as they 
were given in time and space. An alternative system of thought would 
be to consider the views, suggesting that the domination of the idea of 
the nature of the body by classical philosophy is in error. The modern 
French philosophers stated another rethinking about human bodies, 

13 especially  Michael Foucault and Merleau-Ponty. Lots of reactions
followed after Merleau-Ponty's publications on the phenomenology 
of the human body. Proudfort in his essay collection presented papers 
that dealt with the role of the body in the conception of the self, in 
perceptions, intention, and action, in Articial Intelligence, in 

14
thinking about sex and gender, and in psychoanalytical thinking.   
The central argument here is that the body is constructed. The body is 
as well the site where regimes of discourses and power inscribe 
themselves, a nodal for power and nexus for relations of judicial and 
productive power. This means that the body is pre-given, its status is 
culturally conditioned. Accordingly, there are more other ways of 

13J. Butler, “Foulcalut on the paradox of the body” Journal of Philosophy,volume 
lxxxvi, no.11, november1989, 601-607. See also Bjurvill C. (1991) The Philosophy 
of the Body. In: Tymieniecka AT. (eds) Husserlian Phenomenology in a New Key. 
Analecta Husserliana (The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research), vol 35. 
Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3450-7_23.
14Michael A, Proudfort, The Philosophy of Body, Wiley-Blackwell, 2003 (114 
pages).

The Human Body as Epistemic Route to Understanding Reality   | 189



being human, especially by understanding that our bodies are the 
popular indicator of the total consideration on humans and their 
bodies. A postmodernist analysis of knowledge permits that reality, 
truth, and ideas are pluralistic in nature.  Not only that, but the 
postmodernist temperature also accepts dissensus as the basis of 
thought. Now let us consider the notion of the body from other 
perspectives especially from an African Perspective.

An African View of the Body
A deeper appreciation of the human body is understood when we 
explore other non-western ideologies. Within Africa, the human body 
is given a higher place than in western ontology. This shall be 
elaborated within the scope of African (Igbo) ontology. In Igbo 
culture, the body was given a worthy place in human communal 
relations. An analysis of the human person in the Igbo ontology will 
help a deeper understanding of the dignity of the human person. The 
human is called Mmandu (Mma – ndu is a compound word that 
contains the prex, mma which means beauty, goodness, and the 
sufx -  ndu, which translates as life or existence or creation). 
Mmandu could be translated as “the beauty of life”, “goodness of 
life”, “the beauty of creation”, as well as the “spice of existence”.  
What this is saying is that human person is the synthesis of all that is 
created as well as “intrinsic goodness”. The Igbo conception of 
human ontology is that man is a composite of ahu or aru (body) and 
mmuo (Spirit). 
 Although there are distinctions between the body and the 
soul, but the Igbos believed that the body is what makes us human. 
The ahu (body) belongs and accounts for all human physiological, 
anthropological, and neurological functions. The body is a primary 
distinction of who we are as terrestrial animals.  The body is one of 
the major characteristics of what counts us as beings in the visible 
world, identies us, and differentiates us from the rest of other beings. 
Life outside the body is a nuisance and strange in the human 
kingdom. The mmuo is the spiritual and metaphysical essence of 
man. When we talk about the spirits, soul, or death, it pertains to the 
gods and should be handled by the traditional priests, priestesses, and 

190 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



seers. 
 Human nature is seen in the body and several metaphysical 
entities account for the various nature and ontology of persons. It is 
the nature of man to be egoistic, altruistic, or conscious just as it is like 
man to be scientic, technological, philosophical, or otherwise. The 
human body is as well in the state of probability. Probability in this 
essence would mean that man is a being in a state of ux or becoming. 
The tendency then is he may probably bring his anthropological 
attributes into manifestation. The probability may depict intrigues, 
mischiefs, and intricacies in life. The body captures human as a being 
of possibilities and potentialities whose existence is futuristic. 
 The body is seen as a symbol of identity. You are identied, 
admired, and praised by your body built and looks. Hence, you hear 
such words as nwanyi oma mara nma di ogologobi ogi,(a dark, 
beautiful tall woman), nwaoke gbara dimkpa,(A huge man). Hence 
the body acts as a symbol and the criterion of admiration.
 The body is also a symbol of greatness, health, and strength. 
Your body is signicantly your symbol of wealth. The Igbos believed 
that health is wealth in the sense that when you are healthy you can 
acquire wealth and other things in life. Hence, they express it in their 
maximum; onye ji ahu nwere ego, (a healthy person is wealthy). This 
shows that your body identies you as being healthy and as well your 
level of strength in display.
 People are honoured by their bodies. For example, people are 
decorated as a show of communal excellence. The traditional titles 
given are usually seen on decorations on people's bodies. Human 
bodies are as well-decorated during ceremonies and festivities to 
show varieties of human excellence, integrity, and as a way of 
assessing human dignity. Men and women decorate their bodies to 
show several rites of passages they are in and they are as well passing 
through. In marriage ceremonies and some cultural rites and rituals, 
the body is as well-decorated to portray integrity or vice. In some 
other African Cultures, like the Yoruba, the body is decorated with 
marks to show that they belong to certain tribes. Hence the tribal 
marks they wear helps to identify them as people from a certain place 
in Yoruba land.

The Human Body as Epistemic Route to Understanding Reality   | 191



In human life, the Igbos of Southeastern Nigeria sees the body priors 
over the soul or spirit. This does not neglect the functions of the 
human spirit and/or soul, but they are discussed at various realms of 
intellection and not to the detriment of the body. Thus, when we count 
human beings, we count human bodies, not souls because the souls 
need bodies to answer humans.  This accounts for the inuence of the 
body over the soul. There are also situations where the soul inuences 
the body. Hence, the body and the soul are in a complementary 
relationship, especially where they need each other to form the 
human person. Hence the body is strictly part of the human person. It 
is not an accidental but the ontological constitution and therefore acts 
as explanations for the human beingness, experiences, existence, and 
personality in the phenomenological world.
 Contrary to the classical teachings that the human body is 
evil, the Igbos believe that the thought is evil, they express this in 
many ways; Echichi madu chere gbue ibe ya abugbi ihe echere na 
–otu ubochi (the thought of killing another is not a thought of one 
night). Society usually advocates for people to guide their hearts with 
all diligence for out of it follows the issues of life. This means that evil 
follows from within and the body executes it and receives 
punishment afterward.  This cancels the belief that evil is in the 
human body as seen in the teachings in classical philosophy.
  Further, when we compare the idea of the body in Igbo and 
classical philosophy, we can make the following deductions;
(i) The classical notion of the body runs contrary to that obtained 
within African culture.
(ii) The classical notion of the Human body gave a derogatory status 
to the body and as such part of the reason for the polarities in human 
social, cultural, political, and academic representations.
(iii) The classical interpretation of the body, paved way for inhuman 
treatment that is on the rise in the world today.
(iv). The classical orientation of the human body is linear, monistic, 
and reductionist thus it is in a way an obstacle for inter-subjectivity. 
This suggests that there is a need for reorientation of the value, 
purpose, and dignity of the human body.  This calls for immediate 
attention and thus, the next discussion of this paper is to give accounts 

192 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



of how the body is an epistemic route to understand reality. The body 
provides an excellent platform to understand the world, ourselves, 
and others. Consequently, the body is part of the system by which 
truth, knowledge, and cognitive system and sources are built. We 
cannot understand the external except we go back to the body, thus 
we shall discuss this now. 

Our Bodies as Epistemic Route for Understanding Reality
1. Bodies as Medium for Phenomenological Experiences
Phenomenology's emphasis upon being-in-the-world allows it to 
consider the totality of human experience in the world in terms of the 
individual's concrete existence.  Hegel theses that the real is rational 
and the rational is real remind us that the body is real as well as 
rational. Even though knowledge for Hegel begins from senses, then 
perception. What this suggests is that sense-perception is the starting 
point of knowledge and has its roots in the body. The fact that the 
body is not mentioned is a way of suggesting that the body is inferior 
to the knowledge it is producing or about to produce. This is an error 
in reasoning in the sense that the process is discredited to the 
acceptance of the end product. If the process is discredited, then the 
end product should as well be discredited. For an impure and unjust 
course should not produce a pure or just course. We see this error in 
the thoughts of rationalist philosophers who discussed knowledge 
from sense perception without mentioning the body in as much as the 
sense made up different parts of the body. To perceive implies being 
sense potential, and sense active is to have a certain power to manifest 
certain activity. All these suggest that the criterion to perceive is 
being a sensual or bodily being. Sensation depends on the body and 
makes us use sense organs on the body. This is in line with the 
phenomenologist and a scientist who believed that the human body 
provides a fundamental way to treat natural objects. Hence objects, 
natural phenomena, plants, animals are studied in relation to the 

The Human Body as Epistemic Route to Understanding Reality   | 193



body. This also allows for studies in physical sciences.15

 Who are we? We usually identify with our bodies. What 
makes us human is the human body. We can differentiate between 
cats, lions, gorillas from a human being because of the body.  Bodies 
dene us as human beings. This runs contrary to the apostles that 
'rational faculty' as a distinguishing factor between human beings and 
other animals instead of using reasoning as one of the activities of 
being human or simply put,  one of the by-products of the human 
body. Alternatively, this runs contrary to the rational / idealist 
philosophers who taught that what makes us human is the 'thinking 
thing'. The body is prior to reason in situations of accounting for 
human existence. For instance, what counts our babies is the human 
body that they come out of the womb with. If a human female delivers 
a baby wearing the body of let us say; a cat, monkey, or any other 
lower animal we say it is strange; that something is wrong 
somewhere. That human female will invoke the attention of world 
researchers, as well as, the religious to discover what happened and 
why. This shows that we are counted as human because we are 
wearing human bodies. Bodies account for our phenomenal presence 
in this world as humans.
 Again the theories that human beings are spirit and body may 
not be disputed, but the fact is that those that advocates for the spirit 
over the body or esh may be erring in one way in the sense that 
without the body, the person will cease to be human in other words 
could be accounted as other forms of being. Even though we account 
for humans as consisting of body and spirit; the spirit being in humans 
does not supersede the body in the sense that the body is the factor that 
characterizes that spirit as the spirit of humans. Even the livingness 
and beingness in the world as a human is a determinant of the body. In 
other words, the body is the home of the spirit; the bodies house the 
vital forces of humans thereby dening us as embodied beings. 

15Although this has been criticized by scientic reductionism which tends to reduce 
explanation about the body to physical explanation as would be the case if one 
afrms that the body is nothing but the total of its observable and measurable 
operation.

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Again, the spirit will still be identied as the body of such a person. 
For instance, the apostles' re-incarnation, sacred sciences, shammers, 
and different forms of 'sacred hook' practitioners usually identify the 
spirits based on the body they lived in before. Well, whatever they do 
is beyond the scope of this paper, but the essence is that the spirit is 
interdependent on the body, especially on its identication as the 
human spirit cannot be overemphasized.
 The body is the home of our spirit. If you have nobody, 
denitely, we are not alike. The body denes us as an existent being 
(in time and space) and without the body we are non-existent. Even if 
we believe that the spirit controls the body, we can as well say that the 

16
body denes us. We see this in Descartes's Meditation,   that the 
mind causally interacts with the body, although it has been criticized 
from various perspectives. From a perspective that the mysterious 
nature of the spirit, supposed causality, comes with the question of 
'how an immaterial substance causes a material substance to do 
something'? Causality requires some sort of contact. But how can this 
contact take place? Another perspective has to do with the physical 
law called the conservation of energy, which is well established in 
current physical theory; the amount of energy in the universe is 
constant. This implies that the mind can act on physical bodies, new 
energy stands in direct contradiction to known Physical Laws. The 

17
third lane of this argument is from mounting evidence  about the 
brain and how it operates. Scientists and philosophers working on 
this angle believed that it is only a matter of time until we explain 
human behaviour in physical terms. The more we understand how the 
brain works the more the evidence about the mental and brain 
function unfolds. More so, the recent criticism about Descartes's 
notion of the self as mind attracted the very idea of the self that 
underlines interactionism, that means, Cartesian dualism became a 

16R. Descartes, 'Meditations on First Philosophy' in Philosophical Writings, E. 
Anscombe and peter T. Geach (Trans. & eds.), Alexanre Koyre (Intro.) New York: 
The Thomas Nelson Philosophical Text,1968)Pp. 66 -70. 
17Schopenhauer, 'The World as Will and Ideas in Selections, Dewitt, H. Parker (ed.), 
New York: Scribners and sons ltd, 1928, .5 -6.

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18
rened and sophisticated version of Plato's soul-body dualism.  The 
very way we talk about ourselves reects a dualistic view. We think, 
discuss, and see our bodies as if they were shells or containers we just 
happen to inhabit. This means that being a body is not a necessary 
characteristic of which we are, but it provides a medium for the 
assertions of the self and personal identication is veried.
 Considering new attitudes towards the body, Arthur 
Schopenhauer considered the world as an idea and our bodies as the 
starting point for each of us in our perceptions of the world in terms of 
its knowableness, and as such, it is simply an idea. In Schopenhauer 
words;

At present, therefore the body is for us immediate object, 
that is to say, that idea which forms the starting point of 
the subject's knowledge, because the body with its 
immediately known changes precedes the application of 
the law of causality, and thus supplies it with the rst data. 

He emphasized that the possibility of being in the world of perception 
depends on two conditions, the rst is to be objectively expressed, this 
is the power of material things to act upon each other, to produce 
changes in each other, without which common quality of all bodies no 
perception would be possible, even by means of sensibility of the 
animal body. If it is expressed subjectively, the understanding rst 
makes perception possible for the law of causality. Thus, the 
possibility of cause and effect spring only from understanding and it 
is valid only for it. Therefore, the world of perception exists only and 
through for it. The second condition is the sensibility of animals' 
bodies or the quality of being immediate of the subject which certain 
bodies possess. This is what Schopenhauer means that we experience 
the human body in two ways as an idea acquired through intellectual 
perception and as an objectication of the will.

2.  Bodies and what they Represent
Bodies stand in relation to the natural world. Bodies are the only 

18Both types of dualism have been immensely inuential in western culture.

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medium we act in the phenomenological world. Our empirical 
understanding of the world and or reality is basically through the 
medium called the body. The body is at the center of awareness of the 
temporality of the physical world. Movements of objects are usually 
in relation to the intimate grasp of quickness in our bodies. Thus, 
actions, movements, time, depend primarily on the measurement of 
the body it is in relation to. This means that the body is the 
determinant factor with time, seasons, developments, perceptions, 
and regions. The very fact that the body is at the center of the action is 
an eidetic feature of embodiment. This is why Maurice Merleau-

19Ponty  wrote: 

That our own body is in the world as the heart is in the 
organism: it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive; 
the body animates and nourishes the world inwardly, and 
forms with it a system. This means that the body denes 
what reality is or means, irrespective of the perspective. 
Thus the body maintains our entire life-world. Our 
actions are expressed through the body and the judgment 
of how actions are, becomes the basis of ethics.

The body is the medium through which we communicate with the 
world. The body can be described as one of the physical objects 
among other physical objects. It is also under the inuence of the 
physical laws of nature. It is governed by similar mechanical laws 
like every other object. These laws apply to the human body in both 
the internal and external dimensions. When these laws are studied, 
they form the basis of human anatomy, medicine, and every other 
science that studies the mechanism of the human body.
 Furthermore, the senses are there for normal activities; the 
organs perform every characteristic of living things without our 
mental dictates to them. This is the function of the body on one hand 
and from another perspective; the body puts to performance the 

19Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of perception, Smith C. (Trans.) London: 
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1989, 203.

The Human Body as Epistemic Route to Understanding Reality   | 197



translation into the effect of the will. Our thoughts, wills, minds, and 
we, ourselves, are expressed through the body. Accordingly, the body 
is used in two senses; as a reference point in which the spatial world is 
arranged, and as the most intimate of the worldly objects, that is 
embodiment.
 The body is socially expressive. The body is a medium of 
interaction, interconnectivity, interrelatedness, inter-subjectivity, 
and other expressions with other bodies. The body puts up 
expressions of anger, facial expressions to express moods, delights, 
and a range of other bodily expressions. Our bodies present other 
bodies the knowledge of us in terms of social, academic, health, and 
every other issue about us, even bodies without life expresses the 
collapse of the body too. This means that the body is intimate to itself 
as well as to the social and physical world. The body can then be 
described as a complex whole comprising of great harmony and 
alienation until it comes to its disintegration. Our relationships with 
fellow human beings are only possible through the body. Of course 
beings without human bodies cannot be related to as human rather 
they are related to as non-human. In light of this, community life is 
promoted in a relationship with the body. All our existentialist themes 
are only actualized when humans are relating to humans, for 
example, such themes as justice, friendship, marriage, dignity, 
integrity, faith, belief, and the like are ways we want to express our 
bodies as well as want others to see our bodies too. This means that 
the essence of community life is as well a coefcient of body-to-body 
harmony.
 Another important function of the body is in the area of 
species. Our bodies are instruments of the continuity of human life. 
Without our bodies, the human species could go to extinction. This 
means that the bodies are as well for reproducing the human species. 
The role of the body is much that one can say that the entirety of life, 
its meaning, and continuity is a function of the body.

3 The Epistemic Functions of the Body and the embodiment of 
Perception.
 The epistemological functions of the human body are such 

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that it is the foundation of human lives, development, and intellectual 
frame for us to build on. The truth is that we cannot sense without our 
bodies. Our bodies are part of us. This epistemological function 
cannot be denied. The intellectual operations of the soul begin with 
the body. The human soul cannot live outside the body and as such the 
epistemological functions of the body cannot be taken for granted. 
The body is the medium through which the soul interacts, acquires 
information from the external world. The corporeal attraction of the 
soul makes it possible for the soul to obtain information from the 
world. The body, therefore, helps the soul to gain knowledge. We can 
say that the human body is rational. Bodily possession supports the 
soul in gaining knowledge in as much as intelligence is not alone, or 
reasoning is not alone, the body adds sight to intelligence, it uses the 
ears, eyes, and of course the whole body in its search for truth hence 
our bodies are rational bodies.
 More so, Ideas do not develop by themselves independent of 
human bodies. When an idea changes and develops it is always by 
means of a human body cum mind. The human body serves as 
transfer stations of ideas, knowledge, intellectual, and all sorts of 
rational activities. Our bodies stand for most kinds of cognition 
irrespective of the question of truth and falsehood. It is the body that 
we use to contrast with the world. Epistemic objects are dened 
relative to the bodily who contacts them. The body as well informs us 
of the existence of other things, beings, and bodies where it really 
exists, or which predicts something a character really possessed by it. 
Another function of the body is that the body harmonizes our and 
others' experiences. The body serves as an agent of correspondence 
with other bodies. In other words, it infers the existence of a real 
correspondence between knowledge and reality from the facts of 
harmony of experiences. Even though we may ask if that knowledge 
is absolutely free from error, we leave this argument for further 
discussion. From our thesis above, we can say that the body is an 
epistemic valve through which we understand reality in the sense 
that;
(a) It initiates the process of cognition.
(b) It brings new content to knowledge through contacts with 

The Human Body as Epistemic Route to Understanding Reality   | 199



new objects.
(c) It is through the body that other sources of knowledge take 

place that is deduction, induction, and intuition.
(d) The body as well harmonizes its experience with other 

objects of experiences using its parts such as mind, memory, 
understanding, imagination, and brain. That is to say, the 
body accommodates knowledge, tools for arriving at all 
forms of knowledge, truth and as a matter of fact philosophy 
in particular as well as other disciplines rely on the body for 
them to be made manifest.

(e) Now, the different parts of the body stand as an epistemic 
valve to regulate our experiences about reality. For example, 
the tongue serves as a valve to differentiate whether a drink is 
alcoholic or malted. The same way our sexual organs serve as 
a valve to express sexual experiences. The woman's breast is 
used as a valve to experience sexual sensations. 
The body is the center of activity in the world; the body 
expresses both physical and mental activities. Our hands and 
noses perform different functions and at the same time acting 
as an epistemic valve to understanding reality. This suggests 
that the human body is the channel through which we express 
our desires, emotions as well as exert our sense of colour, 
smell, sight, emotion, taste, hearing, or even knowledge.

(f) It is the body that makes us human and as well, primarily a 
terrestrial being. The body situates humans in the visible 
world. Without the body, individuation would not be 
possible, thus A is differentiated from B based on bodily 
recognitions.

One of the fundamental issues that have attracted many arguments 
from various perspectives, especially from the woman and feminist 
philosophers is; “are all bodies epistemic valve?” Which body is and 
which is not? If the answer is yes, have philosophy captured all reality 
given the fact that the experiences of one side of humanity have been 
left? It is not enough to unmask the ways traditional theories of 
knowledge have been tainted by male bias. Well, what concerns top is 

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which version of the truth will prevail and shape thought and action? 
20

If we follow the given,  this means that the women's standpoint faces 
a potential rejection of knowledge claims on epistemological 

21grounds.  Thus, the human female body has been denied proper 
recognition in terms of evaluation of the excellence of the human 
person. We can prove this because sense-knowledge, sense-
experience, sense-perception are all embodied.
 Often, philosophers' writings tend to reduce rationality in 
favour of direct or unmediated bodily experience, or reducing 
embodied experience in favour of abstract rationality. This is one of 
the reoccurrences in western intellectual tradition and as such 
accounts for the absence of sustained reections on the status of the 
human body as well as gender. Human existence is both embodied 
and gendered. It will be partial to account for human existence on the 
levels embodied and leaving the other which is gender. It is not 
accidental that the knowledge is gendered as well as embodied. In as 
much as human knowledge begins from the sense, the empiricist 
standpoint, is suggesting that human experience and knowledge 
starts from the senses. That is to say, that human experience and /or 
perception is embodied.
 The argument is how is perception embodied? Embodiment 
suggests that we are beings with (human) bodies. Human interaction 
with the external world, other humans, and within oneself is through 
the body. We sense light rays and sounds through the body. This 
happens because they are transduced into a neurobiological currency 
capable of generating experience. This is to say that bodily processes 
form a constitutive element in perceptual experience. This could be 
explained in terms of the bodily process having a causal role at the 
beginning of perceptual experiences. This can as well infer the 

20By the given I mean the (especially feminist) criticism of traditional philosophy as 
the male account of philosophy in western orientation
21P. A.Collins, “Towards an Afrocentric Feminist Epistemology” in Voices of 

thWisdom, A Multicultural Philosophy Reader, G.E. Kessler(ed.) 5  edition, 
Belmont: Thomson Wads worth, 2004, 293.

The Human Body as Epistemic Route to Understanding Reality   | 201



22
following statements;
(a) There is a constitutive dependency between bodily processes 

and perceptual experiences.
(b) There is a causal dependency between bodily processes and 

perceptual experiences.    
The argument of (b) over (a) is of limited signicance on a plausible 
assumption that perceptual experiences are the product of a cognitive 
process, then (a) apparently commits one to view that at least some 
cognitive process is constituted, in part, by the exercise of sensoria 
motor skill in the body. On the further assumption that instances of 
the exercise of sensorimotor skill are constituted, in part, by a process 
in bodily components, such as peripheral nerves and muscles, we 
have it that at least some cognitive processes are constituted in part, 
by the bodily process. Whether knowledge, experiences, and 
cognitive process span from the brain, body, head, senses,  enactive 
bodily capacities or world-involving bodily capacities and some 
other ways (through any biological science or Psychology) of 
explaining cognition, knowledge and their sources, the basic 
denominator is the body and its parts is involved, even if the 
explanation is that these capacities are not recognized by some 
internal arrangements of the brain or the central nervous system but 
by the embodied state of the whole person, including the different 
parts of the body. That is to say that the body and the environmental 
processes are as much involved. There are different ways the body 
could be perceived, for instance, the computational process (that is 
generating conceptual representations of reality based on sensory) 
and perhaps motoric or high-level cognitive inputs. We could say that 

22In (a) above, perceptual experiences are constituted in part by the exercise of 
sensoria skills; where as in (b) perceptual experiences are cause in part, by the 
exercise of sensorimotor skills. There is experimental evidence that favour (b) over 
(a). More so there have been arguments of (b) over (a), see the popular arguments 
from, John Haugeland. 'Mind Embodied and Embedded', in Having Thought, 
Haugelane (ed.) (Cambridge: Harvard, 1998), 207 - 37,  Robert Wilson,  The 
Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in Fragile Sciences, (New York: 
Cambridge, 2004). More so (b) belongs to science of Psychological while (a) 
belong to biological science.

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perceptual experience is conceptually independent of the exercise of 
sensorimotor skills, that is perceptual experiences are constituted, in 
part, by the exercise of sensorimotor skills. It could also be seen as 
sensoria motor skills as a capacity to perform in a certain way, rather 
than merely possessing some theoretical understanding. Whether the 
human knowledge and/or cognitive abilities arise from the 
sensorimotor skills or capabilities, they are all different ways of 
characterization of the embodiment of perception, when the roles of 
the body are not prominently mentioned and as such demonstrating in 
varieties of ways that the human body is an epistemic Valve for 
understanding reality.                          

Conclusion
Our bodies are rational. They as well account for our existence as 
human, rationality as well as salient agents for cognition. From the 
discussions above, both the ancient and twelfth-century 
anthropological pedagogy about the human body was not taken 
seriously or was excluded from discussions pertaining to the 
determination of human value. Ancient philosophers deliberated 
more on the soul and disregarded the body as worthless. Within an 
African conception of thought and practices (particularly in Igbo 
culture) the human bodies were decorated especially during cultural 
ceremonies, rites of passages, marriages, and different cultural 
festivities. This shows that the body plays a strong role in assessing 
human value, worth, dignity, and personality. The body bears the 
responsibility of the rst form of our identication, that is to say, we 
are counted human because of the body we are putting on. We are 
rst, bodies before we became rational. The body with its different 
forms to life and display in the world is the bane of learning and this 
has cumulated into different forms of learning as demonstrated by the 
varieties of discipline in our institutes of learning. The body stands as 
a necessary epistemic valve to comprehend our intelligible world, 
contrary to the interpretations of classical western philosophy. The 
moment the body, its functions, and roles are properly interpreted the 
crime indexes in the human world will reduce. The body remains a 
fundamental factor in human to human or human to world 

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transaction. It does not matter what theorists are saying that 
knowledge starts from the senses, perception, sensoria motor, or 
mental causation, or whatever interpretation of the sources or origins 
of knowledge (rationalist or empiricist, idealist or materialist), the 
underlying factor whether it is mention or not is the fact that our 
bodies are the starting point of knowledge in relation to ourselves or 
in relation to the outside world. Thus, our bodies surely stand as an 
epistemic route to apprehend reality.

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