I

The notion of background has moved progressively into the foreground of philosophical discussion. Over the past century, philosophers have increasingly recognized that our conscious mental life cannot adequately function without relying on a background of which we are not properly conscious but which guides and structures our conscious thought and action. The notion of body, though largely disregarded or disparaged by the dominantly idealistic tradition of Western philosophy, has likewise increasingly moved toward the foreground of philosophical theory, and indeed has formed my principal axis of research for the last decade. Because the term “body” is too often contrasted with mind and applied to insentient, lifeless things, while the term “flesh” has such negative associations in Christian culture (and evokes the merely fleshy dimension of embodiment), I use the term “soma” to designate the living, sensing, dynamic, perceptive, purposive body that lies at the heart of my research project of somaesthetics.

If both background and body have moved toward the forefront of philosophical discussion, this is not mere coincidence. They are intimately connected in contemporary theories of the background that assert its crucial importance for mental life and that recognize the crucial somatic dimension of mind. This chapter examines the body's role as structuring unreflective background to conscious mental life and purposive action. But it further explains why this unreflective somatic background should be brought into the foreground of consciousness, not just theoretically but also sometimes in practical action. Such foregrounding of the somatic background in practical contexts of action goes against the received wisdom of master thinkers as different as Immanuel Kant, William James, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Critically addressing their key arguments while outlining some advantages of foregrounding background body consciousness, this chapter also examines how such foregrounding can be integrated and reconciled with the persistent, productive somatic background.