2. Perception

The body being our vehicle is more than just the scaffolding to which our psyche or spirit clings; the body plays a role in perceiving both the internal and external experiences as any sensations are received through our senses, and they affect our emotions and thoughts. Therefore, the body cannot be separated from the psyche; our perception depends and relies on what our senses are able to transmit. According to the philosophers like Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty, whom Shapiro read and respected, phenomenology explains how we exist in the world - they analyze being in time and space. 

Philosopher Merleau-Ponty's last essay in his 'Phenomenology of Perception' is entitled 'Eye and Mind'. As his translator writes in the introduction,

'He hereby names his entire oeuvre. He gives voice to his desire, which was to circumscribe man's opening to the world through the eye (...). Is it not Plato already (as Heidegger shows) who pushes the word eidos* in order to make it designate essence, even though it designated the sensible appearance of the thing, and who caused that which does not appear to the body's eyes to spring forth for a pure gaze?' (M-P, XXI).

Is a pure gaze/undisturbed perception attainable at all? Critic Thomas Fink claims that ‘Shapiro’s speaker is 'reviewing' the history of the desire for original, unmediated perception and attempts to fulfill it (Fink: 54).

While it is a vehicle and a conveyor belt for various sensations that can be further intellectually processed to be transformed into literature, the body may also be engaged in some physical activity: 'Now dance! Now you are dancing like the world' ('After Asturiana'). In 'After a Lost Original', we read about 'a definition of a trance in the garden' (Shapiro 1994: 11). Although the body represents the tangible world, once launched in motion (dancing and trance were part of holy rituals in ancient times), it can get in contact with the realm of ideas. In this sense, the body assumes a metaphysical role.

*eidos = form or essence