"Now the body, whatever may be its function, appears first as the known. We can not therefore refer knowledge back to it or discuss it before we have defined knowing, nor can we derive knowing in its fundamental structure from the body in any way or manner whatsoever." -Sartre (Being and Nothingness, p.297 ET).
Very true! There is a distinction between knowledge and body. And as knowledge is merely one mode of consciousness, there is ultimately a primacy of consciousness over body and thus a greater distinction between the two. But what is this simple, self-evident truth of reflection; what is this elementary thesis but a return to dualism? The human subject is not a monad in the sense of an indistinguishable interpenetration of soul and body. Every time we say or think the concept "body" we are already cutting a void between ourselves and IT. The void becomes veritable; an ontological fact. And since this void is possible and perpetually common (how often consciousness posits its body throughout the course of its existence need not be demonstrated), it can never be reasonably said that soul and body are inseparable. I just fucking separated mine. Maybe the fact that you can't means you are a philistine.
It is a shame that the church's cache of intellectuals have lately attached themselves to monism with a ferocious provincialism. It is a shame because monism is a treachery and a falsehood, or, in the words of Mr. Karl Barth: "A supreme betrayal of religion."
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