Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 1: 107–117, 1998. © 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Scientific Contribution Medicine, symbolization and the “real” body – Lacan’s understanding of medical science Hub Zwart Centrum Voor Ethiek, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, Erasmusplein 1.16.02A, 6500 HD Nijmegen, The Netherlands (Email: hzwart@phil.kun.nl) Abstract. Throughout the 20th century, philosophers have criticized the scientific understanding of the human body. Instead of presenting the body as a meaningful unity or Gestalt, it is regarded as a complex mechanism and described in quasi-mechanistic terms. In a phenomenological approach, a more intimate experience of the body is presented. This approach, however, is questioned by Jacques Lacan. According to Lacan, three basic possibilities of experiencing the body are to be distinguished: the symbolical (or scientific) body, the imaginary (or ideal) body and the real body. Whereas the symbolical body is increasingly objectified (and even digitalized) by medical science, the phenomenological perception amounts to an idealization of the body. The real body cannot be perceived immediately. Rather, it emerges in the folds and margins of our efforts to symbolize or idealize the body, which are bound to remain incomplete and fragile. In the first part of the article (§1–§3), Lacan’s conceptual distinction between the symbolical, the imaginary and the real body will be explained. In the second part (§4–§5), this distinction will be further clarified by relying on crucial chapters in the history of anatomy (notably Mundinus, Vesalius, Da Vinci and Descartes). Key words: body images, digitalization, Jacques Lacan, medical science, phenomenology Introduction Throughout the 20th century, philosophers have been criticizing the scientific understanding of the human body. The basic import of their critique (often inspired by a phenomenological interpretation of bodily life) can be summarized as follows. Instead of presenting the human body as a meaningful unity or Gestalt, medicine tends to regard it as a complex collec- tion of interacting parts and systems. The body as it is experienced in everyday life disappears from view and finds itself reduced to a machine-like entity which is explained in quasi-mechanistic terms. Bodily phenomena become measurable and controllable. By implication, to expose one’s body to the powerful gaze of modern science entails an experience of profound estrangement. In contrast with the systematic disclo- sure of bodily life offered by modern science, a phenomenological understanding will entail the effort to rescue and rehabilitate a more immediate and inti- mate experience of the body in the “life world”. In some of his early seminars, the French philos- opher Jacques Lacan questioned the phenomenolog- ical approach. According to Lacan, medicine either has to explain the phenomena of bodily life in scien- tific terms, or it will not be able to explain them at all (S2, VI 3). Scientific research inevitably entails an ever-increasing objectification of the body. It allows the body to appear in a certain manner, namely as a complex mechanism – although more similar to recent, digital machines (like computers) than to old fash- ioned, mechanistic ones (like clockworks or steam engines). According to Lacan, we cannot say that the body as it is experienced in everyday life is more “real” than the representations of the body which are produced by contemporary medicine. For although the body finds itself completely transformed by the epistemological grids of modern science, a phenom- enological gaze entails a profound transfiguration of the body as well. According to Lacan, phenomenology tends to idealize the body. Its picture of the body is the outcome of an aesthetical transfiguration closely resembling the representations of the body in visual art. The “real” body is never experienced immediately. In order for the body to be perceived, it has to appear in a certain manner. Whereas the phenomenological perception of the body amounts to an idealization, the transformation of the body at work in a scientific understanding is referred to by Lacan as symbolization. The basic objective of my article is to present