Abstract
The Heidelberg neurologist Viktor vonWeizsäcker (1886-1957) chose to place the sick person at the center of his medical anthropology. This raises the epistemological problem of how we can truly gain knowledge about another person’s experience of illness. To do so requires a particular form of contact between the doctor and the sick person. For the sourceof any such knowledge does not lie solely in the self (Ich) of the doctor, but equally in the self of the sick person. This is denoted by the relationship between perceiving and movement, between subject and object, although it makes a difference whether we mean contact with living or dead bodies. Experimental research took place at Heidelberg University between 1920 and 1940 that sought to examine this difference in the relationship between perception and movement. The significance within intellectual history of this research context must be first be taken into account and its impact on the philosophy of embodiment. This research led to a new understanding of the reality of being alive. In contrast to the classical ontology of inanimate objects, the being of the living always includes a sense of „not yet being“ and of „being other“, for which two concepts are used: „prolepsis“ (Alfred, Prince vonAuersperg) and „bipersonality“ (Paul Christian). Thus, a long forgotten thought experiment takes on new paradigmatic significance for the fundamental discourse of the modern humanities: namely, the novella „On the Marionette Theater“ by Heinrich von Kleist.
