The Unconscious Body: Rethinking the Technical Optimization of the ‘Offended’ Human Being

Abstract

The constant development of new forms of body modification and ideas of intervening in consciousness, as expressions of human striving for optimization, fuels the controversially discussed technification of humans. The article first raises the question of the roots of the desire for optimization. In doing so, the fact of human limitation and vulnerability, which is also decisive for man’s religious self-understanding, is placed into the context of the subconscious and the potential of deprivation to cause offence. This deprivation is tied back to the starting point of all experiences, namely corporeality and being a lived body. Using the example of being ill as a fundamental human experience, it is shown that the recognition of human limitation arises from bodily experience and that the erasure of vulnerability, which is founded in the lived body, cannot be achieved through his progressive optimization or through the technical manipulation of consciousness. In opposition to the utopia of technical omnipotence, it is advocated to pay attention to a hitherto little-noticed ‘physiological insult’, insofar as the thesis is pursued that this ‘insult’ also shapes the current understanding of consciousness.

1. Introduction

The nature of consciousness and the body, as well as their relationship to each other, currently engages the sciences, for example, theology and religious studies, especially in light of the increasing technification of the human being. Both aspects are often interpreted as separable, modifiable, or even substitutable components of a system reducible to information. Transhumanist and posthumanist fantasies, for example, about the emergence of artificial superintelligence, as found in the writings of Nick Bostrom, are changing our view of what it means to be human. The notion of the superiority of man over himself not only obscures the complexity of the correlation between consciousness and body, but also simultaneously conceals an existential unavailability as an essential characteristic of human life, which in most religions is considered as tied back to a divine reality. Even in the present understanding of body and consciousness, questionable dualisms on one hand and reductionist tendencies on the other hand can easily be identified. The dwindling interpretation of the body as God-given, whose dignity is expressed, for example, through the appreciation of its individual form and features, goes hand in hand with its reinterpretation as permanently modifiable matter. The fact that salvation is supposed to be dependent on the grace of a god does not suit the success-obsessed Homo Faber, who takes matters into his own hands1 (Grunwald 2020, pp. 45–46). The body is reduced due to its increasing modeling practices to its physical materiality. Particularly, a phenomenological understanding of the body stands in contrast to this abridged interpretation of the human physique, as exemplified, for instance, by Zahavi (2007, p. 64), referencing Sartre, when he states that the objectifying consciousness of the body originates from being a lived body. This point will be further elaborated in the following analyses. Regarding consciousness, Schlögl (2019, p. 164) aptly observes that the philosophy of nature in the 17th century, since Descartes, could directly connect to the idea of the substantiality of the soul and transform it into an autonomously operating, procedural consciousness. This understanding of consciousness forms the foundation of its present interpretation as a mere accumulation of information, in which the distinction between information and consciousness is abolished. Fuchs ([2020] 2022, p. 24) clearly presents the problem associated with this. As conscious beings, we are indeed ‘informed,’ that is, we have knowledge, understanding, and information. But the consciousness of all this information is not itself another piece of information. Because this information itself would have to be understood by a consciousness in order to be information, and that consciousness would itself need to be information, and so on; in other words, we would enter into an infinite regress. Consciousness itself cannot be composed of information.2 Such contradictions in one-sided theories of consciousness and the body also touch on the philosophically and theologically significant question of an adequate anthropology, which more than ever calls for new attempts at an answer. The danger of a functionalist interpretation of information and consciousness, namely that it can lead to a truncated understanding of human nature and human dignity, is emphasized not least by religious authorities, as evidenced by the letter “Antiqua et nova” approved by Pope Francis in 2025 (Antiqua et nova 2025). A look at religious traditions in particular reveals the importance of the physical and mental unity of the human being. In contrast, every endeavor to technically optimize the body or mind seems like an attempt to override the ‘human condition’ and an alternative attempt at self-redemption. Religiously motivated body practices, such as fasting, are always aimed at a mental transformation. Conversely, spoken or contemplative prayer, for example, always includes a change in physical perception, an upliftment that should not be perceived by the practitioner merely as a mental reality, but as a holistic one. The unity of body and mind is also a central starting point in theological anthropology with regard to the attainment of salvation and redemption. This means that changes and shifts in the interpretation of the relationship between body and consciousness always have an impact on religious interpretations of the world and the self.

For the evident desire for continuous optimization, it is necessary to inquire into what gives rise to such a desire and on what epistemological assumptions the hope for its fulfillment is based. Analyzing these aspects reveals not only the positive potentials of the pursuit for improvement, but also their problems and especially their roots in a “physiological insult,” the existence of which will be argued for in the following discussions, drawing on Freud’s idea of a “psychological insult”, from which man has to suffer. The term “physiological injury” refers to the fact that human materiality, the fact of physicality, is inevitably linked to various experiences of limitation. Even basic needs such as hunger and thirst, which can usually be satisfied quickly, make people aware of their physical limitations. The insult of not being able to control one’s own body becomes an even greater challenge through extreme experiences of vulnerability, such as illness and pain. Problematic aspects of a present anthropology, namely the transmission of both a dualistic conception of humans and reductionism, are interpreted as reactions to this experience of humiliation. The thesis is pursued that within the framework of dualistic or reductionist anthropologies, particularly the “unconscious body” is overlooked because corporeality is associated with the primal experience of withdrawal, which is experienced as an “insult.” Not being “master in your own house”3 (Freud [1996] 2008, p. 167) would thus be an experience that does not solely, or even primarily, stem from the recognition of the existence of the subconscious, but from bodility, as is exemplified by the fundamental human experience of illness. Finally, it is argued that a holistic view of the body or the corporality also shapes the understanding of consciousness, insofar as they cannot be thought of separately from each other. With a plea for this holistic view, the endeavors to optimize humans and the possibilities of these endeavors can potentially be illuminated in a realistic manner, corresponding to the appropriate complexity of the body–mind unity.

With a philosophical orientation toward the phenomenological method, which crucially begins its knowledge acquisition from everyday life experience, the question is asked how the human experiences themselves in order to better understand their striving for optimization and overlooked difficulties.

2. The Optimization of the Human Being

The term “optimization” generally refers to measures to improve a current state. Although it is essential to consider Spreen’s (2020, p. 167) criticism that there is currently a veritable “upgrade culture” in which optimization and enhancement, built on the dictum of individualization, have transformed into a “allgemeine Werttatsache” [general fact of value; A.M.K], it remains to be questioned whether the general desire for improving the naturally given state reveals something deeply human. The realization that one’s abilities are not set in stone, being able to practice something, to become better, and to push the boundaries of performance through persistent and continuous practice, constitutes a driving force of human action. Unlike other living beings, humans are not compelled to remain fixated on the status quo in all aspects of their existence. However, it is precisely this freedom of purposeful change that is at the root of the difficult and sometimes dangerous facet of human development potential, namely the undervaluation and downgrading of one’s current level of development, as well as the misleading notion that autonomous improvement can progress infinitely. Fuchs (2023, p. 80) points out that in this conception, humans run the risk of viewing themselves as fundamentally imperfect in their current stage of development and considering their physical existence as a limitation of personal freedom. Especially in the face of machines, humans begin to be ashamed of their imperfections. Accordingly, the goal of the optimization sought is the dissolution of shame in the sense of a detachment from any kind of limitation. Oliver Krüger refers to the religious dimension of the endeavor to transcend humanity, particularly with regard to posthumanism, when he explains that it reveals a ‘salvation-historical teleology that is deterministically designed for the transformation of the cosmos into a thinking universe’ and whose goal is the ‘realization of God’4 (Krüger [2004] 2019, p. 419).

Undoubtedly, the possibilities of optimization seem almost limitless in light of technological advancements. They also present consciousness and the body from an altered perspective, as seen, for instance, in the field of neuroenhancement, genetic optimization, prosthetics, or exoskeleton development. The technical optimization of consciousness is based on its interpretation as an accumulation of information, the nature of which makes it digitizable, transferable, and preservable. Fascinating future visions, such as that of digital immortality, result from such an understanding of consciousness and are already finding their promised fulfillment in various AI simulation technologies. A feature shared by technology and magic is the possibility of projecting […] consciousness beyond every imaginable limit (Fuchs 2015, p. 133)5. The possibility of encountering deceased individuals as AI-generated simulations in virtual space can serve as an illustrative example of the boundlessness of human optimization in the sense of “eternalization of oneself.” The traditional religious hope of life after death and reunion with the deceased finds premature fulfilment in virtuality, as it were. The fact that satisfying the need to perceive this encounter as “real” and “authentic” requires the application of special sensors, for example, on the hands of the person still living in the “analog world,” clearly demonstrates that the impression of proximity of another person is significantly mediated by the sensing body. Even if the counterpart is a simulation, one must encounter it in “bodily immediacy” or the impression of corporeality must be artificially created in order to generate a realistic deception. Yet, in this one-sided concentration on consciousness, bodily existence seems to play a marginal or even no role at all.

The increasing digitalization and virtualization of the living environment intensely influence human understanding of consciousness and the body. According to Esterbauer (2020b), virtual encounters exhibit a lack of sensory wholeness and immediacy. This, in turn, leads to a change in the perception and sensation of one’s own body. The idea of a detached, technically controllable consciousness fuels a mechanistic understanding of the body, according to which the body is a controllable apparatus functioning similarly to a machine, which can be optimized through an equally controllable consciousness. The technical interpretation of consciousness and the body thus turns both into a matter of interest-driven optimizations, corresponding to an anthropology that requires critical examination. Wichmann (2004, p. 47) points out that the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sees in the fragmentation of the subject, stemming from Descartes, the peculiar characteristic of modernity under which it suffers the most. Previous discussions suggest that an increasingly technology-driven anthropology only exacerbates the feeling of fragmentation. Their one-sidedness suggests simple technical solutions that remain unfulfilled due to false premises. However, it is precisely in the fragmentation of the subject, in the fact that humans understand themselves increasingly less as a body–mind unity, that the progress of technification driven by optimization is rooted. In mutual reinforcement, the fragmentation attested by Lacan seems to only continue to intensify. While religious traditions, such as the Christian theology of creation and eschatology, emphasize the physical and spiritual wholeness of the human being and understand the dissolution of human fragmentation as being tied back to a divine power, technological utopias propagate the possibility of not only ultimately shaping and optimizing oneself, but also redeeming oneself. There is a connection between the loss of ties to a religion and the hope of technical optimization. Grunwald explains that the loss of religious commitment has left a vacuum into which, among other things, technological visions are advancing6 (Grunwald 2020, p. 46).

To better understand this societal process, the question naturally arises as to the roots of the pursuit of optimization. In my view, it particularly arises from three aspects of the human condition, namely the eccentricity, the sociality, and the vulnerability of the human being.

2.1. Human Condition

Practices aimed at the improvement and enhancement of human performance must certainly be considered as a human characteristic rooted in self-consciousness and, to express it with Plessner’s ([1928] 1965, p. 292) term, in “Exzentrizität” [eccentricity; A.M.K.] of human beings. What distinguishes humans from every other living being is their ability to distance themselves from themselves and, in doing so, experience themselves as a self. Only to humans is their physical situation consciously available and incumbent, a constant hindrance, but also a constant incentive to overcome it (Plessner 1970, p. 46).7 This unique characteristic ultimately substantiates their ability to harbor desires for self-referential changes and improvements. Against this background, technical enhancement primarily represents a further development or another expression of the typical self-perception and world perception of human beings. Additionally, there are many everyday and natural forms of human striving for improvement. Intentions to improve one’s cognitive abilities as well as to optimize and enhance physical performance are, as mentioned in the introduction, in a certain sense part of human nature. Not least because the aforementioned self-consciousness entails experiencing oneself as a temporal being, i.e., understanding oneself as “becoming” someone, and thereby as a changing and capable of improvement being, one can experience oneself as capable of improvement through, for example, practicing repetition, accumulating different experiences, and so forth.

Furthermore, there is the natural and learned practice of understanding oneself in relation to other people and their abilities. As social beings, humans are distinguished by their propensity to compare themselves with others and to assess their own abilities in relation to the abilities of others. The specific goals and ideas of optimization often do not result from a conscious cogitation or an assessment of a certain progress already made, but rather from the sheer constant presence of other subjects, which evokes not only the development of self-awareness but also a “comparative awareness”. We experience ourselves as subjects who compare and, at the same time, are compared with others. This experience of comparison not only leads to an unconscious or conscious recognition of similarities and differences, but it also immediately culminates in a judgment about these differences based on socially negotiated values. For example, in the evaluation of an ability, a performance, or a certain appearance, others are more developed, stronger, and therefore more desirable for various reasons. The experience of the different profile, the differently positioned strengths of others as desirable, is rooted not only in the experience of otherness and differences but also in one’s own limitations and vulnerability. This dimension is closely linked to the other two dimensions mentioned. The profile of vulnerability is to be understood based on the way in which only humans can understand and perceive themselves and can understand themselves in this perception, particularly through and from others. The reason why vulnerability must be included in any anthropology is not that humans are the only beings to be considered vulnerable, but because humans are vulnerable in a unique way, shaped by eccentricity and sociality.

2.2. The ‘Humiliated’ Human Being

This particular way of being vulnerable also determines the theoretical understanding and handling of this vulnerability, ultimately prompting humans to consciously strive for optimization. Without wanting to deny the positive aspects of the constitution of humans just described, it seems evident that self-experiencing as a vulnerable being also entails an existential challenge. The challenge lies in the fact that the unique self-givenness of humans simultaneously entails their unique self-withdrawal. Unique precisely because humans have an awareness of this withdrawal. In experiences such as aging, pain, and illness, vulnerability presents itself as a holistic experience and sometimes painful certainty. This is holistic in the sense that it inevitably imposes itself on consciousness because it represents a physically perceptible reality for the affected individual.

The existential difficulty of self-withdrawal gains a corresponding sharpness with the German term “Kränkung”, which means “insult” or “humiliation”—a term borrowed from Freud’s psychoanalysis, more specifically from the “libido theory.” In his famous work “Eine Schwierigkeit der Psychoanalyse” [A difficulty of psychoanalysis; A.M.K.], Freud attributes to humans not only a “cosmological” and a “biological” but also a “psychological humiliation”. The intellectual suspension of the geocentric worldview, the evolutionary insight into the kinship of humans and animals, and ultimately Freud’s recognition of the subconscious erode the self-understanding of humans to such an extent that, according to Freud, humans ultimately have to recognize themselves as beings humiliated in multiple ways (Freud [1996] 2008, pp. 162–64). The “psychological insult” essentially conveys that the opaqueness of one’s own psyche deeply unsettles humans, or that the revelation of this unsettlement, which Freud’s analyses accomplish, is a humiliating experience. Freud pointedly emphasizes that human consciousness is incomplete and often unreliable (Freud [1996] 2008, p. 167). Not everything that takes place within the human psyche makes it to consciousness, which in short means that much of what we experience occurs in the subconscious and remains there. Moreover, the process of becoming conscious is always lagging behind inner psychological processes. Whatever ultimately forces itself into a person’s consciousness corresponds to a process that is already concluded and completed (Freud [1996] 2008, pp. 162–64).8 Although it would certainly be necessary to further explain what Freud understands by the terms “soul”, “consciousness” and “experience”, one thing emerges clearly from his words, namely that, according to Freud, one must acknowledge that one’s own psychological processes remain hidden, insofar as they occur in the pre- or subconscious “Seelenleben” [life of the soul; A.M.K.] (Freud [1996] 2008, p. 166). It could be added that the criteria for what one’s consciousness is directed toward and all that escapes our conscious perception are not transparently accessible to us. We know that not only is our perception itself selective, but also what actually comes to consciousness is the result of a selective process. However, the recipient of this recognition encounters it with aversion, even rejecting the existence of a subconscious, and experiences it as an insult. It affects the individual so acutely because they feel sovereign in their own soul (Freud [1996] 2008, p. 164)9 and the attack on the sense of sovereignty feels alienating. Regardless of whether Freud’s theories were initially received with reluctance because their content aimed at revising human self-understanding, it is certain to this day that the realization that humans are inherently withdrawn from themselves, that they cannot sovereignly control themselves, and that this certainty brings about uncertainty is still relevant. The distancing from such knowledge and from the theoretical and practical consideration of such knowledge, according to Freud’s terminology, can be interpreted as an expression of humiliation.

Contrasting the withdrawal of inner psychic processes, or more precisely of the subconscious, as assumed by some theories of consciousness that consider its digitization and transferability, seems to hint at certain contradictions. The opaqueness discovered by Freud still partially adheres to consciousness due to the fact that it cannot be found “inside” humans, like organs, blood, bones and tendons. However, this nature of consciousness seems to have less and less impact on the idea of the replaceability and arbitrary extension of consciousness. For example, the transhumanist idea of the so-called “mind uploading” seems to ignore a certain complexity of the mind, which includes hidden states and processes of consciousness, or deems it ultimately decipherable. Today, the complexity of consciousness appears to face a technological conception of humans within which consciousness becomes a controllable entity in humans. Based on these observations, it cannot be definitively claimed that a dualistic or reductionist view of conscious phenomena is an immediate consequence of the psychological insult identified by Freud. However, the intentions of optimizing consciousness seem to aim at overcoming a humiliation that Freud clearly formulated.

It will now be argued that precisely because the idea of technical optimization of consciousness seems so promising, the actual origin of the experience of withdrawal and thus probably the origin of all salvation programs, which are original core elements of religious ideas and traditions, is often overlooked. The fact that humans are inherently withdrawn from themselves is primarily not a realization that asserts itself through consciousness or the discovery of the subconscious, but through their lived body. It is argued that the complexity of the body and, more precisely, the deprivation of the body as a fundamental experience, which is sometimes experienced as an offence, has always caused a reductionist and dualistic understanding of the body. The term “physiological insult”, chosen due to its structural resemblance to Freud’s “offences of mankind”, indicates that, similar to consciousness, an existential withdrawal is associated with the body, and that both “Kränkungen” are internally linked. In short, “physiological offense” refers to the existential experience of limitation and deprivation of one’s own physical existence, which is not a subsequent experience, but rather corresponds to the circumstance of having and being a lived body.

3. Having and Being a Lived Body

The physical nature of humans seems, at times, much more controllable due to its sensory accessibility compared to processes of consciousness. However, the materiality of the human being is much more complex than it may initially appear, as indicated by the language through which we communicate our experiences. In German, different bodily experiences are expressed through two distinct terms—“Leib” (lived body) and “Körper” (objectified body). These terms signify two different perspectives that can be adopted towards the materiality of the human being in general. In addition, these terms also express two facets of one’s own individual materiality. While the term “Körper”, which can also refer to other non-human physical objects, primarily represents the perspective of an external observer, the term “Leib” encompasses the peculiar experience of the human feeling and identifying oneself with a body, namely one’s own body. In particular, the dimension of self-experience is expressed by the term “Leib.” Within the phenomenological tradition, in which the body plays a methodologically crucial role in revealing reality, the difference as well as the internal connectedness of both terms and ways of experiencing is significant. Although it facilitates understanding the various aspects under consideration, using two words also risks disregarding their internal interweaving (Marcel 1978, p. 49).10 This risk also resonates in discussions concerning human optimization.

Notably, especially with regard to questions of bodily optimization, the sensitivity to the self-experience inherent in the term “Leib” is weakened. A lack of individual discourse about the “Leib” leads to a restricted theoretical discourse about the body, which is confirmed by the fact that the term “Leib” has largely lost its place in everyday language. Even in scientific language, the term “Leib” seems to be used only in philosophical or theological contexts. What has traditionally been referred to as “Leib” or “leiblich” (bodily) is now often used synonymously with the term “Körper,” thus erasing the uniqueness and profile of the concept of the lived body.

The disappearance of the term “Leib” means the loss of two aspects in the discourse about human materiality—the “Leib” itself and the relational dimension that opens up the distinction between “Leib” and “Körper.” It is important to note that both facets are relevant for the enactment of everyday life and for how we experience ourselves and our world. It is crucial to acknowledge both the recognition of oneself in one’s physical, bodily reality, as well as the understanding that one’s individual “having a body” is distinct from all other forms of “having a body”. “Having a body” is always experienced simultaneously with “being a body” (Plessner 1970, p. 43). The lack of sensitivity to the complexity of embodied existence, conveyed through the leveling of the term “Leib,” in my opinion, stems partially from the modern, scientifically influenced understanding of the body, and also from the experience of corporeality itself, specifically in the withdrawal of the “Leib,” which is linked to the aforementioned “physiological insult.” To better understand this, the following discussion addresses an experience familiar to everyone, namely the experience of vulnerability and withdrawal, particularly the experience of illness.

3.1. Illness and Insult

The state of being ill usually represents an exceptional state that simultaneously reveals the complexity of embodied existence. While chronic illness is certainly a reality, the term “illness” generally refers to a state of physical and mental weakness and deviation from the way one feels in a healthy condition. Pöltner (2010, p. 62) points out the crucial fact that human beings’ relationship with the world is always determined by their body. When one is ill, they experience a deficiency characterized by no longer being able to do something or not being able to do it in the same way as before. As sick individuals, we experience the physical inability to do more and the inability to have (more) access to the essential possibilities of our relationship with the world (Pöltner 2010, p. 62).11

This way of experiencing oneself as usual opens up the perception of a deviation from this usual way of experiencing. It allows one to recognize that they are ill. Elemental components of the experience of illness include feelings of physical weakness, exhaustion, as well as pain and associated limitations in all areas of life, affecting perception, cognition, action, and emotion, consequently altering the relationship to oneself, the world, and others. Regarding self-reference, it is crucial that illness particularly intensively reveals both dimensions of physical existence, the corporeal and the embodied. Given that illness often accompanies a perceptible bodily change, one becomes aware of having a body through illness. For instance, the soon noticeable muscle atrophy exemplifies this. The loss of body weight makes the state of illness evident to oneself and others. However, this alone does not define the experience of illness. Ultimately, the experience that I myself am this obviously changing body is crucial. The perception that the body one sees in the mirror or the weight shown on the scale undergoes evident changes is not as paramount as the experience of gazing upon oneself as thin and pale, and acknowledging that it is oneself who has evidently lost weight. The possibility of the separation of body and embodied self is an important indication that the claimed unity is not self-evident, but can be disturbed under certain circumstances and must be regained anew (Esterbauer 2020a, p. 32).12

Through the awareness of having a body, beyond the knowledge of one’s own physical reality, illness reveals oneself as an embodied being, for instance, one directly affected by an injury and the accompanying pain. While one can perceive other people who have a body in their sheer physicality, this task is not feasible for one’s own body. It is always, albeit partially to varying degrees, consciously and notably present that one is their own body and not merely possesses it as others do. Particularly with phenomena of vulnerability such as illness and pain, the experience of being withdrawn from oneself, regarding the embodied aspect, becomes apparent. The body as a medium mediates the world, but remains transparent itself, and so our relationship to the world becomes an immediate one. On the other hand, this mediation cannot be taken for granted, but is susceptible to a variety of disturbances. Even clumsiness or an inability to handle objects makes us realize that the body is an unsuitable instrument, an objectified body. The body also becomes unpleasantly noticeable in illness, as a burden or as an obstacle: the otherwise transparent medium becomes opaque (Fuchs 2020, p. 23).13

The occurrence of illness underlines the relationship between lived and objectified body. When an illness is severe or prolonged beyond what appears bearable, one hopes for recovery through the consumption of medications or other physical interventions. In doing so, one turns to a doctor who has thoroughly studied human physiology. As Illness is primarily an embodied and not solely a physical phenomenon in the sense of an objectifiable corporeality, it is not about repairing the body, but about “healing”, which means regaining the transparency of embodiment and pushing back the opacity of the body, demonstrating that physical treatments often cannot eradicate the illness. The individual body, its genesis, and one’s bodily sensations are crucial in illness, which is why the path to recovery is genuinely individual. Were it not so, illness would be easily overcome by making adjustments and optimizations to the body, i.e., changing, removing, or adding something to achieve a desired state. However, the chronic nature of illnesses and the associated pains dramatically illustrate the impossibility of such “control.” This impossibility of controlling the recovery and healing process is deeply connected to the religious dimension of the experience of grace. According to Christian understanding, for example, the deprivation of one’s own body is deeply connected with the idea of life as a gift from a transcendent God. Human limitations and vulnerability are the anchor point of the experience of God or transcendence. Many religions emphasize the imperfection of human beings and the need to accept these limitations. This can lead to a spiritual search for meaning and transcendence. For example, the payment of votive offerings, such as in thanksgiving for the recovery from a serious illness brought about by God’s grace, testifies to this deep connection between the experience of contingency and vulnerability and the belief in God’s power to influence individual physical wholeness and integrity. The fact that the body and in particular experiences of vulnerability, such as pain, are an important anchor point for the experience of God and transcendence, as well as the experience of salvation, is also shown by the deliberate infliction of pain found in many religious traditions. Although this is characterized in the Christian tradition by the idea of following Christ’s suffering, it seems evident that it is not about a banal form of imitation or participation in the suffering of Jesus Christ, but in particular about the hope of sharing in divine redemption, which in Christian thinking is understood as redemption linked to the body (König 2023, pp. 135–37). Christian anthropology thus establishes an understanding of the unity of body and soul that can serve as a corrective to technical optimization concepts and one-sided solutions to complex phenomena of vulnerability.

A case that further amplifies this concept is the development of a phantom limb or phantom pains. It is fascinating and mysterious that humans can perceive the existence of body parts, and even feel pain in them, despite them not corresponding to any physical, i.e., objective presence. The feeling of pain in a part of the body does not correlate with any sensory-material reality for oneself and others. Fuchs (2011, p. 353) observes that the objective space of the physical organism and the subjective space of embodied experience are intertwined and constantly modifying each other.14 The interdependence of embodiment and bodily possession is in a dynamic interrelationship. Owing to this close connection between lived and objectified body, a considerable effort and therapeutic skill are often required to integrate physical changes into the embodied self. The dismissal that the pain felt in a nonexistent limb, for example, is fantasized or hallucinated disregards the connection between embodiment and bodily possession. Fuchs (2000, p. 101) emphasizes that pain in a phantom limb is no less real than in a limb that is physically present. There are neither ‘imagined’ pains nor hallucinated bodily parts.15 Being an embodied being implies that one cannot control oneself and others like objects. Because the lived body typically remains in the background and transparent, this certainty often takes a back seat.

3.2. The Unconscious Body

The discussions about being ill have demonstrated that an understanding of this condition, which also recognizes the unity of the lived and the objectified body, paradoxically opens up through its opposite: the state of being healthy. What it means to be ill can obviously only be determined from the perspective of being healthy because being ill means a lack of health, withdrawal, or at least constriction of possibilities given to the healthy (Baier 1992, p. 293).16 The “transparency of the body” and its opacity during illness, the shift in self-experience, also sharpens the sensitivity to the significance of the “physiological insult.” The state of being healthy is primarily characterized by the fact that one’s own bodily existence and embodiment do not forcibly intrude into consciousness as disquieting certainties. Instead, both aspects are experienced as natural givens of self-fulfillment, which, moreover, do not receive special attention. Esterbauer (2020a, p. 31) states that “having a body” and “being a body” emerge in different situations with varying intensity, but their connection never dissolves. In other words, we only pay attention to the complexity of bodily existence—the interconnectedness of Leib and Körper—when this fact is unpleasantly revealed, as in the state of being ill. It is only with the experience of limitation, loss, and reliance on others that the subjective space of the embodiment becomes a place of constraint, from which one strives to break free, expand, improve, and leave behind. The inseparability of the lived and the objectified body can then become burdensome, something that one wishes to reject. If one follows Freud’s terminology and understands this realization as an “insult,” one may define those as a realization of constraint, through which one becomes aware of the loss of sovereignty, a process that is met with deep rejection. The certainty imposed by real-life experiences, such as illness, forced constraint and loss, hence threatens to be ignored and denied, or is suggested to be significantly eradicated.

Although, as Fuchs (2008, pp. 82–85) strikingly argues, the understanding of the relationship between consciousness and body within phenomenology differs from that which Freud assumes, the corporeality of the subject could have become the core of psychoanalysis, since Freud also saw the origin of the ego in the physical body. The tension between physicality and consciousness that runs through Cartesianism (Wehinger 2023, p. 18)17 was not uniformly addressed within phenomenology, as Wehinger demonstrates. However, it is owed to phenomenology that this tension resolves through the clarification of the role of corporeality. It is especially Merleau-Ponty who recognized “the unconscious” in bodily behavior, in the realization of life, and in the structures of a person’s living environment (Fuchs 2008, p. 87).18 Here again, it is boundary experiences that reveal the unconscious of the body. The possibility of the chronicity of an illness or pain, for example, makes it clear that experiences sediment within it, with this process happening unconsciously. The unconscious sediment, a bodily “implicit memory” (Summa 2016, p. 326), determines every experience in this way. Especially in situations where one’s own body becomes burdensome, the power of this bodily memory manifests itself. Many everyday situations could also be cited here, as Merleau-Ponty (1966, pp. 173–74) has shown, ultimately pointing to the unconscious body and the significance of bodily memory. Without this, for example, one would not be able to carry out learned, practiced, and habitual movement sequences, react intuitively when necessary, and ultimately integrate new elements into this memory, into the body. Especially when one wants to learn or relearn something, the unconscious body seems obstinate and difficult. In a new car, the button to activate the heating is located in a completely different place than in the previous one, where one had driven for years. The recurring “miss” reminds one of the accustomed order—an order that has its seat in the body, from which the subject’s world unfolds.

The discussions about the complexity of human bodily existence have shown that, in theoretical terms, it is necessary to reclaim this understanding for an adequate anthropology. Not least because the connection of lived and objectified body is also a lifelong challenge for humans, which, if underestimated or overlooked, can lead to suppression or hyperbolic excesses of a “physiological insult.” The fact that technological striving for optimization aims especially at expanding and transcending the body is hardly surprising, as it is based on a shortened understanding of the body that ultimately succumbs to the deception that the body can be reduced to the physical and thus technically replaceable. Such reductionism with far-reaching consequences can be traced back as a reaction to the “physiological insult”, which lies in the fundamental experience of the withdrawal of one’s own body, about which nothing can be done. Additionally, the disregard of the complexity of bodily existence as a “reaction to insult” seems to shape the current understanding of consciousness and the relationship between consciousness and body. The certainty that one is never “master in one’s own house”, that, for example, illness can always strike us, as has been shown, intrudes first and foremost into immediate bodily awareness. It is from this corporeality that the consciousness of this withdrawal ultimately arises.

3.3. The Optimized Consciousness

The “physiological insult”, rooted in lived experience, results in an abbreviated understanding and neglect of the lived body. By this, I mean recognizing the complexity of human materiality, upon which bodily utopias emerge, assuming virtually limitless possibilities for optimizing the body. As Fuchs ([2020] 2022, p. 14) poignantly explains, it is more important than ever to recognize and argue that the human is not a dualistically divided being of mind and body, but primarily a living being of flesh and blood, yet at the same time sentient and self-aware.19 This urgent realization not only poses a question and a corrective for the prevalent understanding of the body, but also for the understanding of consciousness based on it. Thus, the “physiological insult” becomes the crux of optimization that aims to alter consciousness. In these variants of striving for optimization, the significance of the body is overlooked not only insofar as the body–mind differentiation remains unheeded, but especially by eliminating the body itself as the starting point of optimization. These variants exclusively target the optimization of consciousness. Enhancement no longer occurs based on the technification of the body or genetic manipulation, but purely at the level of technical influence on human states of consciousness. Tanner (2005, p. 48) notes that currently, the grasp for the mind, the influence on consciousness, seems more promising than the manipulation of genes.20 According to the concept of consciousness optimization, feelings, such as allowing sadness over a loss to make one melancholic, can be determined through an intervention independent of the body. Only the brain, as the “seat” or medium of consciousness, is affected by this intervention.

The preceding considerations on a phenomenology of illness have shown that experienced embodiment impresses bodily limits as palpable certainty and conscious realization. As much as the desire to overcome these limits seems plausible, the reference to the role of the “unconscious body” makes it clear that fantasies of fulfillment often overlook fundamental aspects. As beings without a body and therefore without physicality, on the other hand, or as beings without a spirit and therefore without embodiment, striving individuals would have no place in the world that allows for experience, since the lived body is our means, in general, to have a world (Merleau-Ponty 1966, p. 176). Consciousness of this world, including oneself, is designed solely from it. The body is the affective background that originally designs consciousness from itself (Merleau-Ponty 1966, p. 119).21 If one thinks of consciousness detached from the body, perceptions, as Fuchs emphatically emphasizes, become something in my consciousness. By thereby effecting the “hypostatization” of consciousness, one imagines it as a “subjective inner space” that is furthermore tied to the brain and hence thought to be located in the space of the anatomical body (Fuchs 2000, p. 93).22 However, consciousness and subjectivity, as Fuchs (2008, p. 371) notes elsewhere, are not “inner worlds.” Consciousness and its structural orders arise only through the interaction of an embodied subject with the world. In other words, consciousness presupposes embodied “being-in-the-world”.

Every effort to achieve a specific feeling—even if they are just simulated feelings—and every state optimization would have no direction if it weren’t predetermined by bodily sensation. This is why Schmitz ([1965] 1982, p. 6) speaks of the body as an “absolute place,” conceived as a “bodily space” (Schmitz [1965] 1982). The possibility of aligning towards something, i.e., intentionality, which characterizes consciousness in the concise sense Husserl (1976, p. 187)23, is rooted in the body and its orientation-creating alignment. Put differently, optimization without our embodied experience would be unthinkable, because our lived body is the condition of possibility of our perceptive intentionality (Zahavi 2009, p. 103).24 In fact, every striving for optimization points to the actual relationship between consciousness and the body, for without an embodied experience that opens up consciousness to this experience, including its limits, one would not be able to strive for a different state and an expansion of the limits of current self-experience. Put differently, one would not even think of wanting to improve or adapt in any direction. Any notion of optimization that overlooks this connection also overlooks the precondition of its own emergence. The existential unavailability of the human being, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, has been shown to be rooted in corporeality or rather the lived body and therefore also affects consciousness. Trying to master this unavailability by ignoring the medium that releases consciousness from itself is an obvious paradox. Experiencing oneself as part of a social structure and thereby recognizing oneself in a uniquely vulnerable way are aspects of the human condition that were addressed at the beginning. Their anchoring in corporeality reveals that such striving for optimization would seem entirely directionless. Conversely, achieving desired states, if not palpably experienced in the body, is indeed inconceivable, especially since every feeling and perception are bodily experiences and not consciousness states separated from the body, occurring in a separate “consciousness space.” Any notion of isolated consciousness optimization ultimately corresponds to a dualistic/reductionist notion of an inner space of consciousness that overlooks the body.

Furthermore, when the body is neglected, the missed opportunity is the recognition that no optimized experience, especially when linked to the body, can be experienced separately from other subjects. As part of a world shared with other people, any optimization, inevitably reflected in bodily self-experience, also affects how one experiences others and how others experience oneself. Even though the expansion of certain limits or the elimination of certain risks of harm within a social structure may also have a stabilizing effect, it is always necessary to question whether the interpersonal structure, which is always a structure between lived bodies, is appropriately considered. Optimizations, envisaged as an individual program entirely independent of others, overlook the embodied nature of humans in the world. A hardly considered aspect of any striving for optimization seems to be that the lived body is the key for connecting with others, allowing one to experience their conditions of existence and limitations as one’s own. For example, the capacity for human compassion, manifesting as bodily unease, reveals that one can be intensely connected with others, so much so that one feels as though they themselves are the one suffering. In the interconnectedness with others, it becomes apparent that bodily/physical limits do not equate to bodily limits. The adjustments required within a theory of the optimized human, conceived as solitary, due to this fact, have certainly been too little, if at all, scientifically reflected upon. It is obvious that the Christian tradition also has interesting points of reference in this respect, namely that Christian concepts of salvation are never limited to the redemption of the individual, but that individual and collective salvation, or salvation encompassing the whole of creation, cannot be thought of in isolation from one another.

4. Conclusions

The analyses undertaken illustrate the significance of a holistic view of the body and consciousness, recognizing their inseparable interconnection, and potentially outlining a realistic understanding of the human desire for self-optimization. Phenomenological considerations of existential boundary experiences are illuminated against the backdrop of the current “upgrade culture” to better understand the pursuit of human optimization and the inevitable difficulties that lie behind this optimization. Only based on a reductionist understanding of the body can one form an understanding of consciousness, which regards it as a phenomenon subject to technical manipulation and control, as something that can be “mastered”. In this mode of thinking, consciousness abstracts from the human being who exists bodily in the world. In other words, the illustrated connection of body and consciousness forms the crucial precondition for being able to think of consciousness as something abstracted from the body. The “utopia” of consciousness optimization is inevitably linked to a neglect of the body. As argued in the article, this neglect sometimes originates from a “physiological insult” arising from the fact that while humans can objectify themselves as material beings due to their “eccentricity”, this always reminds them that they can never truly master themselves. It is emphasized that the corporeality of humans is essential to understanding consciousness and that efforts to optimize humans must include bodily awareness. This should demonstrate that the complexity of the relationship between consciousness and the corporeality of humans is only properly addressed by considering the significance of the body, as human experience, even though its multifaceted meaning often remains unconscious and hidden, is fundamentally grounded in it. In everyday situations, this hiddenness can have positive effects, but in some situations, the frightening, negatively perceived facet of the underlying, unconscious corporeality can also impose itself. This “concealment” and “autonomy” of the body can trigger discomfort, particularly in the context of experiences of suffering. In illness and pain, the hidden and often misunderstood “materiality” is put to the test. From the perspective of the sociology of religion and theology, it should certainly be further scrutinized whether the reduction in religious interpretations of the unity of body and corporeality, of materiality and identity, also means that the body is increasingly interpreted as a technically surmountable object.

In the face of the omnipresence and individualization of technical optimization, corporeality itself becomes perhaps the most significant vulnerability factor of our society and its individuals. The experience of being one’s own body and its irreplaceability is increasingly pushed into the background of thinking and perception due to technologization, ultimately deepening the “physiological insult,” which encompasses the denial of lifeworld experience. The article’s elaborations also pointed to an opportunity to emphasize corporeality, namely the discovery of the bodily aspect of the unconscious. The technological utopias—whether based on the adaptation of the body or consciousness—lead to the crucial anthropological question of on what basis the strived bodily or conscious state is to be experienced, if not on that of bodily existence. A future-oriented benefit of taking “physiological offense” into account is that it can be used as a corrective measure to help develop criteria for assessing the consequences of technology. In this context, the assessment of new technologies would focus more strongly on the questions of which desired optimizations actually concern the well-being and preservation of human dignity and which merely conceal the reinforcement of human vulnerability. In other words, promised technical optimizations could be evaluated more realistically with an awareness of the existence and effects of physiological distress. This would quickly expose dualistic anthropologies that hide behind technical promises and strengthen the positive potential of recognizing and acknowledging human vulnerability, such as the fact that it is an important factor in interpersonal cohesion. Technical individual optimization is always obviously or covertly linked to the resulting inequality towards others. Attempts at self-redemption are always also attempts to detach oneself from a community of solidarity based, among other things, on the factors of vulnerability that are the same for all human beings. The factors of interpersonal relationships and otherness are thus directly affected by the program of technical change in human beings. In order to gain a deeper understanding of changes and shifts in social interaction, anthropologies that essentially represent a unity of body and soul can and should serve as a basis for further analysis. An important source in this discussion, which is certainly not yet exhausted in this regard, is theological considerations on the unity of body and soul. In view of Platonic and Gnostic ideas, there has always been an intensive debate in Christian thought about the significance of the body and its relationship to the spiritual nature of man. The intellectual struggle over the relevance of the materiality of the human being to salvation and how this is to be conceived offers enriching food for reflection not only for ethical questions—according to Christian understanding, the vulnerability of the human being is also linked to his or her inviolability and dignity—but also for philosophical and anthropological questions in particular, such as those concerning the personality and identity of the human being. On an ethical, theological, and practical level, it would also be interesting to conduct a more detailed empirical investigation into the implicit resilience that develops on the basis of a holistic anthropology in response to promises of technical optimization.