Abstract
Corporeality and affectivity can be distinguished as two opposite aspects of the bodily self that we are. In phenomenology this opposition is often reduced so that the affectivity of a lived body becomes a transcendental foundation of any possible body conceived as an object or a thing in space.
The very interest of the phenomenological investigations is situated in the waste domain of the lived bodily experiences. The differences among philosophers refers to their very conceptions of what the status of a lived experience and that of the phenomenon are.
So the conception of the relationship between the corporeality and affectivity of the self varies considerably in Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Henry. But one aspect seems to be neglected in all these concepts, namely, the question of materiality that has no sense.
This aspect to be found in Levinas' analysis of affectivity is the aspect of the bare materiality to be other, strange, foreign or alien that is also a feature of our own body, of its corporeality.