Abstract
What is the relation between our selfhood and appearing? Our embodiment positions us in the world, situating us an object among its visible objects. Yet, by opening and shutting our eyes, we can make the visible world appear and disappear-a fact that convinces us that the world is in us.
We thus have to assert with Merleau-Ponty that we are in the world that is in us. The two are intertwined.
James Mensch employs the insights of Jan Patočka's asubjective phenomenology to understand this double relationship of being-in. He shows how this double relation constitutes the reality our selfhood and thus shapes our social and political relations as well as the violence that constantly threatens to undermine them.