Abstract
This article tackles the mind-body problem in the context of a philosophical analysis of action. In the structure of action the possibility of a particular tension is already contained-action often presents itself as endeavour.
This tension has, in the philosophical tradition, been more than once interpreted as a case of the distinction between spirit and body. This paper attempts, following the example of the phenomenological analysis of action in P.
Ricoeur (in his early work), to demonstrate the consequences of this metaphysical dualism. Metaphysical dualism is then abandoned and dualism is preserved only in the form of a lived duality.
There follows an attempt to interpret the experience of endeavour in another way, using the conceptions of Merleau-Ponty (le comportement), and of M. Heidegger (das Verstehen).
The paper attempts to describe the experience of lived dualism and to offer the kind of conception of action which does not require metaphysical dualism.