Man as a Being of Hygiene in a Phenomenological and Anthropological Perspective

The aim of the text is to address the phenomenon of hygiene as that which concerns the transitory boundary of our corporeality (the lived body in the physical body), as an ambiguous and diverse phenomenon, which presents itself in various ways (in the field of expressivity). The study draws on the fruitful cooperation between phenomenology and philosophical anthropology. In the first part, the text analyzes how corporeality is treated in the phenomenological reflection based on Edmund Husserl’s conception of the lived body and in the following phenomenological thematizations of corporeality. Upon the foundation of such an approach, we engage in an elaboration of the problem of hygiene in its anthropological specificity. With the help of an anthropological study of Helmuth Plessner, it is possible, in the subsequent parts of the text, to approach the phenomenon of hygiene in its particular manifestations—as expressions of interaction in society (with examples of diplomacy and good manners) as well as in the field of artistic expressions (with examples of hygienic images in the first half of the 20th century). Hygiene thus appears as a phenomenon in the framework of a complex being in the world, and it cannot be derived from the outer (socially construed) or causalphysiological phenomena. This makes hygiene a specific leading clue for the research regarding subjectivity