The Spatiality of Acosmic Interiority A Phenomenological Attempt to Rethink “Lived Space”

Some models of thought undoubtedly frame the way we think about spatiality. The “inside/outside” binary is one of them. Depending on grammatical use, the two terms are deployed either as an adverb or a preposition, ultimately expressing the localization of something “inside” or “outside.” Aristotle already referred to this localization when he used the terms “containing” and “contained” within the context of his definition of “place,” understood as a contiguous boundary. He expands on this definition in his Physics, in which the issue of place is discussed along with the issue of “movement,” which denotes not only “shift” but also “increase” and “diminution.”1 According to the Stagirite, place refers to the boundary of the containing body, which is in contact with the contained body. The contained body refers to what can be moved by way of locomotion. Since only contiguous and continuous parts can move, the place is the motionless boundary that is contiguous with the movable body. After the so-called spatial turn in contemporary philosophy, does it still make sense to start from Aristotle, especially when “lived space”2 is set forth as a specific kind of spatiality to characterize interiority? In this chapter, I will indeed argue for such a starting point in our attempt to “rethink the lived space.” I will put into question the binary “inside/outside” to rethink interiority as original spatiality, without reference to exteriority. The notion of contiguity described by Aristotle serves as a key concept to demonstrate the foregoing thesis. The concept of the “continuous” does not admit interruptions and, therefore, maintains the inside/outside as uninterrupted. On the contrary, the “contiguous” implies the difference made by the interruption. Contiguous here means “bordering, adjacent,” or “closely connected,” but never “without stopping” or being “uninterrupted” like the continuous. In my view, the concept of interruption is fundamental to rethink interiority. This notion can help us consider the genuine phenomenon of interiority without necessarily referring it to its contrary, namely exteriority. Hence, it can be considered as contiguous but not continuous with exteriority. Moreover, I will not consider “what/was” interiority is. Rather, I will investigate “how/wie” an internal spatiality manifests itself, and I will consequently refer to phenomenology, which (as Husserl or Heidegger taught us) does not deal with what appears but with how it happens. We can now answer the question that opens this introduction: Is the spatial localization “inside/outside” an irreducible reference? Yes, perhaps, but it can be rethought through the tools of philosophical tradition such that these adverbs and the spatiality they outline as exteriority and interiority are grasped not in continuity but in contiguity. Furthermore, if they are contiguous but not continuous, first, one will not be the contrary of the other, and second, each of the two determinations will be grasped starting from its originality and not in the background of a unique conception of space establishing the criteria of both what is exterior and what is interior.