Coenesthesia or the Immediate Feeling of Existence: Maine de Biran and the Problem of the Unconscious between Physiology and Philosophy

The term “coenesthesia” was introduced at the end of the 18th century by the German physiologist Johann Christian Reil to designate the general perception of the living body through the nerves disseminated in it. Over the course of the 19th century, this notion circulated widely not only in Germany, but also in France, where it was developed in particular by Théodule Ribot. However, a good sixty years before Ribot, Maine de Biran had already employed the notion of “coenesthesia” to indicate the “immediate feeling of existence”, which he distinguishes from the apperception of the self in relation to the body. What Biran emphasizes, in his philosophical appropriation of “coenesthesia”, is the impersonal and mostly unconscious nature of this feeling, which nevertheless never leaves us and plays a key role in the shaping of our personal and conscious life, unnoticeably influencing the course of our ideas, our character, and the emotional tone of our perception of the world. The purpose of this article is to study Biran’s philosophical use of the notion of “coenesthesia” in the last phase of his philosophical reflection (1823–1824) in relation to the emergence of the problem of the unconscious.