The being-cyclist: An essay in existential anthropology

Abstract

Critical of empirical forms of anthropology which have missed the singularity of beings, this paper defines the conditions for the observation of a human being. It would be then up to existential anthropology to do this work. To observe in detail a human being and to understand its existential grammar, the author considers necessary to return to the lexical field of the contour, the consistency, the stability. In a heuristic way, the paper solicits two unexpected supports: a drawing of Marcel Duchamp representing a cyclist and the notion of ball, proposed by Parmenides, that he associates to the one of volume of being. The paper then becomes a reflection on the movement in cycles to think an existential anthropology of the being human riveted to itself. The result is a move away from the foundations of existentialism, which, in different ways, value a being in the process of wrenching away from itself, in disequilibrium or as a “mystery” that cannot be looked at.