How is the body given to the world? : A reflection on Husserl's fifth Cartesian Meditation through Zahavi, Ricoeur and Waldenfels

In 1929, Edmund Husserl held a series of lectures at Sorbonne. These lectures were later published as a book called Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology (Méditations cartésiennes: Introduction à la phénoménologie). This book has engaged philosophers, but also psychologists, ethnologists and feminists among others. Still to this day, interpreters disagrees on what Husserl actually says. This is partly because his collected works are still being edited. But it is also because Husserl doesn’t really succeed in illustrating his efforts in a comprehensible way. That is why it’s possible to deduce ambiguities. This essay will focus on one of these ambiguities, namely, the relation of the ego-alter ego or my body and the body of the Other, in Husserls fifth Cartesian Meditation. Using the knowledge of philosophers as Dan Zahavi, Paul Ricoeur and Bernhard Waldenfels, we set out to reflect around this ambiguity in how the body is defined, how the Other body is defined, and in which way the Other is synonymous with the world. Thereafter, I consider whether Zahavi, Ricoeur or Waldenfels concepts of ambiguity exposes what I rather conceive as a mutuality. Consequently, the question at issue is; How can we understand the mutual relation between body and world in Husserls fifth Cartesian Meditation