This paper aims to explore and expand Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of the body as a mass as he drafted it in his “On the Soul” lecture. He conceptualizes the soul as the (however minimal) reflection of the fact that we have (or we are) a body, thus the conception of the body as a mass may offer possibilities to think the body outside or prior to this reflection. In the article, I expand on three types of bodies. The first of these possibilities is an abstracted body Nancy ascribed to St. Augustine, a body which has been criticized by feminist scholars like Judith Butler. The second one is a hypothetical pre-body proposed by the object-oriented philosopher Graham Harman that may have existed before the actual body emerges. The last one is the disintegrated rotting body in two different contexts: European baroque imagery and asubha kammaṭṭhāna, a Thai meditational practice. All three types of bodies-as-a-mass are legitimate conceptualizations of what Nancy indicates. However, the mass quality is the very nonconceptuality, which is therefore the ultimate outcome that I had to reach.

本文旨在探讨和扩展让·卢克·南希（Jean-Luc Nancy）在“论灵魂”讲座中起草的身体概念。他将灵魂概念化为对我们拥有（或我们是）身体这一事实的（不过是最小的）反映，因此，将身体作为质量的概念可能提供在此反射之外或之前思考身体的可能性。在本文中，我将对三种类型的物体进行扩展。这些可能性中的第一个是南希归因于圣奥古斯丁的抽象身体，该身体受到朱迪思·巴特勒（Judith Butler）等女权主义学者的批评。第二个是由面向对象的哲学家格雷厄姆·哈曼（Graham Harman）提出的假想的前身，它可能在实际的身体出现之前就已经存在。最后一个是在两种不同情况下分解的腐烂物体：欧洲巴洛克式影像和asubhakammaṭṭhāna，泰国的冥想练习。这三种类型的物体都是南希所表示的合法概念。但是，质量是非常没有概念的，因此这是我必须达到的最终结果。