Abstract

The soul takes place in touch. The human soul does so with exactitude. In the paper the marks of this human touch is traced and some remarks on the soul is offered. This is done in three steps. Firstly, Aristotle's claim about the exactitude of human touch in De Anima is presented. Secondly, the aporetic relation between exactitude and excess is explored in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice". Thirdly, returning to touch, the previous two parts will serve as points of access to Jean-Luc Nancy's "deconstructive phenomenology of touch". As the upshot of the interpretation we arrive finally at a notion of responsiveness and an ethos of exactitude.