The human body is William Blake's main preoccupation essential to the understanding of his work. His interest in the human body stems from the dual social functions that the body serves, the body as a passive and reproductive yet largely unproductive object requiring careful discipline and training and the body as the source of anarchical impulses challenging the very hegemonic paradigm and knowledge that has constructed the body. Even though Blake distinguishes these two types of body by calling them "vegetative body" and "Eternal body" respectively, he makes it clear that the former is a corrupted form of the latter caused by the specific cultural and social condition. He attributes a part of this corruption to the mind/body dualism informing both Lockean empricism and Cartesian idealism, which renders the body passive and impotent against the system of knowledge and power. Eventually Blake's emphasis on the body challenges the Enlightenment ideal of the subject of consciousness and presents a unique model of an embodied subject whose body mediates its inside and outside and offers a model for the socio-political principle. This subject is characterized by its flexibility and malleability, contrasted with the solidity and unity of the Urizenic body. Against the Urizenic body which mobilizes all the organic parts in the service of the will of the subject, the Eternal body of the embodied subject exists as a will to move out from its unity and homogeneity into relationship. In other words, the body is not a tool of separation and division but the condition and context through which the self is able to have a relation with others. The transformation of the Urizenic body to the Eternal body, however, requires more than our changed attitudes towards the body. The body is the very focus of ideological production and reproduction so that it requires the transformation of the whole social system that has organized and given meaning to biology. Blake imagines that the puncturing of the seemingly impervious social system comes from the very body that it has constructed, largely because of the body's inherent transgressive characteristics. Blake draws attention to the ability of visual perception, which guides human beings towards an alternative history and reality.

The human body is William Blake's main preoccupation essential to the understanding of his work. His interest in the human body stems from the dual social functions that the body serves, the body as a passive and reproductive yet largely unproductive object requiring careful discipline and training and the body as the source of anarchical impulses challenging the very hegemonic paradigm and knowledge that has constructed the body. Even though Blake distinguishes these two types of body by calling them "vegetative body" and "Eternal body" respectively, he makes it clear that the former is a corrupted form of the latter caused by the specific cultural and social condition. He attributes a part of this corruption to the mind/body dualism informing both Lockean empricism and Cartesian idealism, which renders the body passive and impotent against the system of knowledge and power. Eventually Blake's emphasis on the body challenges the Enlightenment ideal of the subject of consciousness and presents a unique model of an embodied subject whose body mediates its inside and outside and offers a model for the socio-political principle. This subject is characterized by its flexibility and malleability, contrasted with the solidity and unity of the Urizenic body. Against the Urizenic body which mobilizes all the organic parts in the service of the will of the subject, the Eternal body of the embodied subject exists as a will to move out from its unity and homogeneity into relationship. In other words, the body is not a tool of separation and division but the condition and context through which the self is able to have a relation with others. The transformation of the Urizenic body to the Eternal body, however, requires more than our changed attitudes towards the body. The body is the very focus of ideological production and reproduction so that it requires the transformation of the whole social system that has organized and given meaning to biology. Blake imagines that the puncturing of the seemingly impervious social system comes from the very body that it has constructed, largely because of the body's inherent transgressive characteristics. Blake draws attention to the ability of visual perception, which guides human beings towards an alternative history and reality.

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William Blake,the body,embodied consciousness,subject of consciousness,socio-political system,relationship,alterity,transgression,alternative history