"Ich" sagst du und bist stolz auf dieses Wort. Aber das Grössere ist, woran du nicht glauben willst, - dein Leib und seine grosse Vernunft: die sagt nicht Ich, aber tut Ich.
"I", sayest thou, and art proud of this word. Greater though is that in which you would not believe, your body and its great reason, which does not say I yet makes the I.
(Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra)
Years after Nietzsche, Freud and many others (some all the way to this day) operate in a blissful ignorance of this Nietzschean thought: the I of the be-holder, the I of the being whose being is expressed in holding on to the notion of being, is ultimately the expression of a corporeal "reason". Or rather, of corporeal reasons. Pascal's thought on the raisons du coeur que la raison ne comprend pas (or something like that) turned upside down: there is no question in Nietzsche of "Reason" "comprehending" the reasons of the body, because Reason is the product of those reasons, and one cannot truly know one's progenitors.
(Really, comprehending is more than simply knowing: both Biblically and as a matter of common sense, knowing is more akin to penetrating, with unveiling, removing the veils of deception or darkness and getting to, reaching, the kernel of that which is to be known. To comprehend something one incorporates it, encircles it and makes it part of oneself. That is why Reason, expressed, or rather implied in the word "I", cannot comprehend the reasons of the body, because one cannot comprehend one's parents.)
