What is meant by body in Husserl’s phenomenology? Body is a thing that is alive or animated (beseelt). In Husserl, this concept covers a wide range of phenomena. It is the condition for the possibility of the event of the arrival of someone and my being in the position to meaningfully announce this presence. It is as ensouled that the I speaks and is spoken to. To be without soul means to be separated from the world and from other, incarnate beings. But why rely on the concept of soul to understand such phenomena? Is this not a reprise of a metaphysics of the soul, one that posits the mental as a unique substance, an invisible mover of things? This essay argues that the problem of the body is of central importance for Husserl’s transcendental idealism. It is the key to the sense of human being as, despite its worldliness , something transcendent with respect to the world, thus something spiritual .