Biran's thought seems to be shared between the intimacy of self apperception, by which bodily ego lives and tests itself in the first person, and the interest in morality that, originally linked with psychological studies, opens and directs this philosophy towards the field of exteriority and of social relationships. Here, there appears a tension or a continual oscillation, never definitively resolved, which evidences Biran's hesitations and, at the same time, the wealth or even the modernity of his thought. The complexity of this oscillation seems to be rooted in the conception of an living body. This term both resists the ego's effort, as opposite and external, and is assumed and integrated into the egological sphere, the voluntary movement of which it translates and concretises.
Rea, C. (2005). Corps subjectif et question morale chez Maine de Biran. Revue Philosophique de Louvain, 103(1-2), 82-104. https://doi.org/10.2143/RPL.103.1.583130 (Original work published 2005)