This chapter explores the representation of the human body, with a particular focus on transgenesis and transgenderism, in Pedro Almodóvar’s La Ley del Deseo (Law of Desire) (1987) and La Piel que Habito (The Skin I Live In) (2011). Although released 24 years apart, both films represent the female body as a construct that mirrors the fluid reality of the postmodern era in which this body is found. Thus, as the physical space of our global habitat (...) has become ever more artificial, fragmented and unfixed so, too, the screened individual is a ‘floating and drifting self,’ a being that has become increasingly hard to define. Known for his unconventional themes and plots, Almodóvar here challenges traditional notions of what is male and female and the two concepts merge. The viewer explores a fluid corporeal and gendered territory as the once biologically male protagonists are subjected to either voluntary or forced sex change, leaving them physically transformed into a female although their thought patterns are still partly male. Gender and body are open to new interpretations as the filmmaker demonstrates how the human body (and skin), in a sexually permissive, socially and culturally less rigid era, can be surgically and bio-medically altered through a number of procedures, a process which by its end result at times reminds of a Deleuzian becoming. The screened individual is physically changeable, body and mind unfixed concepts, as one identity is left behind and another is adopted. Almodóvar’s man/woman/construct resembles what Zygmunt Bauman has called ‘denizens of’ a ‘postmodern habitat’ that ‘have a rootless and inconclusive existence.’ The argument is inserted into a Baumanian and Deleuzian framework and the fluidity of the human being is analysed from a partly postmodern perspective. (shrink)

Who or what determines the right to die? Do advancing reproductive technologies change reproductive rights? What forces influence cultural standards of beauty? How do discipline, punishment, and torture reflect our attitudes about the human body? In this challenging new book, Jean Bethke Elshtain, a nationally recognized scholar in political science and philosophy, and J. Timothy Cloyd, a strong new voice in social and political science, have assembled a collection of thought-provoking essays on these issues written by some of (...) the finest minds of our day. (shrink)

This essay roughly sketches two major conceptions of autonomy in contemporary bioethics that promote the resourcification of human body parts: (1) a narrow conception of autonomy as self-determination; and (2) the conception of autonomy as dissociated from human dignity. In this paper I will argue that, on the one hand, these two conceptions are very different from that found in the modern European tradition of philosophical inquiry, because bioethics has concentrated on an external account of patient’s self-determination (...) and on dissociating dignity from internal human nature. However, on the other hand, they are consistent with more recent European philosophy. In this more recent tradition, human dignity has gradually been dissociated from contextual values, and human subjectivity has been dissociated from objectivity and absolutized as never to be objectified. In the concluding part, I will give a speculative sketch in which Kant’s internal inquiry of maxim of ends, causality and end, and dignity as irreplaceability is recombined with bioethics’ externalized one and used to support an extended human resourcification. (shrink)

This essay proposes two examples of avant-garde theatre, Jerzy Grotowski's poor theatre and Augusto Boal's theatre of the oppressed, as resources for Christian ethics. Both pursue theater as bodily copresent interaction whose moral labor is the liberation of the human body from conventional gestures for the sake of authentic encounter and from oppressive postures for the sake of social intervention. Focusing on the body in this way reveals that the place of narrative, while essential to Christian ethics, (...) is ambiguous. The outcome of this argument is the possibility of combining the insights of monastic and liberation accounts of the moral life in order to release moral action in microsocial encounters, thus recovering the constitutive humility of Christian ethics. (shrink)

Mother and Fetus: Rights in Conflict A. INTRODUCTION After fertilization of the female egg (ovum) with male sperm the resulting zygote may implant ...

This special volume of Health Care Analysis is dedicated to a consideration of the status of body parts and products and the roleof law in regulating them. We argue that such a discussion is timely giventhe conflation of technological and academic concerns posed by thecomplex legal framework within which these issues are currentlyaddressed and in the light of debates such as those regardingthe storage of children's organs addressed by inquiries atAlder Hay and Bristol, United Kingdom. The contributors addressspecific legal (...) problems which have been brought before the courts in the UK and other jurisdictions, something which wesuggest is likely to occur with increasing regularity oncethe Human Rights Act 1998 comes into force in October 2000.The issues are also considered on a more theoretical level with papers exploring the role of concepts such as property, donation, commodification and kinship in these debates.While the volume focuses principally upon the manner inwhich these issues have arisen in a UK context, though withreference to certain comparative examples, the concepts discussed here are of more general application acrossother jurisdictions. (shrink)

The human body shield problem involves an apparent dilemma for a libertarian, forcing him to choose between his own death and the death of an innocent person. This paper argues that the non-aggression principle permits a forceful response against the property of innocent individuals when a conflict is initiated with that property. In other words, a libertarian may shoot the hostage in order to save himself.

What is a human body? Some reasons are given for thinking that, in the primary case, it is a body that is both of and suitable to a rational animal.

In this article, I will attempt to provide a historical case study, I suggest that the demarcation between perception and how a figure is ‘seen’ is the process of perpetual filtering between the levels of sensation and perception. I argue that this filtering operates through the basic visual principles, which may vary and have divergent functions in different paradigms. This historical case study will focus on the fifty-six plates featured in the influential work of the London surgeon William Cheselden, to (...) reveal the paradigm-based filtering in these prints by arguing that the sense data is organized in the simplest manner to view figures in their unity. Thus, I will focus on the visual principle of simplicity, which features the patterns of similarity, contrast and symmetry. An analysis of Cheselden’s usage of these patterns will demonstrate that he aims to show that every bone in human body is united to one another, which forms an organizing structure. I will conclude that these visual principles were used by Chelselden to achieve perfection by conveying right proportions and the correct number of scales of human body since his observations was laden with Newtonian paradigm. Finally, I will compare this usage to that of Ibn Sina’s, to disclose the paradigm-ladenness of scientific observations. (shrink)

This is the first book in healthcare ethics addressing the moral issues regarding ownership of the human body. Modern medicine increasingly transforms the body and makes use of body parts for diagnostic, therapeutic and preventive purposes. The book analyzes the concept of body ownership. It also reviews the ownership issues arising in clinical care (for example, donation policies, autopsy) and biomedical research. Societies and legal systems also have to deal with issues of body ownership. (...) A comparison is made between specific legal arrangements in The Netherlands and France, as examples of legal approaches. In the final section of the book, different theoretical perspectives on the human body are analyzed: libertarian, personalist, deontological and utilitarian theories of body ownership. (shrink)

A useful concept that can be invoked to resolve complex bioethical issues is that of moral status (or, human dignity). In this article, we apply this concept to dead human bodies in order to support our view that research on such bodies is permissible. Instead of drawing from salient Western theories of human dignity that account for it by appeals to autonomy or rationality, we will base our investigation on emerging conceptions in African theories of moral status (...) as articulated by Thaddeus Metz and Munamato Chemhuru. Our conclusion is that neither of these theories of moral status, one secular, and the other religious, can accommodate the intuition that we have direct duties of respect towards such bodies because, in relation to Metz's conception, they lack the capacity to enter into social relationships while on Chemhuru's conception, dead bodies appear not to have any meaningful purpose within the hierarchy that captures the ontological systems that determine such status. Consequently, we argue that our analysis provides support for the use of unclaimed cadavers in training and research in medical institutions. (shrink)

A human being is the carrier of two different ideas, and there is no direct relation between them. One of these ideas refers to the body. The body itself is a system genetically coded and programmed in advance. On the other hand, one part of the body – the brain – appears to be the carrier of another idea that reflects the whole Universe – the Cosmos. Due to the function human (concretely, brain) is Microcosm, (...) regarded as epitomizing the universe. So human brain or widely to say, human itself is the carrier of the ideas of body parts, and essence-idea of whole body, as well as passive idea of whole cosmos. In a practical life of the human being only very little part of this cosmic idea is actualized and used. Untraditional reflections of this great potential as a result of unusual events beyond ofstandards are also possible. Then knowledge, information-ideas that a human being was ignorant and that were not acquired as a result of his sensual practice throughout his real life, may be activated and these cases are regarded as mystery and sensation. While all human beings possess this potential, capacity, we have not yet acquired well the mechanisms of activation of these passive ideas. Studying the ways of the activation of the passive ideas of our brain is one of the main tasks nowadays. (shrink)

The trade in human body parts can be understood as a solution to key challenges for both buyers and suppliers, as well as being a manifestation of individual property rights over one’s own body. However, it can be argued that there are serious ethical issues involved in commercializing the body in this way, despite which there has recently been a large increase in the international trade in human body parts. The most extensive transactions have (...) concerned the trade in kidneys and the services of the fertility industry. An important driver of this is the fact that the medical profession is increasingly able to facilitate exchanges of human body parts relatively smoothly. The chapter focuses on commercial surrogacy as an example of the ethical aspects of the trade in human body parts and addresses the potential interplay between markets and ethical issues. (shrink)

Two studies investigated the development of infants' visual preferences for the human body shape. In Study 1, infants of 12,15 and 18 months were tested in a standard preferential looking experiment, in which they were shown paired line drawings of typical and scrambled bodies. Results indicated that the 18-month-olds had a reliable preference for the scrambled body shapes over typical body shapes, while the younger infants did not show differential responding. In Study 2, 12- and 18-month-olds (...) were tested with the same procedure, except that the typical and scrambled body stimuli were photographic images. The results of Study 2 again indicated that only the 18-month-olds had a reliable preference for the scrambled body shapes. This finding contrasts sharply with infants' precocious preferences for human faces, suggesting that infants' learning about human faces and human bodies follow different developmental trajectories. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

In the wake of three high-profile judicial decisions concerning the use of human biological materials, the editors of this collection felt in 2011 that there was a need for detailed scholarly exploration of the ethical and legal implications of these decisions. For centuries, it seemed that in Australia and England and Wales, individuals did not have any proprietary interests in their excised tissue. Others might acquire such interests, but there had been no clear decision on the rights or otherwise (...) of the persons from whom the tissue was obtained. In 2009, however, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales recognised a limited exception to this position in Jonathan Yearworth and others v North Bristol NHS Trust . In that case, the Court held that the appellants, who had deposited semen samples for freezing before they undertook treatment for cancer, had “for the purposes of a claim in negligence … ownership of the sperm which they had ejaculated”. One year later, the Supreme Court of Queensland, Australia, took a similarly property-based approach to determining how a semen sample stored shortly before death should be dealt in Bazley v Wesley Monash IVF . According to that court, the co-executors of the estate had sufficient proprietary interests in the semen to legally demand its return from the laboratory where it was held. In 2011, the New South Wales Supreme Court similarly found that the widow of a recently deceased man had a right to possession of his semen in Joceyln Edwards; Re the estate of the late Mark Edwards .In the editors’ view, these decisions signalled a turning point in the Anglo-Australian jurisprudence in this area, taking the law a step beyond the decisions of the late 20th century such as R v Kelly , in which possessory rights were found …. (shrink)

In cultural history the human body has been the object of a great variety of opposing valuations, ranging from "imago dei" to "the devil's tool". At present, the body is commonly regarded as a mere means to fulfill the wishes of its "owner". According to these wishes it can be technically improved in an unlimited way. Against this view the text argues for a conception of the human body as a valuable "common heritage". The "normal" (...) human body as the result of natural and cultural history is an essential condition of the modern social and legal order. The consequences of its technical alteration should be the subject of public debates and common decisions. (shrink)

The Orthodox Church teaches that the bodies of those in Christ are to be regarded as sanctified by the hearing of the Word and faithful participation in the Sacraments, most particularly the Holy Eucharist; because of the indwelling Holy Spirit the consecrated bodies of Christians do not belong to them but to Christ; with respect to the indwelling Holy Spirit there is no difference between the bodies of Christians before and after death; whether before or after death, the Christian (...) class='Hi'>body is also to receive the same veneration; and notwithstanding the physical corruptions that the body endures by reason of death, there remains a strict continuity between the body in which the Christian dies and the body in which the Christian will rise again. That is to say, it is the very same reality that is sown in corruption and will be raised in incorruption. Given such considerations, the notion of “selling” an integral part of a human being is simply outside the realm of rational comprehension. Indeed, it is profoundly repugnant to those Orthodox Christian sentiments that are formed and nourished by the Church's sacramental teaching and liturgical worship. One does not sell or purchase that which has been consecrated in those solemn ways that the Church consecrates the human body. (shrink)

This article reviews the latest report from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Human Bodies: Donation for Medicine and Research. It argues that the report represents a notable evolution in the Council's position regarding the appropriate governance of the human body and biomaterials. It then goes on to examine in more depth one of the report's recommendations – that a pilot payment scheme for eggs for research purposes should be trialled. In particular, it looks at whether the distinctions (...) drawn, first, between eggs for research and therapeutic purposes and, secondly, between eggs for research and other biomaterials can be adequately justified. (shrink)

This paper considers what Fichte's conception of the human body as an instrument of perception entails for his radical principle of the primacy of practice. According to Fichte, perception is a function of what he calls the "articulation" of the human body, as opposed to its "organization." I first provide an interpretation of his theory of the human-bodily articulation by arguing that he construes it as a product of culture as well as nature. On this (...) basis, I go on to consider the theory's implications for perception: first, since our articulated body is the sphere of our free activity, it follows from its function as the instrument of perception that we always exercise some measure of control over what we perceive; second, because our articulated body is a product of culture, the way in which we perceive is conditioned by practical rules, precepts and laws that regulate our reciprocal interaction with nature and society. (shrink)

Using human dead body for medical purposes is a common practice in medical schools and hospitals throughout the world. Iran, as an Islamic country is not an exception. According to the Islamic view, the body, like the soul, is a "gift" from God; therefore, human being does not possess absolute ownership on his or her body. But, the ownership of human beings on their bodies can be described as a kind of "stewardship". Accordingly, any (...) kind of dissection or mutilation of the corpse is forbidden, even with the informed consent of the dead or his/her relatives. The exception of this principle is when such procedures are necessary for saving lives of other persons. In this article using the human dead body for medical education, research and treatment is discussed and the perspective of Iranian Shiite religious scholars in this regard is explained. (shrink)

This volume focuses on issues involving the inviolability of the human body and the decision to end life. The contributors explore the difficulties in framing a public policy that legalizes aid in dying, and return to the more general question of what is the most fair and effective relationship between private medical authority and public policy.

This paper outlines the current common law principles that protect people’s interests in their bodies, excised body parts and tissue without conferring the rights of full legal ownership. It does not include the recent statutory amendments in jurisdictions such as New South Wales and the United Kingdom. It argues that at common law, people do not own their own bodies or excised bodily material. People can authorise the removal of their bodily material and its use, either during life or (...) after their death, for medical or scientific purposes. Researchers who acquire human bodies, body parts or tissue pursuant to such an authority have a right to possess and use them according to the authorisation they have been given, but their rights fall short of full ownership because they are limited in the way that they can use the material. The legal rights of researchers who develop intellectual property and biological products from excised human tissue can be adequately protected by existing common law principles without the need for a new legal principle that people own body parts and tissue removed from their bodies. (shrink)

Descriptions of body imagery and body parts are evident in expressions of Old Testament texts. Although there is no single term for ‘body’ in the Hebrew mind, the concept of ‘body’ functions in its different parts. As part of anthropomorphic descriptions of God and expressions attached to humankind, body parts have special significance, contributing to the theological dimension of texts. The poems in the Psalter are no exception. Several body parts are mentioned in Psalm (...) 38, an individual lament song. In addition to God’s hand (v. 3) and an allusion to his voice (v. 16), several body parts describe the psalmist’s condition. These include ‘flesh’ (bāšār, 3, 8), bones (‘ætsæm, 3), head (rôsh, 5), loins (kæsæl, 8), heart (lēb, 9, 11), eyes (‘yn, 11), mouth (pæh, 14, 15), and feet (rægæl, 17). In addition, allusions to the ear (14, 15) and injured body (wounds, 6) form part of the psalmist’s lamenting experience.Contribution: This presentation touches on the general meaning of these body imagery in the Old Testament and their specific function and meaning in the text of Psalm 38. A textual analysis will portray their theological significance. (shrink)

For millennia, the basic idea that there is a universal order that connects human beings and the universe has lived on in many cultures. This order has often been expressed in geometric or musical-harmonic terms. From Pythagoras to Kepler, universal scholars were firmly convinced that this order represented the primordial code of all things. This chapter explores a new interdisciplinary perspective that combines the fields of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), music theory, and Keplerian astronomical insights. By means of corresponding (...) mathematical analyses, it is shown that the energy meridians of the human body correspond to a specific musical-harmonic order, which in turn is inextricably linked to certain relational aspects of the celestial bodies of our solar system. The study represents completely new discoveries in relation to this universal connection. In doing so, it also opens up new levels of understanding and provides new aspects for the further development of the concept of cosmic life. (shrink)

The story of the body. Fay Bound Alberti takes the human body apart in order to put it back anew, telling the cultural history of our key organs and systems from the inside out, from blood to guts, brains to sex organs.

The author emphasizes the fact that the largest part of Plato’s Timaeus deals with human nature and offers a detailed account of the constitution of the human body. He then lists the parallels and the differences between the constitution of the world body and the human body. The central part of the paper deals with Plato’s explanation of the persistence of the human body within a bodily environment which causes its dissolution. The (...) author pays a special attention to Plato’s theory of the apparatus which keeps running the processes of respiration, digestion and blood circulation. In the concluding section, the author raises thequestion of the relationship between human body and human soul. He shows that, in Plato’s Timaeus, the human body functions to a large extent independently from human soul. One possible reason for this theory is Plato’s conception of the immortal soul. While the human body exists in order to harbour the immortal soul, the latter does not produce and preserve it nor does it cause its dissolution. It only exercises cognitive and ruling functions in it as long as the body is able to hold together and to detain the soul. (shrink)

The approach to AIDS as a disease and a threat for social discrimination is used as an example to illustrate a conceptual thesis. This thesis is a claim that concerns what we call a medical issue or not, what is medicalised or needs to be demedicalised. In the friction between medicalisation and demedicalisation as discursive strategies the latter approach can only be effected through the employment of discourses or discursive strategies other than medicine, such as those of the law and (...) of economics. These discourses each realise different values, promote a different subject, and have a different concept of man. The concept of discourse is briefly outlined against concepts such as the linear growth concept of science and the growth model of science as changes in paradigm. The issue of testing for AIDS shows a conflict between the medical and the legal discourse and illustrates the title of our contribution: the human body as field of conflict between discourses. (shrink)

The author of the Summa Halensis claims that the human body is maximally composite and argues for this using a proof strategy that intends to deduce the body’s composition from the human soul’s immateriality. This study examines that claim and argument, which is given both in a shorter and a longer form. The core of the article consists in a careful reconstruction of both forms, along with an enquiry into its Jewish Neoplatonic sources (first and foremost (...) the Fons vitae) and its appearance in zoological commentaries contemporary to the Summa written by Peter of Spain and Albert the Great. It emerges that the argument brings into play various features of the Summist’s hylomorphic theory, especially a pluralism about substantial forms. (shrink)