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ABSTRACT
Paradoxically, in contemporary human and social sciences, dominated by materialist philosophy, the bodily dimension of the human person is often underestimated. Hence, for example, the idea for providing a man “immortality” by transferring the contents of his brain to the hard drive. Since man is not only an animal that has a reason, but also a spirit that has a body, to understand him properly, it is necessary to distinguish him from both the animal world and the world of angels. Since he is “the third creation”. Underestimating the bodily dimension of human existence changes a person's attitude to the importance and meaning of biological sex, the sense of sexual intercourse, of fertility, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, also to the bonds that bind him with other people, in terms of both bonds with family and bonds with the wider, e.g. national, community.
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Notes
1 Alasdair MacIntyre is saying that philosophers are always unconsciously drawing some pre-philosophical convictions which predetermine their philosophical conclusions. ‘Reason therefore needs Christian faith, if it is to do its own work well. Reason without Christian faith is always reason informed by some other faith, characteristically an unacknowledged faith, one that renders its adherents liable to error’ (MacIntyre Citation2009, 152–153).
2 It seems that this temptation is well described by Jürgen Habermas: ‘To illustrate the technologically assisted life-processes of the human organism, nano-engineers draw up visions of man and machine fused into a production plant subjected to autoregulated processes of supervision and renewal, permanent repair and upgrading. In this vision, self-replicating microrobots circulate in the human body, combining with organic matter in order, for instance, to stop ageing processes or to boost the functions of the cerebrum. Computer engineers, as well, have not been idle, contributing to this genre by drawing up the vision of future robots having become autonomous and evolving into machines which mark flesh-and-blood human beings as a model doomed to extinction. These superior intelligences are supposed to have overcome the flaws of human hardware. As to the software, which is modeled on our brains, they promise not only immortality, but unlimited perfection. Bodies stuffed with prostheses to boost performance, or the intelligence of angels available on hard drives, are fantastic images. They dissolve boundaries and break connections that in our everyday actions have up to now seemed to be of an almost transcendental necessity’ (Habermas Citation2004, 41).
3 ‘The creation of new life via offspring may become an after-thought’ (Malapi-Nelson Citation2018, 15).
4 There are more words of this type in the book: ‘How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins. Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus’ (Song 7:1-4).
5 There is probably no deeper union between a man and a woman than through having children together. As had explained to me a divorced taxi driver, who wanted to take his son to a football game but had to arrange it with his ex-wife: ‘We could get divorced, but through the children we are united forever’.
6 Frederick Engels wrote: ‘The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male. Monogamous marriage was a great historical step forward; nevertheless, together with slavery and private wealth, it opens the period that has lasted until today in which every step forward is also relatively a step backward, in which prosperity and development for some is won through the misery and frustration of others. It is the cellular form of civilized society, in which the nature of the oppositions and contradictions fully active in that society can be already studied’ (Engels Citation1884: II. 4).
7 Simone de Beauvoir writes: ‘The female, more than the male, is prey to the species; humanity has always tried to escape from its species’ destiny; with the invention of the tool, maintenance of life became activity and project for man, while motherhood left woman riveted to her body like the animal. It is because humanity puts itself into question in its being— that is, values reasons for living over life—that man has set himself as master over woman; man’s project is not to repeat himself in time: it is to reign over the instant and to forge the future. Male activity, creating values, has constituted existence itself as a value; it has prevailed over the indistinct forces of life; and it has subjugated Nature and Woman’ (Beauvoir Citation2010, 100).
8 Michel Foucault, inspired by the ancient world, presents sexual intercourse as a relationship of domination between two people, one of whom acts and the other is subjected to an action. The active person is always a man, while the passive person can be a young man, a woman or a slave. A free man never assumes a passive role as that would be dishonourable to him. Sexual relations, according to this interpretation, reflect social relations in which one person dominates the other. Its power applies to the whole person and also includes the right to freely dispose of his body. A passive person – according to Foucault – succumbs to the sexual action of an active person due to being dominated. Sexual subordination is therefore a reflection of the subordinate social position (see: Foucault Citation1990, 46). This way of interpreting sexual relations completely ignores the fact that a woman might voluntarily want to have intercourse with a man, motivated not as much by the search for sensual pleasure, but by the desire for love or the joy of having children. The desire to have children is so deeply embedded in a woman’s psyche that the inability to fulfil it causes usually serious suffering. The dichotomous division: love – pleasure, fertility – necessity, as Agacinski points out, completely ignores the female way of experiencing sexuality (see: Agacinski Citation2012, 117). As Fabrice Hadjadj, for example, proves, even a man is able to distance himself from such a one-sided interpretation of sexual relations: ‘The man penetrates, and the woman is penetrated. A man fertilises outside himself; a woman can conceive in her womb. This does not mean that one of them is active and the other is passive, but that male action is transitive (its goal lies outside the acting subject) and that female action is immanent (the subject contains and end in itself). This difference imposes on a woman and a man a completely different perception of their own bodies’ (Hadjadj Citation2008. Polish edition: 71-72).
9 Sylviane Agacinski takes up her critics from the point of view of the ‘difference feminism’, which has many points convergent with the theory of gender complementarity, but sometimes conflicts with it. Therefore, one should carefully use the intellectual achievements of this trend, while noting the points where cooperation is possible (see: Kupczak Citation2013, 30–37).
10 In Femmes entre sexe et gendre (2012: 113) Agacinski corrects her view on this issue. Plato’s comments on homosexuality are found in the Laws Book I (636c-e) and Book VIII (835c-842a). Plato clearly states that this ‘custom is contrary to nature’ (Plato Citation1871a, 836c), because ‘the pleasure is to be deemed natural which arises out of the intercourse between men and women; but that the intercourse of men with men, or of women with women, is contrary to nature, and that the bold attempt was originally due to unbridled lust’ (Platon 1871a: 636c-e). He was a supporter of a law that would only permit ‘to make men use natural love and abstain from unnatural, not intentionally destroying the seeds of human increase, or sowing them in stony places, in which the y will take no root; and that (…) would command them to abstain too from any female field of increase in which that which is sown is not likely to grow’ (Plato Citation1871a, 839a-b). Being aware that such a law could lead to rebellion, he proposes that such behaviour should be considered shameful, at least in the public sphere. Thus, sexual incontinence itself would not be punished, but the one who does not keep it secret will ‘be deprived of civic honours and privileges, and be deemed to be, as he truly is, a stranger’ (Plato Citation1871a, 841e; see: Stawrowski Citation2006, 84–91). Plato values the procreation of ideas more than the procreation of children, but the soul become ‘pregnant’ (Plato Citation1871b, 209a) not as a result of physical intercourse, but through conversation. In this way, one discovers what is truly beautiful and alluring. ‘But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty – the divine beauty, I mean, pure and dear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life – thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simple and divine? Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble life?’ (Plato Citation1871b, 211e-212a).
11 A discussion of the idea that „a person is prior to embodiment’ is undertaken i.e. by Margaret Archer in ‘Being Human: the Problem of Agency’ (Archer Citation2000, 94).
12 ‘Women’s link to man is to a possible companion and a father for her children. Man’s link to woman is to a possible partner and mother for his children. It is above all in relations to this third, to which they can only give birth together, that man and woman are defined as sexually differentiated. If we forget about this relationship to descendants, if we base no social ties upon it – such as marriage and filiation – the difference between men and women no longer has a great deal of meaning and sexual identity itself becomes unimportant. Thus, paternity and maternity are the truly decisive proofs of sexual difference, and it is not clear that there are others.’ (Agacinski Citation2001, 118).
13 Sylviane Agacinski points out that wondering whether two biological sexes must be matched by only two cultural genders results from forgetting about the relational nature of biological sex. A question of this type is possible only when considering sex in the singular form, separated from each other, as if the male and female bodies were not relational to each other (see: Agacinski Citation2012, 97–98 and 105).
14 ‘Mary's words at the Annunciation – ‘Let it be to me according to your word’ – signify the woman's readiness for the gift of self and her readiness to accept a new life’ (John Paul II Citation1988: n. 18).
15 Thomas Hobbes proposes to look on the people in the natural state ‘as if they had emerged from the earth like mushrooms and grown up without any obligation to each other’ (Hobbes Citation2003, 102).
16 Obviously, angels have no "innate" duties to one another. However, the Hebrew word mal'ak, Greek angelos, means "messenger’, which imlies that in Christian theology they have a specific mission that they receive from God.
17 ‘Parce que l’Europe, même impie, sera nécessairement moins impie que la nation. Parce qu’elle sera la dévotion de l’homme à un groupe moins précis, moins individualisé, et par conséquent moins humainement aimé, moins charnellement embrassé. L’Européen sera fatalement moins attaché à l’Europe que le Français à la France, que l’Allemand à l’Allemagne. Il sentira d’un lien beaucoup plus lâche sa détermination par le sol, sa fidélité à la terre. Faites l’Europe, même souveraine, et le dieu de l’Immatériel déjà vous sourira’ (Benda Citation2006, 113–114).
18 ‘Thus, there is no human nature since there is no God to conceive of it’. Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be, and since he conceives of himself only after he exists, man is nothing other than what he makes of himself.’ (Sartre Citation2007, 22).
19 ‘Et il est effectivement de bon ton aujourd’hui de nier la différence ontologique entre l’homme et l’animal, jusqu’à voir un animal quand nous nous regardons et voir un humain quand nous regardons l’animal’ (Vermersch Citation2018).
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Piotr Mazurkiewicz
Piotr Mazurkiewicz (1960) is professor in Catholic social doctrine and political science at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw. Member of the Council of the Institute of Political Studies on the Polish Academy of Science. Editor-in-chief of the review “Christianity – World – Politics”. From 2008 to 2012 he was Secretary General of the Commission of Bishops' Conferences of the European Community. Main research areas: political ethics and anthropology, religious freedom, state-Church relations, European integration, totalitarianism.