Taking Seriously Our Bodily Being

Introduction: The Body Is in the Soul

CONTEMPORARY WESTERN CULTURES, with a background of science and materialism, tend to think of the human person as a "mindless body" or even a "computer made of meat," to use a phrase of Marvin Minsky, a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence. ¹ On the other hand, Melanesian and African cultures with a background of tribal traditions and animism tend to think of the human person as a "bodiless mind" or a "disembodied spirit." ² It would be oversimplifying to set these contrasts too sharply. In the West, recent studies in neuroscience are much more nuanced. Memory and emotion are described as updating and configuring the circuitry of the physical brain. ³ And in Papua New Guinea, for example, the tradition of body painting suggests a recognition that our bodies are truly part of ourselves. ⁴

Yet, when confronted by either extreme it becomes necessary to point out counterevidence that suggests a more balanced position. For there are things we do as human persons, such as communicating [Begin Page 135] in propositional speech, that require that we describe ourselves as more than material. ⁵ And there are things we do as human persons, such as communicating in tangible signs, that require that we describe ourselves as other than pure spirits. ⁶ Ordinary language testifies to the unity of our experience as embodied spirits or spiritual bodies. You do not say "my mind thinks I'll go" but "I think I'll go." You do not say "you stepped on my body" but "you stepped on me."

I want to expand on a balanced position that takes seriously our bodily way of being and then draw out some implications of this position. For the complexity of our real experience reveals that we are neither bodiless minds nor mindless bodies. We are neither angels nor animals--at least not without serious qualification. We are not spirits living in "body boxes." But we are also not animals with an extra power called "reason" in addition. And we are not two things, layered one on top of the other. Here as elsewhere, we need to avoid setting extremes on a seesaw where lifting one side up implies putting the other side down. It happens in political philosophy when the individual and the community are set against each other as if to lift up the human individual implied putting down the human community and vice versa. And it happens here between human body and human spirit. The fact is that an unbalanced attempt to exalt the body actually fails to uphold the dignity of our human bodily being. For we are not animal, but human bodies. And an unbalanced attempt to exalt the spirit actually fails to uphold the unique value of our human spiritual being. For we are not angelic, but human spirits. To describe a disembodied spirit is not to describe the human spirit.

We do not see or hear or smell exactly like other animals and then, in addition, go on to understand and judge. Rather human bodily sense perception is full of intellection from the start. We do not eat like other animals and then, in addition, go on to share a meal as a family with human meaning. Even eating a meal is completely human from the start because it is full of understanding. We do not engage in sexual copulation like other animals and then, in addition, go on to add human significance and human love. Rather, as fully human, intercourse from the start is not merely the joining of two bodies but of two persons. ⁷ We cannot give whatever "human" meaning we want to our "bodily" acts as if they were morally neutral in themselves. It is a mistake to think that "being male" and "being female" are only aspects of our bodily and biological being as if...