The human body (Leib) is not a mere physical body in the sense of a lump of matter, but an ensouled body: informed through and through by the spiritual soul, the spiritual life-principle of the human being. It consists of the same chemical elements as any other physical body — carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen —, but it is made into a living whole from within by the spiritual life-principle. The body is not the prison of the soul, nor is the soul the passenger of the body: the human being is his body, and he is his soul — he is both at once and inseparably.
The body of the person expresses the metaphysical sublimity and the inalienable personal dignity of the human being. The human face radiates the personal self and makes the other experienceable as a someone. Every activity of the human body — even the seemingly “merely biological” processes — is in the human being always also personally shaped: human eating is not the same as animal feeding, human intercourse is not mere animal copulation, but a personal act (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 165—175).
The form-matter distinction shows: matter alone does not explain the human being. From atoms one can make molecules, from molecules cells — but from cells one cannot make a thought, a free decision of the will, or love. The body is the material side of the body-soul unity, in which personhood as spiritual substantial being is realized in the body. This unity exists from the very beginning: even the embryo has an ensouled body, informed by its spiritual life-principle.
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What is human personhood? (esp. 4.3, 4.6.5)
Nuptial Meaning of the Body
The nuptial meaning of the body designates the capacity inherent in the human body to express the love in which the person becomes a gift and fulfills the meaning of its being. This meaning is not restricted to conjugal love, but pertains to every form of personal self-gift. The body is not merely matter, but an expression of the interiority of the person and of its ordering toward the Thou. In the nuptial meaning it is revealed that the human being finds himself only by giving himself away.
Karol Wojtyła developed this dimension in his catecheses on the theology of the body. He shows that the language of the body expresses a truth about the person that goes beyond the merely biological.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Entity
Spousal Love
Spousal love (amor sponsalis) is the highest form of personal love between man and woman. It is characterized by totality (the gift of the whole person), exclusivity, indissolubility, and openness to new life. Wojtyła describes it as the fourth and highest stage of love after attractio, concupiscentia, and benevolentia.
In spousal love the original unity of the sexes is realized in its deepest personal form. It presupposes self-mastery and integration of the person, because only a person who possesses himself can truly give himself. Spousal love absorbs shame, because the person knows that he is seen as a person and not as an object.
See also: Love, Person, Man, Woman, Original Unity, Original Nakedness, Original Solitude, Self-Mastery, Integration of the Person, Contraceptives
Bodily Integrity
Bodily integrity designates the inviolability and wholeness of the human body as a constitutive dimension of the person. It is not a merely physical good, but a personal good, because the body is not a possession of the person, but the person itself in its bodily dimension. Every instrumentalization of the body therefore injures the person as a whole.
Bodily integrity is grounded in the body-soul unity. Because the human being is his body and does not merely have it, every intervention in bodily integrity affects the person in his dignity. Respect for bodily integrity is an immediate demand of the personalist norm.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Personal Good
Bodily Proximity
Bodily proximity designates the spatial nearness between bodies as a condition of interpersonal encounter. It makes possible touch, eye contact, and conversation — the fundamental ways in which persons encounter one another as a someone. Because the human person is essentially bodily constituted, the actualization of the second dimension of personhood — interpersonal encounter — presupposes bodily proximity. Especially in gestational motherhood a unique form of bodily proximity is shown: nine months of incomparable bodily communion between mother and child.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Spatial Entity
Bodily Spatiality
Bodily spatiality designates the specific way in which the human body is in space. It differs fundamentally from the mere spatial extension of physical objects (cf. Bexten 2017, p. 167 ff.).
Whereas a stone simply occupies a place in space, the body of the person is lived space: the person dwells in his body, he experiences it as the center of his relations to the world. The body opens up a “here” from which the spatial environment is disclosed as a meaningful field of action. This spatiality is an expression of the body-soul unity — the body is not a physical body in which a soul is lodged, but the person is bodily present in space. Wojtyła emphasizes that bodily spatiality opens up the possibility of interpersonal encounter: only because persons are bodily in space can they perceive one another sensibly and turn toward one another.
Bodily Self-Gift
Bodily self-gift is a personal act in which the person gives himself entirely to another human being through his body. Because the human being is a body-soul unity, bodily giving is never a merely corporeal process: it expresses the gift of the whole person and therefore has a depth that goes beyond the purely physical.
In conjugal union, bodily self-gift finds its proper place. Here two persons give themselves to one another in a way that realizes the communio personarum in its deepest form. Karol Wojtyła has worked out that bodily self-gift speaks the “language of the body.” With the body it says what the person as a whole means — namely the unconditional affirmation of the other.
Where bodily union takes place without this personal gift, the language of the body becomes a lie. The instrumentalization of the person threatens. The personalist norm requires that bodily self-gift always be an expression of real love and not of mere use.
Language of the Body
The language of the body is the personal expression of the inner reality of the person through the body. This language can be true — when bodily expression and personal attitude agree. Or false — when there is a contradiction between expression and attitude, as in a bodily union without personal bond.
Karol Wojtyła has shown in his catecheses on the theology of the body that the body possesses its own language of expression that goes beyond the merely biological. The language of the body stands in close connection with the nuptial meaning of the body, for in it the capacity of the person for self-gift is revealed. The truth of the body’s language is an expression of the body-soul unity. Where the body says something other than the person means, the unity of inner and outer is torn apart.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Entity
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Wojtyła, Karol (1969): Osoba i czyn. Kraków (German: Person und Tat, Freiburg: Herder, 1981). (on the theology of the body and the nuptial meaning)