Embodiment is the ontological constitution of the human person as a bodily being — the essential unity of spirit and body in their being. It is not the body itself (the material substance), but the property of being bodily: the essential characteristic of incarnate existence.
Distinction: body versus embodiment
In the substance-ontological tradition, the distinction between substance and property is constitutive:
- Body is the substance — the living, ensouled body as the matter of the human person, permeated by the form.
- Embodiment is the essential characteristic — that ontological constitution by virtue of which the human person is not pure spirit (like angels) but exists bodily. It is a property of personhood, not a being of its own beside the body.
This distinction is analogous to the distinction between free will (as a faculty) and the concrete act of will (as an act).
Position in the personal-ontological tradition
Dietrich von Hildebrand (The Nature of Love, Sittlichkeit und ethische Werterkenntnis) has shown: the spiritual person is always a bodily constituted person. The body is not a shell of the person, but an essential expression and bearer of her personhood. The smile, the gaze, the gesture are not “outer” phenomena beside an “inner” personality, but bodily actualizations of the one, undivided person.
Karol Wojtyła (The Acting Person, Theology of the Body) made embodiment the core of the doctrine of personal self-realization: the act — and thus the person who actualizes herself in the act — is bodily-personal. The catecheses Theology of the Body (1979–1984, Wednesday audiences) unfold embodiment theologically as the language of the person, who finds her meaning in the “play of the gift” of love.
Edith Stein (Finite and Eternal Being) described embodiment phenomenologically as a condition of the constitution of personal experience: only through the body does the person have her position in the world, her perspective, her vulnerability.
Hans Urs von Balthasar (Theo-Drama) and Robert Spaemann (Persons) have worked out the significance of embodiment for identity through time: personal identity is guaranteed through bodily continuity, not although but because the person is bodily constituted.
Essential characteristic: necessary and inalienable
As an essential characteristic of the human person, embodiment is:
- necessary: no human person exists without embodiment; the status “bodily constituted person” constitutes the species.
- inalienable: as long as the person exists, she is bodily; certain death is precisely the separation of body and spiritual substance and thus the end of earthly personal existence.
Bioethical relevance
The recognition of embodiment as essential has, in substance-ontological terms, weighty consequences for several bioethical questions:
Surrogacy: the gestating woman is degraded in her embodiment into a means of production; the child becomes the object of a contract. The bodily-personal unity of motherhood is split into genetic, gestational, and social motherhood — a split that contradicts the essential unity of person and embodiment.
Human trafficking for organ removal: the treatment of embodiment as exploitable matter, separated from personal selfhood, is substance-ontologically impossible (embodiment is a property of the one person, not divisible) and practically a failure to recognize the dignity of the person.
Irreversible loss of brain function: organ donation after brain death presupposes that the person without brain function already no longer exists bodily. The ontology held here denies this identification: as long as the body still lives (breathing, perfused, with persisting hypothalamic function), the embodiment of the person is not dissolved.
Transhumanism: the vision of a detachment of the person from her body (mind uploading, digital immortality) is, in substance-ontological terms, a failure to recognize what the human person is — a bodily being whose essential characteristic cannot be rationalized away.
Ontological classification
Superordinate concept: essential characteristic of the person
Properties:
- necessary: yes
- inalienable: yes
To be distinguished from:
Related concepts:
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What Is Human Personhood? (German)
Sources
- Hildebrand, Dietrich von: The Nature of Love, transl. John F. Crosby. South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009 (orig. 1971).
- Wojtyła, Karol: The Acting Person, transl. Andrzej Potocki. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979 (orig. 1969).
- John Paul II: Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, transl. Michael Waldstein. Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006 (Wednesday audiences 1979–1984).
- Stein, Edith: Finite and Eternal Being, transl. Kurt F. Reinhardt. Washington: ICS Publications, 2002 (orig. 1936).
- Spaemann, Robert: Persons. The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’, transl. Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 (orig. 1996).
- Balthasar, Hans Urs von: Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Vol. II: Dramatis Personae: Man in God, transl. Graham Harrison. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990.
See also
- Body
- Person
- Personhood
- Essential characteristic
- First dimension
- Prote Energeia
- Surrogacy
- Human trafficking
Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.