Breda O’Brien: Our bodies are who we are. Respect them

Here’s my wish for the new year. Let us take bodies more seriously and give them the respect they are due.

This may seem odd coming from an openly religious person. Surely religion, and Christianity specifically, has prioritised the soul and denigrated the body?

While there may have been iterations of Christianity that elevated the soul above the body, in the Aristotelian tradition as interpreted by Thomas Aquinas, to be human is to be embodied. We are our bodies.

According to the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition, everything that exists has a form, that is, the arrangement or organisation of something that makes it what it is. So, to give a crude example, bricks and mortar can make a wall or a house. Matter has the potential to become something but it is only when it takes a particular form that it becomes that thing.

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The soul is the form of the body. It is the organising principle of our bodies that makes us human. The soul is not a ghost in the machine.

In this view, our bodies are so central to who we are that, in Christian theology, the resurrection is not just spiritual. It is stated in the Apostles’ Creed – “I believe in . . . the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”

Bodies are not just convenient meat envelopes for our identities. The centrality of our bodies to our humanity, however, is an insight that can be shared by believers and atheists alike. As an atheist, Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his searing 2015 book, Between The World and Me, explicitly rejects the Christian optimism of Martin Luther King and with it, the idea of the soul.

Embodied beings

Coates insists on the impact of oppression on black bodies, on their physical being in the world. It is not easy to read that “racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth”. It is not easy but it is a vital insight. We are embodied beings and what impacts our bodies impacts our humanity.

The soul is the form of the body. It is the organising principle of our bodies that makes us human. The soul is not a ghost in the machine

When we incorporate this insight that we do not have bodies, but we are our bodies, our way of looking at the world changes. In some ways, our culture has already begun to incorporate this understanding in the insistence on respect for diversity of colour, and for diversity of body shape. Thinness is no longer seen as a synonym for health, and strong, flexible bodies are more celebrated than mere skinniness.

At the same time, body-mind dualism has never held more sway. We are earnestly told that what is euphemistically called sex work, particularly porn, is morally neutral provided that there is consent. It is a mere transaction involving bodies but of no deeper significance. If our bodies are, in a real sense, ourselves, it becomes impossible to sustain the dualistic understanding that allows a euphemism like sex work to coldly separate the two.

Billie Eilish speaking out about how porn had devastating effects on her life was one of the signs of hope from 2021. Her experiences mirror so many young people’s formation. They dive into violent material online and then accept aggressive behaviour in their first experiences of sex. In Eilish’s case, she realised that was neither good nor what she wanted.

Porn stars

Hearing Howard Stern agree about the harms of porn might have been a bit more stomach-churning, given that his graphic interviews with porn stars were a staple of his career not so long ago. Maybe that agreement also marks a turning point. We’ll see.

In porn, bodies are not seen as people but profit-making commodities. Some people who would never view porn have a more subtle scale of discrimination.

It is also part of the triumph of dualism when respect for human beings is based not on their shared physical humanity but on passing certain tests of consciousness or capability. So a pre-conscious human being or a human being who is slowly losing self-awareness are both seen in some quarters as not fully sharing in human dignity.

Making human dignity contingent on being autonomous and self-aware is particularly pernicious

Making human dignity contingent on being autonomous and self-aware is particularly pernicious. Older people or those with disabilities who require basic care with dressing or toileting are described as having reduced or even no dignity. People speak in hushed tones, akin to horror, about the fear of losing their dignity as they become ill or age.

We do not stigmatise the care needed by small babies and children, recognising that it is a stage in their development. If, as we age, some of us will require significant physical care, are these changes also not just natural stages of development?

Dignity is innate in our embodied humanity, not our capability at any given stage. The problem lies not in the need but in the way our society frames that need. A good society honours the dignity of a frail body by providing dignified care in the knowledge that we are all interdependent.

Honouring the dignity of our bodies and the bodies of others is not an optional extra. It speaks to the core of who we are.