scholarly journals The Body in Jesus’ Tomb as a Hylemorphic Puzzle: a Response to Jaeger and Sienkiewicz and an Application for Christological Anthropology

Perichoresis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
James T. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
Prime Matter

Abstract In a recent paper, Andrew Jaeger and Jeremy Sienkiewicz attempt to provide an answer consistent with Thomistic hylemorphism for the following question: what was the ontological status of Christ’s dead body? Answering this question has christological anthropological import: whatever one says about Christ’s dead body, has implications for what one can say about any human’s dead body. Jaeger and Sienkiewicz answer the question this way: that Jesus’ corpse was prime matter lacking a substantial form; that it was existing form-less matter. I argue that their argument for this answer is unsound. I say, given Thomistic hylemorphism, there was no human body in Jesus’s tomb between his death and resurrection. Once I show their argument to be unsound, I provide a christological anthropological upshot: since there was no human body in Christ’s tomb, there are no human bodies in any tomb.

Matter Without Form: The Ontological Status of Christ's Dead Body

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 131-145
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Jaeger ◽  
Jeremy Sienkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Dead Body ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Metaphysical Possibility ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
Prime Matter ◽  
Material Substance ◽  
Secondary Causes ◽  
Material Substances

In this paper, we provide an account of the ontological status of Christ’s dead body, which remained in the tomb during the three days after his crucifixion.  Our account holds that Christ’s dead body – during the time between his death and resurrection – was prime matter without a substantial form.  We defend this account by showing how it is metaphysically possible for prime matter to exist in actuality without substantial forms.  Our argument turns on the truth of two theses: (i) God is able to produce all acts of secondary causes without those secondary causes, and (ii) Substantial forms are secondary causes of the actuality of prime matter.  We argue that the metaphysical possibility of matter without form is perfectly consistent with holding both there is only one substantial form in a material substance and that prime matter is pure potentiality.  Moreover, we argue that the metaphysical possibility of matter without form does little-to-no damage to our natural understanding of material substances.

scholarly journals The disorderly body: considerations of The Book of Numbers, 19 and ritual impurity after contact with a corpse

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 197-205
Author(s):  
Sandra Junker
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Living Body ◽  
The People ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Living Creature

This article deals with the idea of ritual bodily impurity after coming into contact with a corpse in the Hebrew Bible. The evanescence and impermanence of the human body testifies to the mortality of the human being. In that way, the human body symbolizes both life and death at the same time; both conditions are perceivable in it. In Judaism, the dead body is considered as ritually impure. Although, in this context it might be better to substitute the term ‘ritually damaged’ for ‘ritually impure’: ritual impurity does not refer to hygienic or moral impurity, but rather to an incapability of exercising—and living—religion. Ritual purity is considered as a prerequisite for the execution of ritual acts and obligations. The dead body depends on a sphere which causes the greatest uncertainty because it is not accessible for the living. According to Mary Douglas’s concepts, the dead body is considered ritually impure because it does not answer to the imagined order anymore, or rather because it cannot take part in this order anymore. This is impurity imagined as a kind of contagious illness, which is carried by the body. This article deals with the ritual of the red heifer in Numbers 19. Here we find the description of the preparation of a fluid that is to help clear the ritual impurity out of a living body after it has come into contact with a corpse. For the preparation of this fluid a living creature – a faultless red heifer – must be killed. According to the description, the people who are involved in the preparation of the fluid will be ritually impure until the end of the day. The ritual impurity acquired after coming into contact with a corpse continues as long as the ritual of the Red Heifer remains unexecuted, but at least for seven days. 

scholarly journals The Dead Body as a 'Lieu De Mémoire'. The Body-Object and the Living Body in Caitlin Doughty’s Nonfiction

Linguaculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-101
Author(s):  
Cristina-Mihaela Botîlcă
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Personal Memory ◽  
Living Body ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Twenty First Century

Between Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire and Paul Ricoeur’s body-object there appears to be a relation of community and personal memory. Before death, the human body holds three meanings: material, symbolic, and functional, but post-mortem the body also becomes a place where both community and individual can update their relationship with death and mortality. In the twenty-first century, secularization of death practices inevitably leads to a secular view of the body. In Cailin Doughty’s nonfiction, the body seems to stand at the crossroad between spirituality and secularization, so between the meaning of the body and the body as a lieu. This paper will discuss how Nora’s and Ricoeur’s interpretations of memory and body apply to Doughty’s representation of the dead body within a death denying twenty-first century Western society.

Not over Moses’ Dead Body: Jude 9, 22-24 and the Assumption of Moses in their Early Jewish Context

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-213
Author(s):  
Ryan E. Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Previous Scholarship

Jude 9 refers to a story in which the archangel Michael disputes with the devil about the body of Moses. Although the story cited by Jude has not been preserved, the literature of early Judaism contains several traditions that can inform one’s understanding of Jude’s source. This article explores these traditions, especially early Jewish interpretations of Zech. 3, in an effort to throw light on this story and its use in the epistle of Jude. These traditions suggest that the disagreement between Michael and the devil over Moses’ body pertained not to the burial of Moses’ corpse, as previous scholarship has assumed, but to Moses’ bodily ascent into God’s presence. In this ascent account, the devil would have opposed Michael on the grounds that Moses’ fleshly, human body was inadequate for God’s presence. Further, it is probable that Jude 22-24 alludes to the same ascent story.

Thomas Aquinas (I)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonia Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Body ◽  
Entire Study ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
Bodily Resurrection ◽  
Whole Person ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Structure Of Matter

This chapter restores the place of the body within Aquinas’s theory of the composition of human nature, explaining his account of the body’s autonomy relative to the soul. The central arguments of the entire study are elaborated: theological problems, particularly the bodily resurrection, led Aquinas to emphasize the body’s goodness; Aquinas thinks that the individuality of the whole person had its origins in matter; the individual body’s autonomy is underpinned by its unique ‘dimensive quantity’—a corporeal form, but an ‘accidental’, not a substantial form, which individualizes the body’s matter. These arguments are established through attending to: essence and its relationship to the individual; the beauty of the human body; embryology, heredity, and the structure of matter; and individuation. A theme running through the chapter is Aquinas’s radical remodelling of Peter Lombard’s concept of the ‘truth of human nature’, i.e. that from which the resurrected body will be constituted.

scholarly journals The jurisprudence of universal subjectivity: COVID-19, vulnerability and housing

2021 ◽  
pp. 135822912110328
Author(s):  
Kevin Scott Jobe
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Universal Constant ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Eighth Amendment ◽  
Essential Form ◽  
Ontological Reality ◽  
Vulnerability Theory ◽  
Lying Down

Drawing upon Martha Fineman’s vulnerability theory, the paper argues that the legal claims of homeless appellants before and during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate our universal vulnerability which stems from the essential, life-sustaining activities flowing from the ontological status of the human body. By recognizing that housing availability has constitutional significance because it provides for life-sustaining activities such as sleeping, eating and lying down, I argue that the legal rationale reviewed in the paper underscores the empirical, ontological reality of the body as the basis for a jurisprudence of universal vulnerability. By tracing the constitutional basis of this jurisprudence from Right to Travel to Eighth Amendment grounds during COVID-19, the paper outlines a distinct legal paradigm for understanding vulnerability in its universal, constant and essential form – one of the central premises of vulnerability theory.

Do the Dead Have Interests? Policy Issues for Research After Life

1998 ◽  
Vol 24 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 261-291
Author(s):  
Dorothy Nelkin ◽  
Lori Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Tissues ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Valuable Resource ◽  
Market Place ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
University College London

The importance of establishing rights in a dead body has been, and will continue to be, magnified by scientific advancements. The recent explosion of research and information concerning biotechnology has created a market place in which human tissues are routinely sold to and by scientists, physicians and others. The human body is a valuable resource.The body of the nineteenth century philosopher Jeremy Bentham is on display in a glass cage at University College, London. Bentham applied his utilitarian perspectives to the body by suggesting that corpses, including his own, would be of greater use to society stuffed and displayed as an “auto-icon” rather than simply buried away. Preserved, exhibited and studied, the corpse, he said, could serve “moral, political, honorific, dehonorific, money-saving, money getting, commemorative, genealogical, architectural, theatrical, and phrenological” ends.

scholarly journals Physicality as a possible key to understanding human nature

2021 ◽  
pp. 162-172
Author(s):  
Zulfiya Z. Ibragimova
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Body ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Primitive Form ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Human Rationality

The statement about human nature is the subject of numerous discussions, which, however, does not negate the presence of the substrate of its origin, manifestations, specificity, and real dynamics in space and time. In the process of analysis, we find a lot of arguments that confirm this fact, as well as a decent number of counterarguments. In this article, a priori, we proceed from the validity of the existence of the term "human nature", recognizing its ambiguity. Of course, our stated physicality as an aspect of human nature does not exhaust the idea of his nature. The nominal division into soul, spirit, etc. gives us some methodological tools. No more than that. Physicality, in its turn, requires problematization. "Physicality "is a category that denotes what a given human body naturally becomes in the course of its social modifications, so this category can certainly not be considered outside of conjunction with another very important category - "spirituality". These concepts, as well as the phenomena they denote, are interrelated (MORGAN 2006). In our review, there are three main ways to interpret "Physicality". Firstly, it is the only factuality that initially claims the ontological status. Secondly, it is part of a harmonious whole that includes all non-corporeal things. I would like to focus on the third aspect, which includes at least three principles. Thirdly, physicality changes its seemingly simple "fate" dramatically, turning into a problem as a way of human existence. This can be interpreted "as a creative act of overcoming oneself". Only this overcoming of the present self presupposes a reliance on its relevance and reality. This ontologically conditioned event is always self-based. In this sense, the body as a creative phenomenon " never appears just by its own. Yet it is precisely overcoming that is the constitutive feature of human existence. A man is bigger than himself. We can say that the problem is a way of human existence. The problem in the most primitive form can be expressed as "I already want to, but I can't yet". Where does the desire come from if the object of desire (the desired situation) is not yet available? How can you want something that doesn't exist yet and never has? The man himself is a few steps ahead (BUBLIK, 2006). Human rationality is based not only on reflectivity, but also on the ability of a person to operate with ideas that do not have objective visibility (for example, the ultimate category of being). Thus, man proves his metaphysicality: "man's metaphysics expresses not only the presence of the supernatural dimension in man but also his ability to determine himself, to be his own creation". The main methods used in writing the article: the unity of historical and logical, the method of reflection.

Indigenous Anatomies

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-116 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Multidisciplinary Research ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Body Concept

As bioarchaeologists who deal directly with the human body, we often neglect emic understandings of the body that are important to interpreting the worldview of indigenous populations. In this paper, Andean notions of the body are presented using indigenous terminology in an effort to highlight dramatic differences in body concept interpretation. Furthermore, three bioarchaeological Andean case studies will be presented to illustrate perceptions of the age and wellness in different archaeological contexts. It is suggested that highly contextualized and multidisciplinary research questions need to be developed in an effort to interpret emic social and cultural dimensions of the living and dead body and mortuary practices.

Correction of Posture Deviations in the Sagittal Plane Using the Pilates Method

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Alexandru Cîtea ◽  
George-Sebastian Iacob
Keyword(s):  
Low Back Pain ◽  
Back Pain ◽  
Postural Control ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Sagittal Plane ◽  
The Body ◽  
Lower Limbs ◽  
Low Back ◽  
Pilates Method ◽  
The Relationship

Posture is commonly perceived as the relationship between the segments of the human body upright. Certain parts of the body such as the cephalic extremity, neck, torso, upper and lower limbs are involved in the final posture of the body. Musculoskeletal instabilities and reduced postural control lead to the installation of nonstructural posture deviations in all 3 anatomical planes. When we talk about the sagittal plane, it was concluded that there are 4 main types of posture deviation: hyperlordotic posture, kyphotic posture, rectitude and "sway-back" posture.Pilates method has become in the last decade a much more popular formof exercise used in rehabilitation. The Pilates method is frequently prescribed to people with low back pain due to their orientation on the stabilizing muscles of the pelvis. Pilates exercise is thus theorized to help reactivate the muscles and, by doingso, increases lumbar support, reduces pain, and improves body alignment.

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