Owning Our Bodies? The Politics of Self-Possession and the Body of Christ (Hobbes, Locke and Paul)

This essay investigates the idea of self-proprietorship as the concealed ideological basis beneath our most fraught ethical discourses on bodily matters pertaining to birth, health, sex and death. It questions the sense in which such discourses, and their corresponding societal practices, in turn se...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in Christian ethics
Main Author: Wannenwetsch, Bernd (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Sage 2013
In: Studies in Christian ethics
Further subjects:B Hobbes
B Chastity
B St. Paul
B Sexuality
B Locke
B Embodiment
B Property
B Body
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Parallel Edition:Electronic
Description
Summary:This essay investigates the idea of self-proprietorship as the concealed ideological basis beneath our most fraught ethical discourses on bodily matters pertaining to birth, health, sex and death. It questions the sense in which such discourses, and their corresponding societal practices, in turn serve as a practical apology for this troubling anthropology that has come to sustain capitalism. ‘Self-proprietorship’ is analysed for its phenomenological basis in the actual task of learning to own one’s body, and traced in its early philosophical instantiations in Hobbes and Locke. These sources are then contrasted with an account of non-proprietary possession of one’s body, rooted in the astonishing authority granted the spouses in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, a nuanced treatment of porneia and chastity, and the evocative bodily receptions of Christian worship.
ISSN:0953-9468
Contains:Enthalten in: Studies in Christian ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/0953946812466491