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Single Idea 23747

[filed under theme 16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 7. Self and Body / a. Self needs body ]

Full Idea

There is something sacred in every man, but it is not his person. Nor yet is it the human personality. It is this man; no more and no less. …It is he. The whole of him. The arms, they eyes, the thoughts, everything.

Gist of Idea

What is sacred is not a person, but the whole physical human being

Source

Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p,70)

Book Ref

Weil,Simone: 'An Anthology' [Penguin 1986], p.70


A Reaction

I take her to be referring to exactly the concept of a 'person' which Locke introduced. It is important to remember that his concept is mainly forensic - as a concept of ownership and contracts. A person is an abstraction. Even a corpse is a human.


The 15 ideas with the same theme [a body is necessary for a sef]:

The mind only knows itself by means of ideas of the modification of the body [Spinoza]
We need an account of the self based on rational principles, to avoid materialism [Kant]
The powerful self behind your thoughts and feelings is your body [Nietzsche]
Certainty that I will die is more basic to my existence than the Cogito [Heidegger]
What is sacred is not a person, but the whole physical human being [Weil]
Bodily identity and memory work together to establish personal identity [Ayer]
People own conscious states because they are causally related to the identifying body [Ayer]
Two experiences belong to one self if their contents belong with one body [Ayer]
Empiricists can define personal identity as bodily identity, which consists of sense-contents [Ayer]
A person is an entity to which we can ascribe predicates of consciousness and corporeality [Strawson,P]
If we have a pain, we are strongly aware of the bodily self [Cassam]
Maybe our persistence conditions concern bodies, rather than persons [Olson, by Hawley]
For 'animalism', I exist before I became a person, and can continue after it, so I am not a person [Olson, by Lowe]
The self is founded on bodily awareness centred in the brain stem [Edelman/Tononi]
You hold a child in your arms, so it is not mental substance, or mental state, or software [Merricks]