Bioethics and the Human Body

Abstract

We discuss the concept of a ‘body’, the individual body as the lived experience of the body, the social body, shaped by the tensions between the demands of a social/moral order and the egocentric drives, and the body politic, as an institutionalized and disciplined body. We describe the body as it was perceived in Classical Greek Antiquity at the time when the Hippocratic Oath was first conceived, and any changes that may have occurred by Late Antiquity, using the concept of a body-world as represented by everyday life, the arts, politics, philosophy, and religion. This ‘recreated’ body-world elucidates how a person of Classical or Late Antiquity perceived her/his body via their ‘lived-in’ world and relates it to medical and philosophical thinking about the body as well as to concepts of health and disease. We demonstrate how the institutional structures of the Roman Empire and the Church influenced the way a body was understood, how the administrative and governmental needs led to the first developments of Public Health, and how the Christian understanding of the body as the body and spirit of Christ changed the attitude towards suicide, euthanasia, and abortion. These changes are reflected in the understanding of bioethical thinking and affected the interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath.