Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men’s belief that they “own” their bodies — those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!
CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
My family and I went to see the new Pixar movie Inside Out on Saturday, and I heartily endorse it. It is a very funny family comedy which gives a humorous fictional account of how people think and interact with others. Personifications of our emotions run the show for each person, and the story conceit is well developed. On one level it can be enjoyed as a kid’s movie, and on another level it is a pretty profound meditation on how complex human thoughts and emotions are, as we attempt to interact with others while barely understanding, at times, the complex factors within us determining our reactions to the outside world. As usual for Pixar, stay for the ending credits, where you will see funny vignettes. A good film for the forthcoming holiday weekend.
The notion that we “own” our bodies is, indeed, a curious one. Dominus membrorum suorum nemo videtur: no-one is to be regarded as the owner of his own limbs, says Ulpian in D.9.2.13. pr.
To the Roman jurists and the later Civilians, the notion that the body of a free man could be owned seemed absurd, for only things in commerce can be owned. There is the further problem that the relationship between the individual and his body is rather one of identity than possession. The French Civil Code faithfully reproduces this in Article 16 “The human body, its elements and its products may not form the subject of a patrimonial right,” and “Agreements that have the effect of bestowing a patrimonial value to the human body, its elements or products are void”
Like the “self,” it is a product of the mind-body dualism of Descartes. The” self,” as Miss Anscombe points out, “is blown up out of a misconstrue of the reflexive pronoun. That it is nonsense comes out also in the following fact: it would be a question what guaranteed that one got hold of the right self, that is, that the self a man called “I” was always connected with him, or was always the man himself. Alternatively, if one said that “the self connected with a man” meant just the one he meant by “I” at any time, whatever self that was, it would be by a mere favour of fate that it had anything else to do with him.”
“The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband. And in like manner the husband also hath not power of his own body, but the wife.” 1 Corinthians 7:4