Looking In Wonder: Prenatal Sublimity and the Commonplace "Life" (original) (raw)
Related papers
2019
The paper discusses images of prenatal development created by Ernst Haeckel and Lennart Nilsson. Despite the obvious differences between a 19th-century biologist and philosopher of nature and a 20th-century photographer, substantial similarities exist in the way their respective narrations situate embryos and fetuses within the cultural realm. The paper traces the processes of creating the representations of stages of embryogenesis and the controversies surrounding them, analyzes the discursive frame within which the images are produced and function, and discusses their media specificity. It also examines the metaphysical ambitions surrounding the process of producing embryoand fetal identities and the relation of these identities to the important cultural characteristics of their historical epochs.
Birth: A radically new meditation for philosophy
Diogenes, 2024
This paper explains why and how we should introduce birth into the canon of subjects explored by philosophy. It focuses on the epistemology of birth, namely, on the nature, origin, and limits of the knowledge produced by and/or related to giving birth. The paper provides a view on the philosophy of birth, i.e., an approach to construct a new "logos" for "genos".
All human beings are natal: reconsidering human existence through birth
Journal of Political Power, 2021
pp., €37 (hardback), ISBN 9780198845782 'All human beings begin life by being born, and all human beings die'-with this seemingly trivial statement Alison Stone begins her book Being born: Birth and philosophy. Birth and death, natality and mortality-these are the universalities of our lives, markers of our finitude, and, as Hannah Arendt claims in The human condition, 'the most general condition of human existence' (1998, p. 8). However, even though birth and death are equally universal for our existence, they have never received equal attention from philosophers. Death has been philosophically reflected on since Epicurus and Plato, and later mortality has been one of the significant categories of the philosophy of existence, for example, in Sartre's or Heidegger's work. The topic of birth, on the other hand, is relatively new to philosophy. The development of this topic has only started in recent feminist philosophy. The inquiry of feminist authors primarily focuses on practical aspects, such as the ethics or politics of birth, and mainly concentrates on the mother's experience and maternal body. Very little has been said so far about what it means to be born from a mother and how natality shapes our existence. Being born is an excellent contribution to overcoming the philosophical neglect around being born. Stone aims at re-balancing the asymmetrical attention towards birth and death by, firstly, focusing on birth and, later, tracing the intertwined connections between natality and mortality. This book is a rare gem because Stone examines being born within the framework of existential philosophy. She is interested in how our views on human existence can be transformed if we consider being born; how the structure of meaningful existence is conditioned by being born, and which features of our existence are caused or influenced by being born. Reciprocally, these questions also bring into light what being born consists of. Comprising an introduction and seven chapters, the first chapter of Being born offers an overview of the topic of birth and natality in feminist philosophy. The second complements the first by focusing on history, inheritance, and vulnerability. Chapter three unfolds features of our existence rooted in natality: dependency, relationality, embeddedness in social power, and situatedness. The fourth chapter is dedicated to the radical contingency of being born, and the fifth looks to birth anxieties. Chapter six reveals the connection between natality and mortality. In the final chapter, Stone addresses temporality and the gift of birth, and conclusion by reflecting on how natality structures our existence. Stone defines 'to be born' as 'to begin to exist at a certain point in time by coming into the world with and as a specific body, and in a given place, set of relationships, and the situation in society, culture, and history, while doing so by way of being conceived in and then exiting from the womb' (p. 1). She distinguishes three senses in which 'being born' are used: narrow-'to be born is just to exit the womb of the person who gestated me' (p. 2); broad-'to be born is to be conceived and gestated in that person's womb and finally exit it' (p. 2); broader-'the process of birth as continuing into psychological birth during the infant's earliest years' (p. 2).
The Order of Life: How Phenomenologies of Pregnancy Revise and Reject Theories of the Subject.
This paper explores the challenges to universal accounts of the subject raised by phenomenologies of pregnancy. It outlines how phenomenologies of pregnancy indicate a need to rethink classical theories where the subject is described as autonomous, rational, genderless, unified, and discrete. It asks if phenomenologies of pregnancy are a critical expansion upon generic accounts of human experience or if they indicate the impossibility of any such account. It concludes that pregnancy does argue that phenomenology must reconsider its subject-centered analyses, but affirms the descriptive phenomenological method.
Voices and Bodies: The Afterlife of the Unborn
Numen 56, pp. 326-65, 2009
Th is article discuses the fate of a special class of child, the unborn, in the afterlife, as well as the gradual criminalization of abortion in Antiquity. Particular attention is paid to a possible prohibition of abortion in Orphism that may underpin the nekyiai in P. Bon. 4. and Vergil Aen. 6. Th en it turns to depictions of the aborted in the Apocalypse of Peter and its late antique off spring to show how the aborted fetus gradually acquires a visible body and an articulate voice. At the same time, the theology of sentiment works out its solutions to mitigate the problem of the innocent in hell. Th e fate of the almost bodiless fetus in the Resurrection became a bone of contention by the early 5th C. Th e satirical questions posed Christians about the resurrection of the unborn may fi rst have been raised by Porphyry. His interest in the embryo and its ensoulment in the Pros Gauron are adduced as evidence. Attention is drawn to Augustine's doubts about the status and fate of the human embryo, and some reasons are suggested about why he hesitated to adopt an unambiguous "human from conception"