PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN BODY

What is the explanation for the increasing human passion for cosmetic surgery? Why do we so readily submit to the surgeon's knife?

'We choose our clothes, we exercise and diet in order to maintain a preferred shape. Cosmetic surgery is just another way of improving our looks and how we feel about ourselves' — or so the argument goes.

I find it difficult to criticize this faultless logic; and yet there seems to me something disturbing about the idea that a human body is just a lump of stuff to be whittled into shape like a piece of wood or clay.

It was only in the 20th century that philosophers began to take the human body seriously as a topic for inquiry. Up until that time, the accepted view was that a person is a compound of a body and a mind or soul, a subject of consciousness who owns or occupies a body.

If my body is just something I own, or occupy, then it makes sense to do alterations from time to time, just as you would do alterations to your house, or your clothes, or your car.

On the other hand, if I am my body, if there is no distinction between 'I' that I refer to when I tell you what is 'on my mind', and the physical presence that I see when I look in the mirror, then this requires a fundamental rethink of what it means to have cosmetic surgery.

It is true that, throughout history, human beings have adorned and painted their bodies. But this is somehow different. The patient in the operating theatre is more than just an object to be worked on, a blank canvas for the plastic surgeon's art. — In these pages, we will be trying to find out why.

© Geoffrey Klempner 2008