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The story of the body and the story of the person: Towards an ethics of representing human bodies and body-parts

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Abstract.

Western culture has a few traditions of representing the human body – among them mortuary art (gisants), the freak show, the culture of the relics, renaissance art and pre-modern and modern anatomy. A historical analysis in the spirit of Norbert Elias is offered with regard to body – person relationship in anatomy. Modern anatomy is characterized by separating the story of the person from the story of the body, a strategy that is incompatible with the bio-psycho-social paradigm of clinical medicine. The paper discusses different aspects of the above traditions and how they might bear on this conflict and on contemporary bioethics and bedside practice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Internal Medicine B, Meir Hospital, Kfar Saba, Israel

    Y. Michael Barilan

  2. Department of Behavioral Sciences, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Y. Michael Barilan

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  1. Y. Michael Barilan
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Correspondence to Y. Michael Barilan.

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Barilan, Y.M. The story of the body and the story of the person: Towards an ethics of representing human bodies and body-parts. Med Health Care Philos 8, 193–205 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-004-6492-2

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