Benoist J, Cathebras P
Laboratoire d'écologie humaine, UPR 221 du CNRS, Aix en Provence, France.
Soc Sci Med. 1993 Apr;36(7):857-65. doi: 10.1016/0277-9536(93)90078-i.
A first level of immateriality of the human body is very classic for anthropologists: it concerns the different conceptions of soul, of a supernatural component of the human being. It refers also to different kinds of continuity and exchange between the human body and society. The other immateriality appears as an answer to the biological reductionism of the body. As we can see in biomedical conception of the body, as well as in different totalitarian utopias, biological reductionism tends to reduce the whole person to its biological body. Consciously or unconsciously, people cannot accept it. Contemporary ways of healing reflect this contradiction: people accept biological knowledge but they do not accept a purely biological conception of their own body. They conceive that there is an immaterial part in the human body; however it is not supernatural but a part of nature. In this way this 'not divine immateriality' can be conciliated with some kind of scientific approach. The refusal to enclose the person in the biological body appears as a constant through human societies. At the medical level, this refusal is always present in the ill person's image of his body and of his illness. At a more general level, this refusal is probably necessary in order to keep human freedom as well as human specificity.
它涉及到灵魂的不同概念，即人类的超自然组成部分。它还指人体与社会之间的不同类型的连续性和交流。另一种非物质性表现为对身体生物还原论的回应。正如我们在身体的生物医学概念以及不同的极权主义乌托邦中所看到的，生物还原论倾向于将整个人简化为其生物身体。人们有意或无意地无法接受这一点。当代的治疗方式反映了这种矛盾：人们接受生物学知识，但他们不接受对自己身体的纯粹生物学概念。他们认为人体中有一个非物质的部分；然而，它不是超自然的，而是自然的一部分。通过这种方式，这种“非神圣的非物质性”可以与某种科学方法相调和。拒绝将人封闭在生物身体中似乎是人类社会的一个常量。在医学层面，这种拒绝始终存在于病人对自己身体和疾病的认知中。在更普遍的层面上，这种拒绝可能对于保持人类自由以及人类特性是必要的。
