Digital Continent Summer 2017 | Page 12

3 the teleological principle – are treated as reducing the human person to a mere body. The teleological principle is the importance of an inherent design, or end, within a being that drives that being towards its fulfillment. But nowhere within this definition is the human person reduced to a body. This section will elaborate upon the teleological principle, explaining it and defending it against charges of reducing gender to mere biology. In so doing, this section will also argue that functional concepts are real, essential, and necessary for a fuller understanding of human nature as embodied. The third section contains the primary argument against the popular understanding of gender, and will argue how the physical body must be understood to belong to the human person as an extension of human nature. This thesis will argue that the idea of a belonging advanced in the popular understanding of gender is mistaken, confused with the concept of a possession, which is something added to, but not part of human nature. How the human body relates to the human person is at stake in this argument. The human body cannot be a possession, because human nature is essentially embodied. The human person is essentially embodied. Bodies belong to the human person in a way more intimate and deep than presented by the popular understanding of gender. Section One: The Popular Notion of Gender as “Felt” Experience Two primary elements define the popular understanding of gender: radical fluidity and social construction. These two elements describe the shape of “felt” experience as “lived” experience. This understanding is distinct from a notion of gender as pure, willful experience, by which gender is believed to merely be chosen by the individual. This idea of gender as simply chosen and willed is not how the popular understanding of gender views itself. Such a view over-simplifies the complexity of the actual