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person is incarnated in a body all his or her own, “which can in various ways be incorporated into his
subjectivity and thus made to share it.” 106 In this way, my body sufficiently belongs to me as an
extension of my human being. Is not the process of growth and development an intimate experience?
In Summary
Teleology does not reduce the physical body to mere biology. Contrary to the popular
understanding of gender, an appeal to the importance and significance of functional concepts favorably
argues that the body belongs to the human person as the bodily extension of the human person. First,
living beings require functional concepts in order to live. The human being is a living being. Therefore,
the human body contains functional concepts. Second, human beings can only be known as persons
through their bodily existence. The fact of human development demonstrates human nature, the basis
for human personhood. How a thing acts determines what a thing is. For human beings, the physical
body reveals that the what is actually a who.
106
John Crosby, The Selfhood of the Human Person (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
1996), 144.