35
Saward quotes Aristotle on this connection: “Aristotle,” he writes, “puts it rather elegantly; birth, he
said, is the ‘road to nature,’ the way you arrive at being what you are.” 125 In this sense, a human person
could not be him or herself, in the truly literal sense, if born with any other body. Being male or female
is critical to who a person is, because human bodies come in one of two forms, and those forms are not
as interchangeable as the popular sense of gender posits. One’s sex is not an ornament on the human
person, to be removed or replaced on any given desire. The human body itself stands as a language of
love, and the grammar and words in a given language cannot be changed without affecting the
transmission of meaning. Human nature as embodied – and embodied in one of two ways – matters
greatly. The philosopher Karol Wojtyla wrote extensively on this topic, refining what it means for the
human body to be a gift.
Karol Wojtyla’s analysis of the verb to use frames the critical distinction between a belonging
and a possession in the context of love. And what is love? It cannot be mere sentiment. It cannot be raw
emotion. It cannot be a powerful urge. It absolutely does not reduce to these passions. Wojtyla
distinguishes between two senses of the word use: 1) “to employ some object of action as a means to
an end” and 2) to enjoy or find pleasure in. 126 To use may mean to treat something as a tool, or to
witness an object as a source for delight. The former rightly expresses the relationship between people
and non-persons. The latter, however, is somewhat more complex, because people ought to be sources
of delight for each other. A grave problem develops, however, when the delight visible in another
person transforms into a mere sense of pleasure, thus changing the other into a means to an end.
Wojtyla invokes the personalist principle, which states that a person must never be used as a means to
an end, but treated as an end in him or herself. 127 The human being as a person exists as both subject
and object, but never exclusively as an object.
Karol Wojtyla, in Love and Responsibility, begins his study from
the critical acknowledgement that the opposite of love is not hate; rather,
the opposite of love is use. He builds his argument from several key
premises. First, the fact that each human person is somebody implies the
objectivity of the human person. 128 For this reason, the human subject is
also an object in the world. Second, as an acting subject, man is also
125
John Saward, Cradle of Redeeming Love: The Theology of the Christmas Mystery (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
2002), 123. Though it may seem odd that I reference a work on Christmas theology, the perceived oddity betrays a
profound understanding of human nature. The hypostatic union in Christ – the real union between human and
divine natures – upholds a firm and lasting sense of human nature. Human nature is not fleeting or fake. It is real
and substantial, and this includes relationality, because our nature is shared with other human beings. Being born
into a human body is telling of human nature. For these reasons, I chose to include the material from this work on
Christmas theology.
126
Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, trans. H. T. Willetts (New York: Farrer, Straus, Giroux, 1981), 25, 33.
127
Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, trans. H. T. Willetts (New York: Farrer, Straus, Giroux, 1981), 26.
128
Ibid, 21.