From the Body Canon of Modern Times to the Comprehension of Modern Practices of Biotechnological Design

Abstract

The article deals with the corporal canon of the Modern Era, which influenced modern practices of biotechnological design of the human body. It is shown that in modern times the instrumental attitude to the human body acquires an extra-sacral character. The main features of the corporal “canon”, revealed in the Modern Era, on the one hand, point to the body as a rejected, despised material object, which acquires its significance only in connection with the responsible goal-setting activity of the mind, on the other, give it value, treating it as an integral part of human dignity.Consistent liberalism, considering the body as an individual value and upholding the right to freely dispose of it, provides a person with the opportunity to instrument and commodify it in various ways, giving it a commodity price, but at the same time discounting it as a moral value. Author concludes that the modern stage of development of scientific knowledge in many ways contributes to deepening the contradiction between the price and value of the human body.It is demonstrated that modern corporal canon is associated with the instrumentalization of corporality, which acquires a special technological character. In addition, the commercialization of scientific knowledge, which attests to the global spread of biocapitalist tendencies, gives new features to the already existing body canon.On the one hand, there is a step-by-step legitimization and legalization of the body and its parts as goods. On the other hand, in the same legal and ethical debate, there is a kind of “return” to a person of his alienated body, which is expressed in the establishment of procedures designed to protect his personal embodiment.