If Anything Is Sacred, the Human Body Is Not It

“The body is certainly something we should appreciate, but it is not the most obvious thing to be considered sacred. A far better candidate would be consciousness.”

In his poem “I Sing the Body Electric,” Walt Whitman writes, “If anything is sacred the human body is sacred.” This is a common sentiment that underpins various laws, religious teachings, and general moral judgements. In part due to the Christian view that the human body is made in the image of God, Western culture simply takes for granted that the human body, at least to some degree, is sacred. But is it?

To be “sacred” means to be “dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of a deity.” It is traditionally a religious term, deriving from the obsolete verb sacren, meaning “to make holy.” In modern usage, the word can also mean simply “entitled to reverence and respect.” Whatever definition one uses, the idea that the human body is sacred seems technically false—at least from a secular worldview. The body is certainly something we should appreciate, but it is not the most obvious thing to be considered sacred. A far better candidate would be consciousness.

Without consciousness, the human body loses all of its practical value, all of its charm, and some significant degree of its aesthetic allure. When a person loses all brain function, we consider him to be dead, even if his body is still alive. When a body does die, we take modest care to protect it from desecration; we salvage organs when appropriate, and we dress the body up in a nice suit of clothes for a funeral service before ultimately laying it to rest under the ground or in flames.

If parts of a body are preserved beyond death, they are treated more like art and property than sacred objects. For example, a lock of Kurt Cobain’s hair is currently up for auction. This, apparently, is the absolute highest level of reverence we pay to parts of a body that stick around after consciousness has left.