Birth and Death

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

I try in this paper to think anew about human birth, about the creation of human life, and about the experience of those who create human life. I argue that giving birth to human beings should not be thought to be any more essentially natural, however that is conceptualized, than is human death. I suggest that human birth, like human death, should be understood to be central to whatever is thought to be distinctively human and that the tradition of describing birth as a natural event has served the normative purpose of discounting the value of women's experiences and activities. My discussion is often about images and associations, the preconceptual stuff philosophy should not ignore. I try to show how preconceptions shape our conceptions of birth and death, and how the standard conceptions are awry.