Act Of Procreation Research Articles

Theorizing Divine Generation: Reading James 1:16–18 with the Middle Platonists

Abstract James 1:16–18 presents a theory of divine generation, which has been interpreted variously. Most commonly, this passage is taken as a reference to Christian conversion, God’s creation of the cosmos, or the creation/election of Israel. While each of these readings is possible, none accounts for all the evidence. By contrast, placing James’s theory of divine generation into conversation with Middle Platonists on the same topic yields some fruitful parallels, both in its theory and significance. This comparison suggests that interpreting James 1:16–18 should produce a synthesis of previous interpretation. James here emphasizes God’s on-going procreative act as the generation of new, divinely-originated creatures of virtue, oriented towards obedience of God’s law.

Woman, Mother, and the Other: Unraveling the Matrix of Feminine Self

A woman as a mother in Indian society is a subject of great reverence. The mother is considered an embodiment of the divine mother goddess. But due to the pronatalist Indian social structure, a woman has less value outside of marriage and motherhood. The question arises here—as a personified goddess, is she equally valued in her real life and free to make her procreative choices as an independent Self? There is continued inequality and persistent sexism between men and women that structure the way they are viewed in society. Men construct the idea of women from their own perspective instead of what women are in reality, expressing themselves as the subject and women as “the other.” Ancient scriptures state that a woman is created to facilitate men in the act of procreation. For this, society further imposes various restrictions on her subjectivity through social practices to control her sexuality and maternal body. This paper explores and examines the social layers of a woman in general, and the way mythology perpetuates the idea and influences her life even today. Illustrations of various mythological texts glorify her position solely as subjugated procreator and caregiver, not as a woman as self but as mother and the other. In the contemporary social context of globalization and the consequential challenges presented to the traditional ways of life, the contentious issues in relation to these texts will be taken up for discussion and analysis. This paper concludes with caution that a real woman cannot be seen as the personification of goddesses in relation to the oppressive elements of a patriarchal society. Her pseudo-glorification merely unravels her enslaved otherness, and cannot be her empowered Self.

La obliteración de la trascendencia política de la maternidad en la teoría erótica de Simposio

Diotima’s speech in the Symposium, which defines the erotic function as an act of procreation in the beautiful, is generally regarded as the most faithful account of the philosopher’s views on the nature of love. While this definition has received much attention from commentators, few studies pay attention to the literal aspect that is veiled behind the rhetorical effect Plato seeks to install. This neglect is even more striking given that the theory of reproduction that underlies the metaphor contains several ambiguities that are unfamiliar to contemporary biology. In the present paper I propose to read Diotima’s argumentation by focusing on the biological conception of procreation that gives structure to the metaphor. I will focus my analysis on the statement that “the sexual union (synousía) between man and woman is a childbirth (tókos).” I will argue that this sentence not only condenses the general sense of the metaphor of intellectual procreation, but also hints at the embryological conception that underlies the metaphor, and that explains to some extent the ambiguity of the Platonic lexicon considering what the philosopher states in Timaeus 91c. I will also argue that the Symposium’s discourse on conception and childbirth, by effacing the female experience, contributes to the tradition of obliteration of the political transcendence of motherhood that prevails in the civic discourses of the time, and therefore to the reinforcement of the exclusion of women from citizenship and from the political sphere in general.

Right to Access to Human Reproductive Technologies under Indian Legal Framework: A Bird’s View

The need and importance of a child is recognized by almost all religions all over the world. Begetting a child is one of the most joyful moments in the life of a person. In fact, begetting a child is considered as a sacred duty of an individual towards his family and the society and this duty is fulfilled through the institution of marriage. The act of procreation is normally a natural process of sexual union between couples and requires no external interference of a third party. However, many couples are unable to beget a child due to infertility caused by various factors. Such infertility and the inability to beget a child have a severe impact on the couples and particularly woman. It affects their personal, family and social relations. Since the ancient times mankind has tried to find a solution to the problem of infertility and help such couples to beget a child.

Right to Access to Human Reproductive Technologies under Indian Legal Framework: A Bird’s View

The need and importance of a child is recognized by almost all religions all over the world. Begetting a child is one of the most joyful moments in the life of a person. In fact, begetting a child is considered as a sacred duty of an individual towards his family and the society and this duty is fulfilled through the institution of marriage. The act of procreation is normally a natural process of sexual union between couples and requires no external interference of a third party. However, many couples are unable to beget a child due to infertility caused by various factors. Such infertility and the inability to beget a child have a severe impact on the couples and particularly woman. It affects their personal, family and social relations. Since the ancient times mankind has tried to find a solution to the problem of infertility and help such couples to beget a child.

THE ROLE OF THE AMAIBI IN THE LAI HARAOBA OF MANIPUR

Lai Haraoba is an inseparable part of the cultural life of the Meiteis known as Manipuris in general. It has a dimorigin. Lai Haraoba is a ritual performed under strict rules and order with the objective to please various deities and ancients. During the ritual which may last five days or more, the creation of the world and humans is represented with dance and sing by the maibis accompanied by the pena music of the Maiba. The number of Maibis may vary from three to more than three where only one maiba or Amaiba is employed. There are numerous Umang lais thus to be pleased ritually once in a year. In fact, each place has its own different deity and some particular deities have been regarded as the guardian deity of a region in which all the villages falling inside that region will have to deserve the ritual of lai Haraoba for that particular deity only. This ritual is performed starting on an auspicious day during February to July in a year. The main objectives of Lai Haraoba are to please the deities sot that the area under whose protection becomes prosperous with less morality which also infers the idea of growth of population by reminding people to perform the act of procreation as a duty. This particular part or inducement is performed with beautiful lyrical dialogue on the last day of the ritual in the form of the chance meeting of Panthoibi and Nongpok Ningthou. A propose of what has been laid out above the objectives of the study are very clear. I will help in codifying women’s involvement in social and cultural life in Manipur along with its relevant ramifications in the present context. This paper attempt to discuss the importance role of Amaibis in umang Lai Haoba.

Allegories of Creation: Glassmaking, Forests, and Fertility in Webster’sThe Duchess of Malfi

Allegories of Creation: Glassmaking, Forests, and Fertility in Webster’s<i>The Duchess of Malfi</i>

Beneficence and procreation

Consider a duty of beneficence towards a particular individual, S, and call a reason that is grounded in that duty a “beneficence reason towards S.” Call a person who will be brought into existence by an act of procreation the “resultant person.” Is there ever a beneficence reason towards the resultant person for an agent to procreate? In this paper, I argue for such a reason by appealing to two main premises. First, we owe a pro tanto duty of beneficence to future persons; and second, some of us can benefit some of those persons by procreating. In support of the first premise I reject the presentist account of time in favor of the view that future persons are just as real as presently existing persons. I then argue that future persons are like us in all the morally relevant ways, and since we owe duties of beneficence to each other, we also owe duties of beneficence to future persons. In support of the second premise I offer an account of benefiting according to which an individual can be benefited by an action even if it makes her no better off than she would have been, had the action not been performed. This account of benefiting solves what I call the “non-identity benefit problem.” Finally, I argue that having a life worth living is a benefit, and some of us can cause some persons that benefit by causing them to exist.

Secret Fatalities and Liminalities: Translating the Pre-Verbal Trauma and Cellular Memory of Late Discovery Adoptee Illegitimacy

Secret Fatalities and Liminalities: Translating the Pre-Verbal Trauma and Cellular Memory of Late Discovery Adoptee Illegitimacy

Divinations on Deviations

Divinations on Deviations Heather Fowler (bio) Three. Annemarie Monahan. PM Press. www.pmpress.org. 300 pages; paper, $16.95. At the Mouth of the River of Bees. Kij Johnson. www.smallbeerspress.com. 297 pages; paper, $16.00 In my view, the term "speculative fiction" can best be classified as a vast umbrella under which the strange books hover, often typified by genre designations such as science fiction, fantasy, and horror—along with many blended literary texts that involve experimentation or avant-garde construction. It is no wonder, then, that the sex in such narratives often falls short of vanilla and may not even involve a genuinely procreative act. The novel Three (2012) by Annemarie Monahan is a book that avoids easy classifications by consisting of a narrative that fractures one person's possible future into three distinct potential paths after a young version of the soon to be split protagonist meditates on T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), quoting, "Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare eat a peach?" as a launching pad for departures into three independently evolving realms of possibilities, all of which contemplate lesbianism—where the narrative's underlying question seems to be, "In how varied a direction can one person go with her sexual or economic reality based on small choices that expand into radically different erotic and social scenarios?" On one such speculative departure, Monahan introduces the reader to Kitty, a married woman who romantically engages with her sexually aggressive female professor, only to find that a desired intimacy can rapidly devolve from something once considered spiritual and sacred to a relationship irreparably cheapened by her professor's later attempts to transition their exchange to one of sexual play dates after the faculty character Faye secures her own husband. As Kitty's earlier feelings of lust and reverence vanish, the reader rather longs for their return since the passions Kitty's husband evokes are nowhere near the elegance and intensity as the ones Faye might inspire, even in a masturbatory fantasy: I lie down. My nails skim my mouth. She kisses me. My palm brushing down. She breathes against my throat. The scent of her. I trace the fall from my ribs, so full, so fervid. She holds me. She whispers love. The revelation, the religious feeling. My hips lavish under my hands. The heat of me on my fingers. She touches me like this, beautiful Faye, like this, like this, like this. As this character's potential other life, the author also introduces Katherine, a physician haunted by her exchange with a woman named Amanda who both renounces her for God and later states she has been taken advantage of by Katherine, as opposed to having participated in an active and consensual sexual exchange. Kathryn, unlike Kitty, is ravenous in her acquisition of female lovers, but, as a result of the trauma Amanda's betrayal causes, cruises cyber-sites for married women, stating that the types of women she prefers match the following type/s: "Untried. Longing…not the thrill seekers, not the perverts, but women enkindled with strange fire…. I want them to write to me, to be sought for just one faultless night. I will never, ever be reimagined as a predator again." The final alternate path for this woman is embodied by a politicized activist character named Ántonia. Ántonia's lifestyle is that of working at a bizarre and increasingly delusional feminist utopia located on a boat commune called Atlantis, where Ántonia's narcissistic partner Josephine first gathers a following with Ántonia at her side and subsequently throws her over for the attentions of a more zealous zealot, whose faith in a mystical existence, full of vibe and energy, verges on insanity. As those in Atlantis find more and more food sources that must be stricken from their palates to keep their spaces pure, the sex in these passages is progressively neutered and Ántonia's attachment to Josephine comes to a chillingly silent end: [End Page 13] I open the bedroom door. They're not kissing, they're not touching except where their heads bow together, caught in a lover's whisper...

Queering the Sexual Impasse in Seventeenth-Century “Imperfect Enjoyment” Poetry

Responding to the recent turn in queer theory toward the aesthetic and away from the antisocial theory of sex, this essay argues for recuperating queer sexual formalism as a basis for ethical relationality and communality. The essay focuses on a group of seventeenth-century mock-love lyrics known as “imperfect enjoyments” that interrupt both sexual and formal heteroconventions, turning the sexual impasse into a queerly generative and procreative act. Although scholars traditionally read the poems as satires on sexual failure, I show that libertine poets' investments in philosophical materialism, particularly Lucretian materialism, decenter this form of generation, allowing for the exploration of nonnormative, unscripted forms of creativity and relationality to emerge. Rejecting the notion that queer theory is “postsex,” the essay draws on Lucretian materialism to highlight the unlimited metamorphic possibilities of rearranging both art and life forms.

Smuggled into Existence: Nonconsequentialism, Procreation, and Wrongful Disability

The wrongful disability problem arises whenever a disability-causing, and therefore (presumptively) wrongful, procreative act is a necessary condition for the existence of a person whose life is otherwise worth living. It is a problem because it seems to involve no harm, and therefore no wrongful treatment, vis-a-vis that person. This essay defends the nonconsequentialist, rights-based, account of the wrong-making features of wrongful disability. It distinguishes between the person-affecting restriction, roughly the idea that wrongdoing is always the wronging of some person, and the harm principle, the idea that all wrongings are harmings. It argues, first, that the harm principle should be rejected, in light of offending intuitions in salient examples. Rejection of the harm principle is not only independently plausible, but also paves the way for a nonconsequentialist diagnosis of wrongful disability. This diagnosis conceives of wrongdoing as a failure to express adequate respect for the humanity or personhood inherent in the person created. The paper defends a theory of humanity-respecting rights that accommodates plausible intuitions about satisficing and fairness, without resorting to consequentialist premises that lead to well-known impossibility results and paradoxes.

Il caso del cosiddetto aborto post-natale / The case of the so called post natal abortion

Non disponibile / Not available

The Gift of Gametes – Unconscious Motivation, Commodification and Problematics of Genealogy

Three-way baby making is not new: genetic surrogacy existed in Biblical times and donor insemination was recorded in Britain over 200 years ago. However, the gift of gametes between women breaks all social conventions. This paper examines the phenomenon of gamete-donation questioning whether a ‘gift’ of such magnitude can ever be ‘free’ (as the Human Fertilisation &amp; Embryology Authority advocates), or a ‘true’ gift (in Derridian terms). Exploration of this unprecedented ‘gift’ from a psychoanalytic approach is supplemented by an interdisciplinary one, drawing on the gift literature in philosophy, anthropology, ethnography and socioeconomics, as well as neonatal research and reproductive medicine. Critics note the dearth of analyses that take seriously the psychological ramifications of contemporary treatments, protocols and expectations in reproductive medicine. Based on psychoanalytic therapy within a clinical practice devoted to reproductive issues, the author argues that institutionalised asexual reproduction alters unconscious conceptualisations of the act of procreation – converting the passionate intimacy of primal scene into a clinical coupling of gametes in a mechanised arena. The author argues that, too charged to contemplate, the gamete's transcendent quality and blurring of elementary personae/ res distinctions leads protagonists, including professionals, to defensive commodification. Multiple emotional meanings are ascribed to gifted gametes by each in the triangle of donor, recipient and offspring, illustrated here with verbatim material. This article addresses some of the far-reaching socio-political consequences for class, race, age, gender and sexuality of asexual reproduction, related to selection procedures and uneven global and local distribution of fertility treatment and its cost in financial, physical, practical and emotional terms. Similarly, feminist unease over (patriarchal) reproductive control and gatekeeping policies are considered, as well as ethical concerns over genetic manipulation, pre-implantation screening, sex selection, selective foetocide and potential exploitation of transnational donors and surrogates.

Ex uno homine tota haec animarum redundantia. Ursprung, Entstehung und Weitergabe der individuellen Seele nach Tertullian

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to examine Tertullian’s opinions on the origin, beginning and transmission of the human soul. These opinions cannot be considered as representing a coherent and systematic doctrine which is evidenced not only by some inner inconsequences and contradictions but also by the fact that Tertullian’s reasoning is to a great extent motivated by the efforts to refute the arguments of his opponents. The core of Tertullian’s “doctrine”—the distinction between the Spirit of God (spiritus) and his breath ( flatus), the latter being the very substance of the human soul, transmitted by the act of procreation and deriving, ultimately, from the original soul of Adam (traducianism)—was intended by him as the main weapon against the alternative concepts of the soul as presented by Hermogenes and Marcion.

Menschen machen aus Akt und Substanz. Prokreation und Vaterschaft im reproduktions - medizinischen und im literarischen Experiment

As an experimental medical practice artificial insemination in humans dates back to the end of the 18th century. Efforts intensified in the second half of the 19th century, when, especially in France, the number of reports in scientific publications increased and the topic became the subject of heated debates. I trace this emergence of reproductive medicine avant la lettre by reviewing the relevant medical publications. Hereby, I focus on how experiments in artificial insemination presupposed a new conceptualisation of procreation which detaches procreation from the doings of human actors by reducing it to the fusion of germ cells. This “biologisation” of pro creation entailed a series of irritations with regard to the determination of “natural” paternity and the impact and relevance of the procreative act’s nature. These irritations are dealt with in a novel that appears in Paris in 1884, entitled The Man-Maker.This novel thus attests to the cultural uncertainties that went along with the emergence of what laid the epistemological ground for the reproductive medicine to come.

Medical and socio-cultural aspects of infertility in the Middle East

The Middle East (ME), an area rich in history and tradition with >300 million population, includes 18 heterogeneous countries concerning resources, income per capita, available healthcare services, population density, growth rate, birth rate, total fertility rate and life expectancy. There is a high prevalence of infertility in the ME because of post-partum infection, unsafe abortion, iatrogenic tubal and pelvic infertility, tuberculosis, schistosomiasis and high incidence of male factor infertility. It is argued that in the ME, the solution to the problem of infertility is its prevention, and population control should take precedence over infertility treatment. However, for a successful family planning program and adoption of small family norms, couples should be reassured that they will be helped to achieve pregnancy should they decide so. Prevention and treatment of infertility are of particular significance in ME because a woman social status, her dignity and self-esteem are closely related to her ability to have children. Also there is gender suffering of infertility in the ME. One of the stumbling blocks to acceptance of assisted reproductive technology (ART) as a line of treatment of infertility was the unacceptability to the main religious groups of the involvement of a third party in the act of procreation. Practices of ART in the ME have many common features and little differences. A mechanism had to be found to provide low-cost ART to the needy.

Kommentar zum Tischgebet des Prudentius (cath.3). By MARIA BECKER.

Prudentius may be the single most important Latin poet of Late Antiquity, as Maria Becker states at the outset of her fine book, a commentary on Cathemerinon 3 (pp. 47–260) with introduction (pp. 1–28) and Latin text and facing German translation (pp. 30–45). Yet the first comprehensive treatment of Prudentius’ work in English dates from as recently as 1989 and, despite a growing number of studies published since then, we are still far from able to paint a detailed picture of Prudentius’ poetic universe. What we lack in particular are commentaries that put our understanding of Prudentius’ poetry philologically on safer ground. Becker's book is such a work. It focuses on only one poem. This, however, contains all the wealth of imagery of Prudentius’ poetry as in a microcosm. Most of it pertains to smell and taste, but there are also violent and erotic images. A fish's mouth is torn and bloodied by an angler's hook. Cattle are ‘murdered’ and shredded into bloody pieces. The Virgin's pregnant body is repeatedly invoked in no uncertain terms, as is Eve's seduction by the serpent and her subsequent suffering as an oppressed housewife. Buckets are foaming with snow-white milk gushing from twin breasts, honey is perspired by the bee hive. The sweet smell of roses, honey, and apples is mixed with the foul smell of corpses. True, Prudentius’ aim is to deny what he affirms: it is the untouched Virgin who conceives. It is God's word that is sweet. It is not meat that is consumed. In fact, the hymn promotes vegetarianism, as Becker explains in a thirty-page excursus (pp. 105–37). But herein also lies the mystery of Prudentius’ poetry: in an effort to overcome passion, passion is aroused by the most sensual imagery, much of which is borrowed from classical literature. The meaning, function, and ultimate purpose of this technique is not yet fully understood. Becker is right in pointing to the typology of Eve and the Virgin as a key motif more than previous studies have done and in developing it in a second long excursus (pp. 210–25). Yet even she does not quite explain why Prudentius embellished it in such erotic terms, mixing metaphors of violence, food, and smell with allusions to the act of procreation that are supposed to constitute a denial of sexual activity (and a denial of physical pleasure in general) and an affirmation of the ascetic, the ‘taming’ of the body by depriving it of pleasure, be it by abstaining from meat (product of physical violence against animals) or by celebrating virginity. The wider ascetic background of Prudentius’ poetry is, of course, well known. What is less understood is why this asceticism operated with such sensual, including violent and sexual, imagery. In that respect, Prudentius’ poetry is as puzzling and probably as little understood as some of Jerome's prose still is, where the same technique is used. Here much interpretative work still needs to be done. But from now on at least we have Becker's excellent commentary as an indispensable aid in that pursuit.

Why we do it: rethinking sex and the selfish gene

Why do people have sex? Is it solely for the purpose of passing on genetic information, or are there other reasons? A candid, no-punches-pulled interpreter of the core ideas of evolutionary biology (Science News), author Niles Eldredge unravels the origins of our coital instincts. Whereas other scientists dismiss human sexuality as a helpless response to the same deep-set biological imperatives that govern the behavior of lesser animals, Eldredge points to various examples of customs, taboos, laws, and other cultural forces that run counter to our most primal desires. Directly assaulting the reductionist selfish gene theory, whereby sex is reduced to a purely procreative act, Eldredge draws on Darwin's ideas about evolution as well as modern economic theory to describe the delicate cultural and societal interaction that exists between survival, sex, and procreation in the human species.

‘Streaming Physical Love’

‘Streaming Physical Love’