lyceum-institute-peripatetic-periodical-2026-07-22-technologizing-our-bodies-...

we seek to optimize control over our emotions, our desires, our focus. (Here, I note in passing, the recent interest in a “brand” of Stoicism.) Each aim presumes that there exists a mechanism other than the “self” which chooses to use it. IV. Reforming the Unnatural This presumption does great harm! Not least because it is partially both accurate and true. We are selves who must be responsible for our bodies, and what we are as selves is indeed irreducible to the biological matter that constitutes our boundaries of immediate corporeal awareness. The mind or soul which is responsible for the body is truly different from it; but they are not different as one thing and another. The self is not a vanishing point, and the body is not some mechanism inexplicably belonging to or controlled by this invisible, incalculable, inexpressible “self”. The body is a part of the self, as are the emotions, as are our habits. These parts may be integrated into the whole better or worse, but to treat them as separate in principle is to fracture the self. When we fracture the self, we reduce its being, ultimately, to that vanishing point. Simultaneously, we convert the parts into mere instrumental, voluntary extensions of the self. In effect, we turn them into technologies—parts comprised within a managerial project. Control over the diverse elements of our lives might look, in many of its particulars, like taking care of our living. But the two are very different modes of thinking, with very different consequences. Generally speaking, we develop technologies for the extension of control. Every technology is good or bad, precisely as an instrument and considered apart from any other effects, insofar as it succeeds or fails at this extension. In rendering parts of our lives as technologies of a sort, we find, quickly, that many do not easily extend our control over life; often, to the contrary. We therefore seek to upgrade or improve them. How long before we can replace them with technologies that “perform better”? Even a technology, however, is misjudged if considered only as an instrument apart from any other effects. This abstraction never exists in actuality. Technologies do not operate in a vacuum of other considerations. Their effects are never limited to the direct object of their instrumental extension. More always is involved. Much more so, then, ought we to consider our bodies (or other aspects of our living) as more than mere instruments. The grip of my hand is not measured in the same manner as the grip of my vice clamps, even if they might overlap in their functions. The vice is replaceable; it is not part of me. But the grip of my hand is my grip, as it is my hand; as that hand belongs to me in a way far more intimate than any mere possession ever could. I can and indeed do try to improve the strength of my grip through training, exercise, practice. Sometimes, it fails; this, too, is a part of my own good. Taking care for our lives, that is, recognizes that these parts belong to our living such as to belong amidst a good which cannot be measured according to an extent of control. In failing to conceive these attributes as parts of the self, that is, we not only conceive them wrongly, but even come to measure them incorrectly. V. Conclusion: Resolving Our Measures Measuring the body and its performance is not without good. Certainly, it renders great benefit to the science of medicine. It helps us improve our physical fitness. We may run faster, jump higher, lift heavier weights; and charting progress and performance can aid us in doing this optimally. But to what end? Are we improving for improvement’s sake? Chasing the desires of a vanishing self? It is sad that we would destroy ourselves—unintentionally and even in some sense unconsciously—in misguided efforts to re-build it in our own (distorted) image. Again, I must ask: to what end? Our measurements must be properly subordinated to a good incalculable—not because it is too expansive—if they are to be parts truly of the whole.