Naming the Beast: Using Hengstenberg’s Body to Identify the Nature of Man/Animal Chimeras
Naming the Beast: Using Hengstenberg’s Body to Identify the Nature of Man/Animal Chimeras

Summary/Abstract: Recent developments in stem-cell technology have allowed scientists to combine the genetic material of humans and other animals to create a living embryo. This has led to fervent discussion as to the nature of the human body and what constitutes “man.” Are man and animal as separable as once thought? Is it possible for there to be some sort of transitory creature who is in some ways man and in other ways animal? These questions and others of a similar kind ultimately call into question the phenomenological and metaphysical nature of this new creature and, by extension, the phenomenological and metaphysical nature of man. These doubts require an answer that provides a wholistic response to the issue of the nature of the body of man. The thought of Hans Eduard Hengstenberg presents such an answer. In his work Phenomenology and Metaphysics of the Human Body, Hengstenberg creates an analysis of the nature of the body of man that specifically describes both its unique elements and nature. Using the arguments found in this work, this article aims to use the phenomenology and metaphysics of Hengstenberg to confront the afore mentioned questions and create a description of the body of man that firmly places these man – animal chimeras soundly in the domain of the animal. In doing so this article investigates the nature, goals, purpose, and underlying factors of the physiological and spiritual elements of the body of man and confronts the nature of the body of the chimera.

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