Pregnancy and childbirth have never been invested so far as objects of reflection by philosophers. They are, at best, integrated into broader issues, policies, mostly at worst melted in the darkness of a purely private experience, impossible to universalize - thus deprived of all dignity concept. Thus, these moments yet so common in the lives of nearly half of our species, when (rarely) envisioned by the thinker, are reduced to what they are supposed to be signs - disposal social, the stranglehold of patriarchy as the traditional universalist feminism, or correspondence of irreducible woman with nature to some essentialist rhetoric - when they are not neglected in favor of bioethical questions concerning the status of the embryo ...
But to my knowledge there is no attempt to think, understand, conceptualize these events for themselves, as they are realities to understand and examine the first degree, depending on the point of view the person who lives in the flesh - the pregnant woman and the woman who gives birth.
course, there is the Socratic - But this is not a reflection of the rather brilliant use of an image, itself considered well known, transparent. But what image can make us understand what it's like giving birth to a child? Once past the dizzying time of copulation itself very well described and analyzed since ancient times, we are facing an ocean totally blank mind, which extends roughly from the implantation of egg in the uterus to breastfeeding newborn.
Metaphysics of parturition remains to be built. This terrible gaping
several reasons. We can consider it is just another example of repression of women outside the space of rational power - space traditionally occupied by men of thought. This is so true that some women philosophers to date entries in the Pantheon of the Logos were carefully excluded the possibility of existence of childbirth. One can also find a reason "category" for this absence. Pregnancy and birth are unique experiences - and by definition the singular is not easily accessible to the philosopher. It does not submit to scrutiny of the concept without resistance. There are other similar cases : The experience of desire, that of pain or death. But these have not been so ignored. Probably because men live, all, desire, pain, and death. It was therefore with the pregnancy the problem of a singular experience that is not suitable for all humanity - but only part of the package. The problem is intensified since the party itself may, through prog contraception, shirk this experience, avoid it. Every woman does not give birth, a woman will not give birth.
I am woman, I am modestly profession philosophizing - and I gave birth.
As a woman, I had this unbelievable experience that I'm still not returned.
As a philosopher, I was stunned by this terrible silence, the opacity of any share held in front of what seemed to think so rich, so important to say - something that seemed likely to illuminate an unusual way the human condition - the condition of mankind in general, beyond that of my peers, primiparous, multiparous or nulliparous. Any woman will not give birth - but every woman is affected by birth.
Birth is a business woman - but it is the responsibility of every man, because it also tells us what it means to be human. The role of philosophical thinking has always been, in my view, to clarify the human experience, to clarify the meaning. Why should I be forbidden to enter under the beam of the concept that time of my life?
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