Abstract:Flesh carries memories of theological passions.In Chris tian ity, flesh evokes a creative touch, divine love, and suffering.More prominently, it alludes to sin, lust, and death.To be described as livi...Flesh carries memories of theological passions.In Chris tian ity, flesh evokes a creative touch, divine love, and suffering.More prominently, it alludes to sin, lust, and death.To be described as living "according to the flesh"-as Jews, women, and sexual minorities have been-is to be considered trapped in sinfulness. 1 Outside Christian circles, in everyday uses of the term "flesh," those memories might be barely recognizable; but they are not inconsequential.Desire and instincts are said to inhabit flesh, or even to be indistinguishable from carnality.These associations have earned flesh a bad reputation-but also the admiration of many followers of Eros.Ironically, it is the religious aura of flesh that most troubles postmodern phi los o phers, not its bad reputation.For them, flesh functions as an essence, the self-identity of the body.As a subjective interiority, it fosters the illusion of unmediated sensibility and thus of absolute truth.They also consider flesh to be irremediably Christian, always haunted by the incarnation.Those associations lead some thinkers to denounce flesh and proclaim the end of the passions that "flesh" once named.These phi los o phers' gestures may be hasty, betraying irritability toward the per sis tence of Christian ideas in Western thought, but their critiques cannot be taken lightly.Flesh is a concept prone to metaphysical excess, used not only to demonize corporeality but also to spiritualize it-in both cases losing touch with ordinary bodies.Read More