Abstract

Nagle, Cormac M The advent of the social sciences, psychology and sociology, and their development over the past eighty years or so have made us much more aware of the integrated nature of the human person. Today we are less likely to speak about souls and bodies as separate entities or to be dualistic in our thinking. Nevertheless, the influence of the Stoics in their teaching on natural law and its ethical implications, based on what is natural physically, and later the attempt by Descartes to extend his mechanical approach to science to include human beings (he explicitly describes the body as a machine in his work, Description of the Human Body, (La description du corps humain) is an unfinished treatise, (1647) still seem to infect our thinking in the area of moral teaching and practice