The human person as a fundamental category of sexual and gender education: a phenomenological approach

Abstract

In this article we discuss the ontological foundations of the human person for sexual and gender education. The extremes of materialism, mechanicism, idealism and essentialism tends to annul bodiliness when approaching these foundations, thus we explore the necessity of an anthropological foundation of body-centered sexuality. Methodologically, we made a choice for the phenomenology of bodiliness in Merleau-Ponty and analyzed the concrete aspects of bodiliness and sociableness, discussing its overture to transcendence and its challenges of the necessary utopias to the exercise of human freedom. We conclude that bodiliness is not a sufficient condition, but it is a necessary condition for the integral study of human sexuality, which allows us to situate sociableness and develop transcendence. This prevents a study of sexuality without body, as it occurs in the essentialist and mechanistic approaches.