I suggested above that war, if not explicitly then tacitly, frames our understanding of other forms of violence, use, or misuse of human bodies. That bodies die is one of the most fascinating things about them. That all human societies have conjured with this fact suggests that we are all troubled at the body's end. No society anywhere at any time, so far as we know, has been disinterested in death and the fate of the dead body. They had seen bodies piled up en masse, shoved into anonymous piles, thrown into lime pits, ill-dignified.
Bodily identity is one essential dimension of the human person.
Perhaps, in not torturing others nor, exploring why torture is repugnant, in not harming the dead and examining why abuse of the dead body is repulsive, we do much more than enact unthinkingly ancient custom or carry out unfeelingly abstract obligation. We link ourselves up with a web of human meanings that go back as far as recognizably human creatures go and will continue so long as such creatures walk the face of the earth, are born, live, and die. Each essayist, in his or her own way, tends to these matters. As we all must. I found lurking in the interstices of modernity.