Taylor Guitars And Scientology

• Taylor Guitars And Scientology Videos

The book is a recruiting tool for Scientology. It's based on Scientology philosophy, but avoids some of their stranger beliefs so it can pass as a 'secular' booklet. The fact that Deering does this is one of the main reasons I always recommend buying a Goldtone over a Deering as a first banjo, unless you can get the Deering used. Taylor Guitars is an American guitar manufacturer based in El Cajon, California and is one of the largest manufacturers of acoustic guitars in the United States.

Beck Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970), known mononymously as Beck, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his experimental and lo-fi style, and became known for creating musical collages of wide genre styles. Today, he musically encompasses folk, funk, soul, hip hop, electronic, alternative rock, country, and psychedelia. He has released 13 studio albums (3 of which were independently released), as well as several non-album singles and a book of sheet music.

Born in Los Angeles in 1970, Beck grew towards hip-hop and folk in his teens and began to perform locally at coffeehouses and clubs. He moved to New York City in 1989 and became involved in the city's small and fiery anti-folk movement. Returning to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, he cut his breakthrough single 'Loser,' which became a worldwide hit in 1994, and released his first major album, Mellow Gold, the same year. Odelay, released in 1996, topped critic polls and won several awards. He released the psychedelic Mutations in 1998, and the funk-infused Midnite Vultures in 1999. The soft-acoustic Sea Change in 2002 showcased a more serious Beck, and 2005's Guero returned to Odelay's sample-based production. The Information in 2006 was inspired by electro-funk, hip hop, and psychedelia; 2008's Modern Guilt was inspired by '60s pop music; and 2014's folk-infused Morning Phase won Album of the Year at the 57th Grammy Awards on February 8, 2015. His thirteenth studio album, Colors, was released in October 2017 after a long production process, and won awards for Best Alternative Album and Best Engineered Album at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. His fourteenth album titled Hyperspace is due in 2019.^[2]

With a pop art collage of musical styles, oblique and ironic lyrics, and postmodern arrangements incorporating samples, drum machines, live instrumentation and sound effects, Beck has been hailed by critics and the public throughout his musical career as being among the most idiosyncratically creative musicians of 1990s and 2000s alternative rock. Two of Beck's most popular and acclaimed recordings are Odelay and Sea Change, both of which were ranked on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The four-time platinum artist has collaborated with several artists and has made several contributions to soundtracks.

• 2Career
• 6Personal life
• 8Discography

Early life[edit]

Beck was born Bek David Campbell^[3][4] in Los Angeles, California, on July 8, 1970.^[5] His father, Canadian arranger, composer, and conductor David Campbell, worked on hundreds of albums and numerous films.^[6] His mother, American visual artist Bibbe Hansen, grew up amid New York's Andy Warhol Factory art scene of the 1960s, where she was a Warhol superstar,^[6] but moved to California at age 17, where she met Beck's father.^[7] Bibbe's maternal grandmother was Jewish, while her father, artist Al Hansen, was of Norwegian descent^[8][9] and was a pioneer in the avant-gardeFluxus movement.^[6] Beck has said that he was 'raised celebrating Jewish holidays' and that he considers himself Jewish.^[10]

Beck began life in a rooming house near downtown Los Angeles. As a child, he lived in a declining neighborhood near Hollywood Boulevard.^[11] He later recalled, 'By the time we left there, they were ripping out miles of houses en masse and building low-rent, giant apartment blocks.'^[7] The lower-class family struggled financially, moving to Hoover and Ninth Street, a neighborhood populated primarily by Koreans and Salvadorian refugees.^[7] He was sent for a time to live with his paternal grandparents in Kansas, later remarking that he thought 'they were kind of concerned' about his 'weird' home life.^[12] Since his paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, Beck grew up influenced by church music and hymns.^[12] He also spent time in Europe with his maternal grandfather.^[6]

After his parents separated when he was 10,^[7] Beck stayed with his mother and brother Channing in Los Angeles, where he was influenced by the city's diverse musical offerings—everything from hip hop to Latin music and his mother's art scene—all of which would later reappear in his work.^{[citation needed]} Beck obtained his first guitar at 16 and became a street musician, often playing Lead Belly covers at Lafayette Park.^[13] During his teens, Beck discovered the music of Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, and X, but remained uninterested in most music outside the folk genre until many years into his career.^[6][7] The first contemporary music that made a direct connection with Beck was hip hop, which he first heard on Grandmaster Flash records in the early 1980s.^[7] Growing up in a predominantly Latin district, he found himself the only white child at his school, and quickly learned how to breakdance.^[7] When he was 17, Beck grew fascinated after hearing a Mississippi John Hurt record at a friend's house,^[14] and spent hours in his room trying to emulate Hurt's finger picking techniques.^[12] Shortly thereafter, Beck explored blues and folk music further, discovering Woody Guthrie and Blind Willie Johnson.^[14]

Feeling like 'a total outcast', Beck dropped out of school after junior high.^[14] He later said that although he felt school was important, he felt unsafe there.^[11] When he applied to the new performing arts high school downtown, he was rejected.^[15] His brother took him to post-Beat jazz places in Echo Park and Silver Lake. He hung out at the Los Angeles City College, perusing records, books and old sheet music in its library. He used a fake I.D. to sit in on classes there, and he also befriended a literature instructor and his poet wife.^[15] He worked at a string of menial jobs, including loading trucks and operating a leaf blower.^[14]

Career[edit]

Early performing and first releases (1988–93)[edit]

Taylor Guitars And Scientology Videos

Beck began as a folk musician, switching between country blues, Delta blues and more traditional rural folk music in his teens.^[7] He began performing on city buses, often covering Mississippi John Hurt alongside original, sometimes improvisational compositions.^[12] 'I'd get on the bus and start playing Mississippi John Hurt with totally improvised lyrics. Some drunk would start yelling at me, calling me Axl Rose. So I'd start singing about Axl Rose and the levee and bus passes and strychnine, mixing the whole thing up,' he later recalled.^[12] He was also in a band called Youthless that hosted Dadaist-inspired freeform events at city coffee shops.^[7] 'We had Radio Shack mics and this homemade speaker and we'd draft people in the audience to recite comic books or do a beatbox thing, or we'd tie the whole audience up in masking tape,' Beck recalled.^[7]

In 1989, Beck caught a bus to New York City with little more than eight dollars and a guitar.^[12] He spent the summer attempting to find a job and a place to live with little success.^[12] Beck eventually began to frequent Manhattan's Lower East Side and stumbled upon the tail end of the East Village's anti-folk scene's first wave.^[6] Beck became involved in a loose posse of acoustic musicians—including Cindy Lee Berryhill, Kirk Kelly, Paleface, and Lach, headed by Roger Manning—whose raggedness and eccentricity placed them well outside the acoustic mainstream.^[14][16] 'The whole mission was to destroy all the clichés and make up some new ones,' said Beck of his New York years. 'Everybody knew each other. You could go up onstage and say anything, and you wouldn't feel weird or feel any pressure.'^[16] Inspired by that freedom and by the local spoken-word performers, Beck began to write free-associative, surrealistic songs about pizza, MTV, and working at McDonald's, turning mundane thoughts into songs.^[16] Beck was roommates with Paleface, sleeping on his couch and attending open mic nights together.^[17] Daunted by the prospect of another homeless New York winter, Beck returned to his home of Los Angeles in early 1991.^[14][18] 'I was tired of being cold, tired of getting beat up,' he later remarked. 'It was hard to be in New York with no money, no place[..] I kinda used up all the friends I had. Everyone on the scene got sick of me.'^[12]

Back in Los Angeles, Beck began to work at a video store in Silver Lake 'doing things like alphabetizing the pornography section'.^[12] He began performing in arthouse clubs and coffeehouses such as Al's Bar and Raji's.^[6][12][14] In order to keep indifferent audiences engaged in his music, Beck would play in a spontaneous, joking manner.^[19] 'I'd be banging away on a Son House tune and the whole audience would be talking. So maybe out of desperation or boredom, or the audience's boredom, I'd make up these ridiculous songs just to see if people were listening,' he later remarked.^[20] Virtually an unknown to the public and an enigma to those who met him, Beck would hop onstage between acts in local clubs and play 'strange folk songs', accompanied by 'what could best be described as performance art' while sometimes wearing a Star Warsstormtrooper mask.^[14] Beck met someone who offered to help record demos in his living room, and he began to pass cassette tapes around.^[14]

Eventually, Beck gained key boosters in Margaret Mittleman, the West Coast's director of talent acquisitions for BMG Music Publishing, and the partners behind independent record labelBong Load Custom Records: Tom Rothrock, Rob Schnapf and Brad Lambert.^[6] Schnapf saw Beck perform at Jabberjaw and felt he would suit their small venture.^[14] Beck expressed a loose interest in hip hop, and Rothrock introduced him to Carl Stephenson, a record producer for Rap-A-Lot Records.^[14][21] In 1992, Beck visited Stephenson's home to collaborate. The result—the slide-sampling hip hop track 'Loser'—was a one-off experiment that Beck set aside, going back to his folk songs, making his home tapes such as Golden Feelings, and releasing several independent singles.^[14]

Mellow Gold, and independent albums (1993–94)[edit]

By 1993, Beck was living in a rat-infested shed near a Los Angeles alleyway with little money.^[12] Bong Load issued 'Loser' as a single in March 1993 on 12' vinyl with only 500 copies pressed.^[22] Beck felt that 'Loser' was mediocre, and only agreed to its release at Rothrock's insistence.^[23] 'Loser' unexpectedly received radio airplay, starting in Los Angeles, where college radio station KXLU was the first to play it,^[22] and later on Santa Monica College radio station KCRW, where radio host Chris Douridas played the song on Morning Becomes Eclectic, the station's flagship music program. 'I called the record label that day and asked to have Beck play live on the air,' Douridas said. 'He came in that Friday, rapped to a tape of 'Loser' and did his song 'MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack.'^[14] That night, Beck performed at the Los Angeles club Cafe Troy to a packed audience and talent scouts from major labels.^[14] The song then spread to Seattle through KNDD, and KROQ-FM began playing the song on an almost hourly basis.^[22] As Bong Load struggled to press more copies of 'Loser', Beck was beset with offers to sign with major labels.^[24] During the bidding war in November, Beck spent several days in Olympia, Washington, recording material with Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening, which would later see release the following year on Johnson's K Records as One Foot in the Grave.^[25]

A fierce bidding war ensued, with Geffen Records A&R director Mark Kates signing Beck in December 1993 despite intense competition from Warner Bros. and Capitol.^[14][25] Beck's non-exclusive contract with Geffen allowed him an unusual amount of creative freedom, with Beck remaining free to release material through such small, independent labels as Flipside, which issued the sprawling, 25-track collection of pre-'Loser' recordings titled Stereopathetic Soulmanure on February 22 the following year.^[14][25] By the time Beck released his first album for Geffen, the low-budget, genre-blending Mellow Gold on March 1,^[14] 'Loser' was already in the top 40 and its video in MTV's Buzz Bin.^[11] 'Loser' quickly ascended the charts in the U.S., reaching a peak of number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and topping the Modern Rock Tracks chart.^[26] The song also charted in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe. Beck's newfound position of attention led to his characterization as the 'King of Slackers', as the media dubbed him the center of the new so-called 'slacker' movement.^[27] Critics, feeling it the essential follow-up to Radiohead's 'Creep',^[25] found vacantness in the lyrics of 'Loser' strongly associated with Generation X, although Beck himself strongly contested his position as the face of the 'slacker' generation: 'Slacker my ass. I mean, I never had any slack. I was working a $4-an-hour job trying to stay alive. That slacker stuff is for people who have the time to be depressed about everything.'^[12]

Backlash and Odelay (1994–97)[edit]

Feeling as though he were 'constantly trying to prove myself',^[11] Beck suffered a backlash, with skeptics denouncing him as a self-indulgent fake and the latest marketing opportunity.^[28] In the summer of 1994, Beck was struggling and many of his fellow musicians thought he had lost his way.^[7] Combined with the song's wildly popular music video and the world tour, Beck reacted believing the attention could not last, resulting in a status as a 'one-hit wonder'. At other concerts, crowds were treated to twenty minutes of reggae or Miles Davis or jazz-punk iterations of 'Loser'.^[15] At one-day festivals in California, he surrounded himself with an artnoise combo. The drummer set fire to his cymbals; the lead guitarist 'played' his guitar with the strings faced towards his body; and Beck changed the words to 'Loser' so that nobody could sing along.^[7] 'I can't tell you how many times I was looking at faces that were looking back at me with complete bewilderment—or just pointing and shaking their heads and laughing—while performing during that period,' he later recalled.^[29] Despite this, Beck gained the respect of his peers, such as Tom Petty and Johnny Cash, and created an entire wave of bands determined to recapture the Mellow Gold sound.^[30] Feeling his previous releases were just collections of demos recorded over the course of several years, Beck desired to enter the studio and record an album in a continuous linear fashion, which became Odelay.^[29]

Beck blends country, blues, rap, jazz and rock on Odelay, the result of a year and half of feverish 'cutting, pasting, layering, dubbing, and, of course, sampling'.^[13] Each day, the musicians started from scratch,^[31] often working on songs for 16 hours straight.^[13]Odelay's conception lies in an unfinished studio album Beck first embarked on following the success of 'Loser', chronicling the difficult time he experienced: 'There was a cycle of everyone dying around me,' he recalled later.^[30] He was constantly recording, and eventually put together an album of somber, orchestrated folk tunes; one that, perhaps, 'could have been a commercial blockbuster along with similarly themed work by Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana'.^[30] Instead, Beck plucked one song from it—the Odelay album closer 'Ramshackle'—and shelved the rest ('Brother' and 'Feather In Your Cap' were, however, later released as B-sides).^[7][30] Beck was introduced to the Dust Brothers, producers of the Beastie Boys' album Paul's Boutique, whose cut-and-paste, sample-heavy production suited Beck's vision of a more fun, accessible album.^{[citation needed]} After a record executive explained that Odelay would be a 'huge mistake', he spent many months thinking 'that I'd blown it forever'.^[15]

Odelay was released on June 18, 1996, to commercial success and critical acclaim. The record produced several hit singles, including 'Where It's At', 'Devils Haircut', and 'The New Pollution',^[32] and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1997, winning a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album as well as a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for 'Where It's At'. During one busy week in January 1997, he landed his Grammy nominations, appeared on Saturday Night Live and Howard Stern, and did a last-minute trot on The Rosie O'Donnell Show. The combined buzz gave Odelay a second wind, leading to an expanded fan base and additional exposure.^[20] Beck enjoyed but, like several executives at Geffen, was bewildered by the success of Odelay. He would often get recognized in public, which made him feel strange. 'It's just weird. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel natural to me. I don't think I was made for that. I was never good at that,' he later told Pitchfork.^[29]Odelay sold two million copies and put 'one-hit wonder' criticisms to rest. During this time, he contributed the song 'Deadweight' to the soundtrack of the film A Life Less Ordinary (1997).^[33]

Mutations and Midnite Vultures (1998–2001)[edit]

Having not been in a proper studio since 'Deadweight', Beck felt anxious to 'go in and just do some stuff real quick', and compiled several songs he had had for years.^[33] Beck and his bandmates hammered out fourteen songs in fourteen days, although just twelve made it onto the album, 1998's Mutations.^[33] Beck decided on Nigel Godrich, producer for Radiohead's OK Computer the previous year, to be behind the boards for the project.^[33] Godrich was leaving the United States for England in a short time, which led to the album's quick production schedule—'No looking back, no doctoring anything'.^[33] The whole point of the record was to capture the performance of the musicians live, an uncharacteristic far-cry from the cut-and-paste aesthetic of Odelay.^[33] Though the album was originally slated for release by Bong Load Records, Geffen intervened and issued the record against Beck's wishes.^[34][35] The artist then sought to void his contracts with both record labels, and in turn the labels sued him for breach of contract. The litigation went on for years and it remains unclear to this day if it has ever been completely resolved.^[36] Beck was later awarded Best Alternative Music Performance for Mutations at the 42nd Grammy Awards.^[37]

Midnite Vultures, Beck's next studio effort, was originally recorded as a double album, and more than 25 nearly completed songs were left behind.^[29] In the studio, Beck and producers studied contemporary hip hop and R&B, specifically R. Kelly, in order to embrace and incorporate those influences in the way Al Green and Stax records had done in previous decades.^[29] In July 1998, a core group began to assemble at Beck's Pasadena home: bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen, keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and producer-engineers Mickey Petralia and Tony Hoffer.^[31] Dozens of session players passed through, including Beck's father, David Campbell, who played viola and arranged some of the strings. The musicians held communal meals and mountain-bike rides on dusty trails nearby, but remained focused on Beck's instructions: to make an up-tempo album that would be fun to play on tour night after night.^[31] 'I had so many things going on', said Beck of the recording process. 'I had a couple of rooms of computers hooked up, I was doing B sides for Japan, I was programming beats in one room and someone would be cooking dinner in the other room.'^[31] In November 1999, Geffen released the much-anticipated Midnite Vultures,^[38] which attracted confusion: 'fans and critics misguidedly worried whether it was serious or a goof,' and as a result, The New York Times wrote that the album 'never won the audience it deserved'.^[39] The record was supported by an extensive world tour. For Beck, it was a return to the high-energy performances that had been his trademark as far back as Lollapalooza. The live stage set included a red bed that descended from the ceiling for the song 'Debra', and the touring band was complemented by a brass section.^[40]Midnite Vultures was nominated for Best Album at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards.^[41]

Sea Change (2002–03)[edit]

In 2000, Beck and his fiancée, stylist Leigh Limon, ended their nine-year relationship.^[42] Beck lapsed into a period of melancholy and introspection, during which he wrote the bleak, acoustic-based tracks later found on Sea Change.^[43] Beck sat on the songs, not wanting to talk about his personal life; he later said that he wanted to focus on music and 'not really strew my baggage across the public lobby'. Eventually, however, he decided the songs spoke to a common experience (a relationship breakup), and that it would not seem self-indulgent to record them.^[44] In 2001, Beck drifted back to the songs and called producer Nigel Godrich.^[45]

Retailers initially predicted that the album would not receive much radio support, but they also believed that Beck's maverick reputation and critical acclaim, in addition to the possibility of multiple Grammy nominations, might offset Sea Change's noncommercial sound.^[44]Sea Change, issued by Geffen in September 2002, was regardless a commercial hit and critical darling,^[39] with Rolling Stone revering it as 'the best album Beck has ever made, [..] an impeccable album of truth and light from the end of love. This is his Blood on the Tracks.'^[46] The album was later listed by the magazine as one of the best records of the decade and of all-time, and it also placed second on the year's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll. Sea Change yielded a low-key, theater-based acoustic tour, as well as a larger tour with The Flaming Lips as Beck's opening and backing band.^[47][48] Beck was playful and energetic, sometimes throwing in covers of The Rolling Stones, Big Star, The Zombies and The Velvet Underground.^[46][49]

Following the release of Sea Change, Beck felt newer compositions were sketches for something more evolved in the same direction, and wrote nearly 35 more songs in the coming months, keeping demos of them on tapes in a suitcase.^[29] During his solo tour, the tapes were left backstage during a stop in Washington, D.C., and Beck was never able to recover them. It was disheartening to the musician, who felt the two years of songwriting represented something more technically complex. As a result, Beck took a break and wrote no original compositions in 2003.^[29] Feeling as though it might take him a while to 'get back to that [songwriting] territory', he entered the studio with Dust Brothers to complete a project that dated back to Odelay. Nearly half of the songs had existed since the 1990s.^[29]

Guero and The Information (2004–07)[edit]

Guero, Beck's eighth studio album, was recorded over the span of nine months during which several significant events occurred in his life: his girlfriend, Marissa Ribisi, became pregnant; they were married; their son, Cosimo, was born; and they moved out of Silver Lake.^[39][50] The collaboration with the Dust Brothers, his second, was notable for their use of high-tech measures to achieve a lo-fi sound.^[39] For example, after recording a 'sonically perfect' version of a song at one of the nicest recording studios in Hollywood, the Dust Brothers processed it in an Echoplex to create a gritty, reverb-heavy sound: 'We did this high-tech recording and ran it through a transistor radio. It sounded too good, that was the problem.'^[39] Initially due to be released in October 2004, Guero faced delays and did not come out till March 2005, though unmastered copies of the tracks surfaced online in January.^[51]

Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high.^[52] Lead single 'E-Pro' peaked at number one at Modern Rock radio, making it his first chart-topper since 'Loser'.^[53] Beck, inspired by the Nintendocore remix scene and feeling a connection with its lo-fi, home-recording method, collaborated with artists 8-Bit and Paza on Hell Yes, an EP issued in February 2005.^[50] In December 2005, Geffen also issued Guerolito, a fully reworked version of Guero featuring remixes by the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock, the Dust Brothers' John King and Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada.^[50]Guerolito combines remixes previously heard as B-sides and new versions of album tracks to make a track-by-track reconfiguration of the album.^[50] Also released in 2005 was A Brief Overview, a 12-track promotional-only 'History of Beck' compilation CD sampler that featured a combination of older and newer Beck tracks.^[54]

The Information, Beck's ninth studio album, began production around the same time as Guero, in 2003. Working with producer Nigel Godrich, Beck built a studio in his garden, where they wrote many of the tracks.^[55] 'The idea was to get people in a room together recording live, hitting bad notes and screaming,' said Beck, adding that the album is best described as 'introspective hip hop'.^[56] Beck described the recording process as 'painful', noting that he edited down songs constantly and he perhaps recorded the album three times.^[57] For the release, Beck was allowed for the first time to fulfill a long-running wish for an unconventional rollout: he made low-budget videos to accompany each song, packaged the CD with sheets of stickers so buyers could customize the cover, and leaked tracks and videos on his website months ahead of the album's release.^[55][58] Digital download releases automatically downloaded the song's additional video for each single sale, and physical copies came bundled with an additional DVD featuring fifteen videos.^[55]

Modern Guilt (2008)[edit]

In 2007, Beck released the single 'Timebomb', which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance.^[59] For his next studio effort, his tenth, Beck tapped Danger Mouse to produce, and the two first met in December 2007 to record. The duo knocked out two tracks in two days, but the notion that the album would be finished in a timely fashion soon evaporated.^[59] Beck had known Danger Mouse casually before, as many of his former musicians ended up working with Danger Mouse's side project, Gnarls Barkley. Still, the musicians were surprised at how well they got along.^[60] Following the grueling recording schedule, Beck was exhausted, calling it 'the most intense work I've ever done on anything', relating that he 'did at least 10 weeks with no days off, until four or five in the morning every night.'^[60] Beck's original vision was a short 10-track burst with two-minute songs, but the songs gradually grew as he fit 'two years of songwriting into two and a half months.'^[60]Modern Guilt (2008) was 'full of off-kilter rhythms and left-field breakdowns, with an overall 1960s vibe.'

Record Club, Song Reader, production work and non-album singles (2009–13)[edit]

Modern Guilt was the final release in Beck's contract with Geffen Records. Beck, then 38, had held the contract since his early 20s.^[59][60] Released from his label contract and going independent, Beck began working more heavily on his own seven-year-old label, which went through a variety of names.^[29] His focus on smaller, more quixotic projects,^[15] Beck moonlighted as a producer, working with artists such as Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thurston Moore and Stephen Malkmus.^[29] Beck worked for five or six days a week at the small studio on his property in Malibu, and founded Record Club, a project whereby an entire classic album—by The Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, INXS, Yanni—would be covered by another singer in the span of a single day.^[15] Beck provided four songs for the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), each attributed to the title character's fictional band, Sex Bob-Omb.^[61] Beck also collaborated with Philip Glass,^[62]Jack White,^[63]Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow,^[64] Jamie Lidell,^[65]Seu Jorge,^[66]Childish Gambino,^[67] and The Lonely Island.^[68]

Song Reader, a project Beck released in December 2012, is 20 songs presented only as sheet music, in the hopes that enterprising musicians will record their own versions.^[69] The idea of Song Reader came about nearly fifteen years prior, shortly after the release of Odelay.^[15] When sent a book of transcribed sheet music for that album, Beck decided to play through it and grew interested in the world before recorded sound. He aimed to keep the arrangements as open as possible, to re-create the simplicity of the standards, and became preoccupied with creating only pieces that could fit within the Great American Songbook.^[15] In 2013 Beck began playing special Song Reader concerts with a variety of guests and announced he was working on a record of Song Reader material with other musicians as well as possibly a compilation of fan versions.^[70]

In the summer of 2013, Beck was reported to be working on two new studio albums: one a more self-contained acoustic disc in the vein of One Foot in the Grave and another described as a 'proper follow-up' to Modern Guilt.^[71] Beck expected to release both albums independently, and released two standalone singles over the course of the summer: the electro ballad 'Defriended' and the chorus-heavy 'I Won't Be Long'.^[71][72] A third single, 'Gimme', appeared on September 17.^[73]

Morning Phase, Colors, and Hyperspace (2014–present)[edit]

In October 2013, Beck signed to Capitol Records. On January 20, 2014, Beck released the track 'Blue Moon', which was to be the lead single for his twelfth studio album, Morning Phase.^[74] On February 4, second single 'Waking Light' was released, just prior to the official release of Morning Phase on February 21, 2014.^[75][76][77] For the recording of the album, Beck reunited with many of the same musicians with whom he had worked on the critically acclaimed 2002 album Sea Change, and likely because of this, it has been noted that the two albums have a similar genre.^[78]

On February 8, 2015, at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, Morning Phase won three Grammys: Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Rock Album; and Album of the Year.^[79] Upon receiving the Album of the Year award, the album beat out Pharrell Williams's G I R L, Beyoncé's self-titled album, Sam Smith's In the Lonely Hour, and Ed Sheeran's x.^[80]

In the time after Morning Phase's release and general critical success, Beck mentioned that he had been working on another album at around the same time, but that the new album would be more of a pop record. Shortly after Morning Phase's Grammy wins, on June 15, 2015, Beck released the first single titled 'Dreams' off this upcoming thirteenth studio album. 'I was really trying to make something that would be good to play live,' he said shortly after its release.^[81] However, no further word was heard from Beck pertaining to the release of the album. On June 2, 2016, almost a year after the initial release of 'Dreams,' Beck released a new single titled 'Wow', along with a lyric video of the song and an announcement that his still untitled album would be released on October 21, 2016.^[82] In September 2016, the album was delayed with no new release date announced and, on September 24, Beck said he didn't know 'when it's coming out. It's probably in a few months.'^[83] Once again, however, no further singles were released and no new release date was scheduled for the album.

On September 8, 2017, Beck released the single 'Dear Life,' which was quickly followed up with the official release of 'Up All Night' on September 18.^[84][85]Colors was released on October 13, 2017. It was recorded at co-executive producer Greg Kurstin'sLos Angeles studio, with Beck and Kurstin playing nearly every instrument themselves.^[86] The experimental pop-fused record received generally positive reviews from critics.^[87] On July 18, 2018, Beck performed the title track Colors, and the first single 'Wow' on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.^[88]

On April 15, 2019 Beck released a new single co-produced with Pharrell Williams 'Saw Lightning' and revealed that his next album, titled Hyperspace, would release in summer 2019.^[2]

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Beck among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.^[89]

Collaborations and contributions[edit]

In 1999, Beck contributed to a tribute album for Bruce Haack and Esther Nelson and their label Dimension 5 Records. The album, Dimension Mix, released in 2005, was a benefit for Cure Autism Now that was produced by Ross Harris, an early collaborator who designed the artwork for Mellow Gold.

On June 20, 2009, Beck announced that he was starting an experiment called Record Club, in which he and other musicians would record cover versions of entire albums in one day. The first album covered by Beck's Record Club was The Velvet Underground & Nico. Starting on June 18, the club began posting covers of songs from the album on Thursday evenings, each with its own video.^[90] On September 4, 2009, Beck announced the second Record Club album, Songs of Leonard Cohen. Contributors included MGMT, Devendra Banhart, Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother and Binki Shapiro of Little Joy.^[91] In the third Record Club venture, Wilco, Feist, Jamie Lidell and James Gadson joined Beck to cover Skip Spence's Oar. The first song, 'Little Hands', was posted on Beck's website on November 12, 2009.^[92] The Record Club has since covered albums by INXS and Yanni.

On June 19, 2009, Beck announced Planned Obsolescence, a weekly DJ set put together by Beck or guest DJs. Soon after, on July 7, Beck announced that his website would be featuring 'extended informal conversations with musicians, artists, filmmakers, and other various persons' in a section called Irrelevant Topics. Then, on July 12, he added a section called Videotheque, which he said would contain 'promotional videos from each album, as well as live clips, TV show appearances and other rarities'. Also in 2009, Beck collaborated with Charlotte Gainsbourg on her album IRM, which was released in January 2010. Beck wrote the music, co-wrote the lyrics, and produced and mixed the album. The lead single, 'Heaven Can Wait', is a duet by Beck and Gainsbourg.^[93]

In late February 2010, it was announced that electronic artist Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow had collaborated with Beck on two songs, 'Fresh Hex' and 'Grape Aerosmith', on his upcoming album Maniac Meat. Tobacco revealed that in making the album, Beck sent the vocal parts to him, and that they had never actually met.^{[citation needed]} In March 2010, Beck revealed that he had produced songs for the new Jamie Lidell album, Compass.^[94] In the summer of 2010, Beck contributed songs to both The Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack, with 'Let's Get Lost' (a duet with Bat for Lashes),^[95] and True Blood (HBO Original Series Soundtrack, Vol. 2), with 'Bad Blood'.^[96] He also contributed songs to the soundtrack of Edgar Wright's film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which was released in August 2010.^[97]

In 2011, he collaborated with Seu Jorge on a track titled 'Tropicália (Mario C. 2011 Remix)' for the Red Hot Organization's most recent charitable album Red Hot+Rio 2, a follow-up to the 1996 album Red Hot + Rio. Proceeds from the sales will be donated to raise awareness and money to fight AIDS/HIV and related health and social issues.^[98] He also contributed on the song 'Attracted to Us' on Turtleneck & Chain, the second album from The Lonely Island. Also in 2011, Beck produced a solo album by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth called Demolished Thoughts. An album he produced for Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Mirror Traffic, was released in August 2011.

In October 2011, it was widely reported that Beck and producer Hector Castillo were collaborating with American composer Philip Glass to produce a remix album of the composer's works in honor of his 75th birthday.^{[99][100][101][102]} The album, Rework Philip Glass Remixed, was released on October 23, 2012, to critical acclaim, and featured Beck as both a curator and a performer.^[103][104] In particular, Pitchfork described Beck's 22-minute contribution to the album, 'NYC: 73–78', as 'a fantasia .. the most startling and original piece of music with Beck's name on it in a while, and the first new work to bear his own spirit in even longer.'^[105] Reflecting on Beck's contribution to the album, Glass remarked that he was 'impressed by the novelty and freshness of a lot of the ideas'.^[106] Beyond his work as a performer, Beck acted as the album's curator, bringing together a diverse collection of artists—including Amon Tobin, Tyondai Braxton, Nosaj Thing, and Memory Tapes—whose work had also been influenced by Glass.^[107][108] In December 2012, an interactive iPhone app titled 'Rework_' was released to complement the album.^[109][110]

Beck has contributed three new songs—'Cities', 'Touch the People' and 'Spiral Staircase'—to the video game Sound Shapes for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita.^[111] Beck collaborated on two songs for Childish Gambino's 'Royalty' mixtape in 2012.^[112] In 2014, Beck collaborated with Sia for the song 'Moonquake Lake', which is featured in the soundtrack for the 2014 Annie film.^[113]

In 2015, Beck collaborated with former Fun. frontman Nate Ruess on the single 'What This World Is Coming To', which was one of the Grammy-winning artist's many works featured on his debut solo album Grand Romantic released in June 2015. He also collaborated with electronic dance music duo The Chemical Brothers on their most recent album Born in the Echoes, providing lead vocals and also credited in writing for the track 'Wide Open', released in July.^[114] In 2016, Beck collaborated with French electronic music band M83, providing vocals for the song 'Time Wind' from their album Junk. He was also featured on 'Tiny Cities' by Flume. He also collaborated with Lady Gaga on the song 'Dancin' in Circles', from her 2016 album Joanne.^[115]

In 2017, Beck appeared in the multi award-winning film The American Epic Sessions, directed by Bernard MacMahon. He recorded '14 Rivers, 14 Floods' backed by a full gospel choir, live onto the first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s.^[116]

In 2019, Beck worked with Jenny Lewis on the song 'Do Si Do' from her album On the Line. He also collaborated with Cage the Elephant on the song 'Night Running' from their album Social Cues.

Musical style[edit]

Beck's musical style has been considered alternative^[117] and indie.^[118] He has played many of the instruments in his music himself.^[119] Beck has also done some remixes for fellow artists, notably David Bowie and Björk. He has been known to synthesize several musical elements together in his music, including folk, psychedelia, electronic, country, Latin music, hip hop, funk, soul, blues, noise music, jazz, and many types of rock.^[120] He has also taken music from Los Angeles as a reference point in his songs.^[120]

Beck has an irreverent style of sampling, often using such sources as obscure films to splice together cuts of people talking in the background of his music, or various other found sounds to create sound collages in the background of his music.^{[citation needed]}

Pitchfork Media applauded Midnite Vultures, saying, 'Beck wonderfully blends Prince, Talking Heads, Paul's Boutique, 'Shake Your Bon-Bon,' and Mathlete on Midnite Vultures, his most consistent and playful album yet.' The review continued to comment on Beck, saying that his mix of goofy piety and ambiguous intent helped the album.^[121]A Beck song called 'Harry Partch,' a tribute to the composer and his 'Corporeal' music, employs Partch's 43-tone scale.^[122]

Art career[edit]

During 1998, Beck's art collaborations with his grandfather Al Hansen were featured in an exhibition titled 'Beck & Al Hansen: Playing With Matches', which showcased solo and collaborative collage, assemblage, drawing and poetry works.^[123] The show toured from the Santa Monica Museum of Art to galleries in New York City and Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada. A catalog of the show was published by Plug in Editions/Smart Art Press.^[124]

Personal life[edit]

Family[edit]

Beck's nine-year relationship with designer Leigh Limon and their subsequent breakup is said to have inspired his 2002 album, Sea Change.^[125] He wrote most of the songs for the album in one week after the breakup.^[126] In April 2004, shortly before the birth of their son Cosimo Henri, Beck married actress Marissa Ribisi, who is the twin sister of actor Giovanni Ribisi.^[127][128] Their daughter, Tuesday, was born in 2007.^[59] On February 15, 2019, Beck filed for divorce from Ribisi after nearly 15 years of marriage.^[129]

Beck suffered a spinal injury while filming the music video for 2005's 'E-Pro'. The incident was severe enough to curtail his touring schedule for a few years, but he has since recovered.^[70][130]

Religion[edit]

Beck has self-identified both as Jewish^[10] and as a Scientologist.^[131] Beck has been involved in Scientology for most of his life; his estranged wife, Marissa, is also a second-generation Scientologist.^[132] Beck publicly acknowledged his affiliation with Scientology for the first time in an interview published in The New York Times Magazine on March 6, 2005. Further confirmation came in an interview with the Irish Sunday Tribune'si Magazine on June 11, 2005, where he was quoted as saying, 'Yeah, I'm a Scientologist. My father has been a Scientologist for about 35 years, so I grew up in and around it.'

Appearances in media[edit]

The 1986 punk rock musical film Population: 1, starring Tomata du Plenty of The Screamers, features a young Beck in a small nonspeaking role.^[133] Beck also appears in Southlander (2001), an American independent film by Steve Hanft and Ross Harris.^[134]

Beck has performed on Saturday Night Live seven times. During his 2006 performance in the Hugh Laurie episode, Beck was accompanied by the puppets that had been used onstage during his world tour. He has made two cameo appearances as himself on Saturday Night Live: one in a sketch about medicinal marijuana, and one in a VH1 Behind the Music parody that featured 'Fat Albert & the Junkyard Gang'.^[135]

Beck performed a guest voice as himself on Matt Groening's animated show Futurama, in the episode 'Bendin' in the Wind'.^[136] He performed in episode 11 of the fourth season of The Larry Sanders Show, in which the producer character Artie (Rip Torn) referred to him as a 'hillbilly from outer space'.^[137] He also made a very brief voice appearance in the 1998 cartoon feature film The Rugrats Movie,^[138] and guest-starred as himself in a 1997 episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast titled 'Edelweiss'.^[139]

On January 22, 2010, Beck appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien's last show as a backup guitarist for a Will Ferrell–led rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Free Bird' alongside ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper, and O'Brien himself on guitar.^[140][141] On March 1, 2014, Beck was the musical guest on a Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Jim Parsons. Beck also appeared in the 2017 film The Circle, as himself giving a musical performance of the song 'Dreams'.

Discography[edit]

Studio albums[edit]

• Golden Feelings (1993)
• Stereopathetic Soulmanure (1994)
• Mellow Gold (1994)
• One Foot in the Grave (1994)
• Odelay (1996)
• Mutations (1998)
• Midnite Vultures (1999)
• Sea Change (2002)
• Guero (2005)
• The Information (2006)
• Modern Guilt (2008)
• Morning Phase (2014)
• Colors (2017)
• Hyperspace (2019)^[142]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

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134. ^Gordon, Jeremy (May 10, 2016). 'Beck, Elliott Smith-Starring Cult Classic Southlander Gets Reissue'. Pitchfork. Retrieved October 16, 2017.
135. ^Ryan, Maureen (October 30, 2006). 'Bright spots scarce on 'SNL''. Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on July 7, 2008. Retrieved April 26, 2008.
136. ^'Futurama Volume Three DVD'. Sci Fi. May 3, 2004. Archived from the original on July 1, 2008. Retrieved April 26, 2008.
137. ^'Beck: 'Gamma Ray''. LastBroadcast.co.uk. August 11, 2008. Retrieved September 1, 2009.
138. ^IMDB entry for The Rugrats Movie full cast & crew.
139. ^IMDB entry for 'Edelweiss'.
140. ^Roberts, Soraya (January 23, 2010). 'Will Ferrell and wife Viveca Paulin perform 'Free Bird' with Conan O'Brien on last 'Tonight Show''. New York Daily News. New York. Retrieved November 21, 2010.
141. ^Leo, Alex (January 23, 2010). 'Will Ferrell Sings Free Bird on Conan's Last Show (VIDEO)'. The Huffington Post. New York. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
142. ^Minsker, Evan (April 15, 2019). 'Beck Announces New Album Hyperspace, Shares Song With Pharrell: Listen'. Pitchfork. Retrieved April 15, 2019.

External links[edit]

• Beck at AllMusic
• Beck on IMDb
• Diskobox, comprehensive discography
• Whiskeyclone.net, large, informative Beck site
• Stewoo.net, the largest Beck fan forum
• Beck at Rolling Stone

The beginning of human personhood is the moment when a human is first recognized as a person. There are differences of opinion as to the precise time when human personhood begins and the nature of that status. The issue arises in a number of fields including science, religion, philosophy, and law, and is most acute in debates relating to abortion, stem cell research, reproductive rights, and fetal rights.

Traditionally, the concept of personhood has entailed the concept of soul, a metaphysical concept referring to a non-corporeal or extra-corporeal dimension of human being. However, in modernity, the concepts of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, personhood, mind, and self have come to encompass a number of aspects of human being previously considered to be characteristics of the soul.^[1][2] With regard to the beginning of human personhood, one historical question has been: when does the soul enter the body? In modern terms, the question could be put instead: at what point does the developing individual develop personhood or selfhood?^[3]

Related issues attached to the question of the beginning of human personhood include both the legal status, bodily integrity, and subjectivity of mothers^[4] and the philosophical concept of 'natality' (i.e. 'the distinctively human capacity to initiate a new beginning', which a new human life embodies).^[5]

• 3Fetal personhood in law
• 4Other markers
• 6Legal perspectives

Fertilization[edit]

Fertilization is the fusing of the gametes, that is a sperm cell and an ovum (egg cell), to form a zygote. At this point, the zygote is genetically distinct from either of its parents.

Fertilization was not understood in ancient times. Alexander the Great and Augustus Caesar were reputed to have been conceived without fertilization (virgin birth). Hippocrates believed that the embryo was the product of male semen and a female factor. But Aristotle held that only male semen gave rise to an embryo, while the female only provided a place for the embryo to develop,^[6] (a concept he acquired from the preformationistPythagoras). William Harvey refuted Aristotle's idea that menstrual blood could be involved in the formation of a fetus, asserting that eggs from the female were somehow caused to become a fetus as a result of sexual intercourse.^[7]Sperm cells were discovered in 1677 by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who believed that Aristotle had been proven correct.^[8] Some observers believed they could see an entirely pre-formed little human body in the head of a sperm.^[9] The human ova was first observed in 1827 by Karl Ernst von Baer.^[8] Only in 1876 did Oscar Hertwig prove that fertilization is due to fusion of an egg and sperm cell.^[6]

Many members of the medical community accept fertilization as the point at which life begins. Dr. Bradley M. Patten from the University of Michigan wrote in Human Embryology that the union of the sperm and the ovum 'initiates the life of a new individual' beginning 'a new individual life history.' In the standard college text bookPsychology and Life, Dr. Floyd L. Ruch wrote 'At the time of conception, two living germ cells—the sperm from the father and the egg, or ovum, from the mother—unite to produce a new individual.' Dr. Herbert Ratner wrote that 'It is now of unquestionable certainty that a human being comes into existence precisely at the moment when the sperm combines with the egg.' This certain knowledge, Ratner says, comes from the study of genetics. At fertilization, all of the genetic characteristics, such as the color of the eyes, 'are laid down determinatively.' James C. G. Conniff noted the prevalence of the above views in a study published by The New York Times Magazine in which he wrote, 'At that moment conception takes place and, scientists generally agree, a new life begins—silent, secret, unknown.'^[10]

The view that life begins at fertilization reached acceptance from mainstream sources at one point. In 1967, New York City school officials launched a large sex education program. The fifth grade textbook stated 'Human life begins when the sperm cells of the father and the egg cells of the mother unite. This union is referred to as fertilization. For fertilization to take place and a baby to begin growing, the sperm cell must come in direct contact with the egg cell.' Similarly, a textbook used in Evanston, Illinois stated: 'Life begins when a sperm cell and an ovum (egg cell) unite.'^[11] Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft goes so far as to say:^[12]

This is widely accepted still today and has been verified by the scientific community.

'To begin with, scientifically something very radical occurs between the processes of gametogenesis and fertilization: the change from a simple part of one human being (i.e., a sperm) and a simple part of another human being (i.e., an oocyte,usually referred to as an 'ovum' or 'egg'), which simply possess 'human life', to a new, genetically unique, newly existing, individual, whole living human being (a single-cell embryonic human zygote). That is, upon fertilization, parts of human beings have actually been transformed into something very different from what they were before; they have been changed into a single, whole human being. During the process of fertilization, the sperm and the oocyte cease to exist as such, and a new human being is produced.

To understand this, it should be remembered that each kind of living organism has a specific number and quality of chromosomes that are characteristic for each member of a species. (The number can vary only slightly if the organism is to survive.) For example, the characteristic number of chromosomes for a member of the human species is 46 (plus or minus, e.g., in human beings with Down's or Turner's syndromes). Every somatic (or, body) cell in a human being has this characteristic number of chromosomes. Even the early germ cells contain 46 chromosomes; it is only their mature forms - the sex gametes, or sperms and oocytes - which will later contain only 23 chromosomes each.1 Sperms and oocytes are derived from primitive germ cells in the developing fetus by means of the process known as 'gametogenesis.' Because each germ cell normally has 46 chromosomes, the process of 'fertilization' can not take place until the total number of chromosomes in each germ cell are cut in half. This is necessary so that after their fusion at fertilization the characteristic number of chromosomes in a single individual member of the human species (46) can be maintained, otherwise we would end up with a monster of some sort.'^[13]

Others have disputed this view. Law professor and ethicist Richard Stith has written that the proper word for the growth of a fetus is not construction, as of a house or car, but development, as of a (pre-digital-era) photograph or a tree sapling:

Human beings do develop. To think they are constructed is flatly erroneous.. We know with certainty that quickening is an illusion, that the child is developing from the beginning, not being made from the outside, for its form lies within it, in its active potency, in its activated DNA.^[14]

That a human individual's existence begins at fertilization is the accepted position of the Roman Catholic Church, whose Pontifical Academy for Life declared: 'The moment that marks the beginning of the existence of a new 'human being' is constituted by the penetration of sperm into the oocyte. Fertilization promotes a series of linked events and transforms the egg cell into a 'zygote'.'^[15] The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith also has stated and reaffirmed: 'From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a new life is begun which is neither that of the father nor of the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth.'^[16] Eastern Orthodox churches and most of the more conservative Protestant denominations also teach this view of life.

Philosophical and religious perspectives[edit]

Answers to the question of when human life begins and when personhood begins have varied among social contexts, and have changed with shifts in ethical and religious beliefs, sometimes as a result of advances in scientific knowledge; in general they have developed in parallel with attitudes to abortion^[17] and to the use of infanticide as a means of reproductive control.

Since the zygote is genetically identical to the embryo, the fully formed fetus, and the baby, questioning the beginning of personhood could lead to an instance of the Sorites paradox, also known as the paradox of the heap.^[18]

Neil Postman has written that in pre-modern societies, the lives of children were not regarded as unique or valuable in the same way they are in modern societies, in part as a result of high infant mortality. However, when childhood began to develop its own distinctive features (including graded schools to teach reading, children's stories, games, etc.) this view changed. According to Postman, 'the custom of celebrating a child's birthday did not exist in America throughout most of the eighteenth century, and, in fact, the precise marking of a child's age in any way is a relatively recent cultural habit, no more than two hundred years old.'^[19]

Ancient writers held diverse views on the subject of the beginning of personhood, understood as the soul's entry or development in the human body. In Panpsychism in the West, David Skrbina noted the various kinds of soul envisioned by the early Greeks.^[20]

Generally, the question of the ensoulment of the fetus revolved around the question of when the rational soul entered the body, whether it was an integral part of the bodily form and substance, or whether it was pre-existent and subject to reincarnation or pre-existence.

Aristotle developed a theory of progressive ensoulment. In On the Generation of Animals, he declared that the soul develops first a vegetative soul, then animal, and finally human, adding that abortions were permissible early in pregnancy, before certain biological processes began. He believed that the female substance was passive, the male active, and that it required time for the male substance to 'animate' the whole.^[21]

Hippocrates and the Pythagoreans stated that fertilization marked the beginning of a human life, and that the human soul was created at the time of fertilization.

According to Hinduism Today, Vedic literature states that the soul enters the body at conception.^[22]

Concepts of pre-existence are found in various forms in Plato, Judaism, and Islam.

The Jewish Talmud holds that all life is precious but that a fetus is not a person, in the sense of termination of pregnancy being considered murder. If a woman's life is endangered by a pregnancy, an abortion is permitted. However, if the 'greater part' of the fetus has emerged from the womb, then its life may not be taken even to save the woman's, 'because you cannot choose between one human life and another'.^[23]

Some medieval Christian theologians, such as Marsilio Ficino, held that ensoulment occurs when an infant takes its first breath of air. They cite, among other passages, Genesis 2:7, which reads: 'And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.'^[24]

The Early Church held various views on the subject, primarily either the ensoulment at conception or delayed hominization. Tertullian held a view, traducianism, which was later condemned as heresy. This view held that the soul was derived from the parents and generated in parallel with the generation of the physical body. This viewpoint was deemed unsatisfactory by St. Augustine, as it did not account for original sin. Basing himself on the Septuagint version of Exodus 21:22, he affirmed the Aristotelian view of delayed hominization.

St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo held the view that fetuses were 'animated' (using Aristotle's term for ensoulment) near the 40th day after conception.^[17] However, both held that abortion was always gravely wrong.^[25][26][27]

In general, the soul was viewed as some kind of animating principle; and the human variety was referred to as the 'rational soul'.

Fetal personhood in law[edit]

Ecclesiastical courts[edit]

Following the decline of the Roman Empire, ecclesiastical courts held wide jurisdiction throughout Europe. According to Donald DeMarco, PhD,^[28] the Church treated the killing of an unformed or 'unanimated' fetus as a matter of 'anticipated homicide', with a corresponding lesser penance required. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the following statement regarding the beginning of human life and personhood is provided:

Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.^[29]

Common law[edit]

Although abortion in the United Kingdom was traditionally dealt with in the ecclesiastical courts, English common law addressed the issue from 1115 on, beginning with first mention in Leges Henrici Primi. In this treatise, abortion, even of a 'formed' fetus, was a 'quasi-homicide', carrying a penalty of 10 years' penance. This was a much lesser penalty than would accrue to full homicide. With the exception of Bracton, later writers insisted that killing a fetus was 'great misprision, and no murder', as formulated by Sir Edward Coke in his Institutes of the Lawes of England. Coke noted that the murder victim must have been 'a reasonable creature in rerum natura', in accordance with the standards of murder in English law. This formulation was repeated by Sir William Blackstone in England and in Bouvier's Law Dictionary in the United States.

The reasonableness of the creature is of some considerable weight in the legal conception of personhood. Children are not considered full persons under the law until they reach the age of majority.

Antamedia hotspot v5 full. Nonetheless, children have been treated as persons with respect to bodily offences, beginning with Offences against the Person Act 1828, although this protection did not prevent children from being sold by their parents, as in the Eliza Armstrong case, long after the slave trade had been abolished in England.

In addition, 'a child en ventre sa mere' (in utero) was regarded by common law as 'in being,' or 'as born' when ensuring that wills and trusts do not run afoul of the rule against perpetuities; nine (or sometimes ten) months of gestation were allotted for this purpose.^[30]

Implantation[edit]

In his book Aborting America,Bernard Nathanson argued that implantation should be considered the point at which life begins.^[31]

Biochemically, this is when alpha announces its presence as part of the human community by means of its hormonal messages, which we now have the technology to receive. We also know biochemically that it is an independent organism distinct from the mother. [Note: in writing the book, 'alpha' was Nathanson's term for any human before birth.]

In their book, When Does Human Life Begin?,^[32] John L. Merritt, MD and his son J. Lawrence Meritt II, MD, present the idea that if 'the breath of life' (Genesis 2:7) is oxygen, then a blastocyst starts taking in the breath of life from the mother's blood the moment it successfully implants in her womb, which is about a week after fertilization. If the end-point to human life is the moment the body stops using oxygen, then it may follow that the corresponding starting-point is the moment the body starts using oxygen.

Segmentation[edit]

Non-conjoined monozygotic twins form up to day 14 of embryonic development, but when twinning occurs after 14 days, the twins will likely be conjoined.^[33] Some argue that an early embryo cannot be a person because 'If every person is an individual, one cannot be divided from oneself.'^[34]

However, Fr. Norman Ford stated that 'the evidence would seem to indicate not that there is no individual at conception, but that there is at least one and possibly more.'^{[citation needed]} He went on to support the idea that, similar to processes found in other species, one twin could be the parent of the other asexually. Theodore Hall agreed with the plausibility of this explanation saying, 'We wonder if the biological process in twinning isn't simply another example of how nature reproduces from other individuals without destroying that person's or persons' individuality.'^[35]

Brain function (brain birth)[edit]

In the years since the designation of brain death as a new criterion for death, attention has been directed towards the central role of the nervous system in a number of areas of ethical decision-making. The notion that there exists a neurological end-point to human life has led to efforts at defining a corresponding neurological starting-point. This latter quest has led to the concept of brain birth (or brain life), signifying the converse of brain death. The quest for a neurological marker of the beginning of human personhood owes its impetus to the perceived symmetry between processes at the beginning and end of life, thus if brain function is a criterion used to determine the medical death of a person, it should also be the criterion for its beginning.

Just as there are two types of brain death - whole brain death (which refers to the irreversible cessation of function of both the brain stem and higher parts of the brain) and higher brain death (destruction of the cerebral hemispheres alone, with possible retention of brain stem function), there are two types of brain birth (based on their reversal) - brain stem birth at the first appearance of brain waves in lower brain (brain stem) at 6–8 weeks of gestation, and higher brain birth, at the first appearance of brain waves in higher brain (cerebral cortex) at 22–24 weeks of gestation.^[36]

Fetal viability[edit]

International status of abortion law

UN 2013 report on abortion law.^[37]

'Until the fetus is viable, any rights granted to it may come at the expense of the pregnant woman, simply because the fetus cannot survive except within the woman's body. Upon viability, the pregnancy can be terminated, as by a c-section or induced labor, with the fetus surviving to become a newborn infant. Several groups believe that abortion before viability is acceptable, but is unacceptable after' is the perspective of Planned Parenthood, a major abortion provider.^[39][40][41] In some countries, early abortions are legal in all circumstances, but late-term abortions are limited to circumstances where there is a clear medical need. While there is no sharp limit of development, gestational age, or weight at which a human fetus automatically becomes viable,^[42] a 2013 study found that 'While only a small proportion of births occur before 24 completed weeks of gestation (about 1 per 1000), survival is rare and most of them are either fetal deaths or live births followed by a neonatal death.' ^[43]

Birth[edit]

While, at one end of the ideological spectrum, some believe human personhood begins at fertilization, at the other end of the spectrum others believe that as long as the fetus is still inside the body of the woman (whether it is viable or not), it does not have any rights of its own.^[44]

Other markers[edit]

There are also other ideas of when personhood is achieved:

• at ensoulment
• at 'formation' – an early concept of bodily development (see Preformationism).
• at the emergence of consciousness
• at the emergence of rationality (see Kant)

Human personhood may also be seen as a work-in-progress, with the beginning being a continuum rather than a strict point in time.^[45]

Individuation[edit]

Philosophers such as Aquinas use the concept of individuation. In regard to the abortion debate, they argue that abortion is not permissible from the point at which individual human identity is realised. Anthony Kenny argues that this can be derived from everyday beliefs and language and one can legitimately say 'if my mother had had an abortion six months into her pregnancy, she would have killed me' then one can reasonably infer that at six months the 'me' in question would have been an existing person with a valid claim to life. Since division of the zygote into twins through the process of monozygotic twinning can occur until the fourteenth day of pregnancy, Kenny argues that individual identity is obtained at this point and thus abortion is not permissible after two weeks.^[46]

Ethical perspectives[edit]

The distinction in ethical value between existing persons and potential future persons has been questioned.^[47] Subsequently, it has been argued that contraception and even the decision not to procreate at all could be regarded as immoral on a similar basis as abortion.^[48] Subsequently, any marker of the beginning of human personhood doesn't necessarily mark where it is ethically right or wrong to assist or intervene. In a consequentialistic point of view, an assisting or intervening action may be regarded as basically equivalent whether it is performed before, during or after the creation of a human being, because the end result would basically be the same, that is, the existence or non-existence of that human being. In a view holding value in bringing potential persons into existence, it has been argued to be justified to perform abortion of an unintended pregnancy in favor for conceiving a new child later in better conditions.^[49]

Legal perspectives[edit]

Ireland[edit]

The 1983 Eight Amendment granted the full right to life, and personhood, to any 'unborn'. As such, abortion was banned in nearly all cases, except to save the life of the mother. This was repealed on 25 May 2018 by a 66% voting margin, with abortion becoming legal on 1 January 2019.^{[citation needed]}

United States[edit]

In its 1885 decision McArthur v. Scott, the US Supreme Court affirmed the common law principle that a child in its mother's womb can be regarded as 'in being' for the purpose of resolving a dispute about wills and trusts.^[50]

In 1973, Harry Blackmun wrote the court opinion for Roe v. Wade, saying 'We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate.'

In 2002, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act was enacted, which ensures that the legal concepts of person, baby, infant, and child include those which have been born alive in the course of a miscarriage or abortion, regardless of development, gestational age, or whether the placenta and umbilical cord are still attached. This law makes no comment on personhood in utero but ensures that no person after birth is characterized as not a person.^[51][52]

In 2003, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was enacted, which prohibits an abortion if 'either the entire baby's head is outside the body of the mother, or any part of the baby's trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother.'^[53]

In 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act into law.^[54] The law effectively extends personhood status^[55] to a 'child in utero at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb'^[56] if they are targeted, injured or killed during the commission of any of over 60 listed violent crimes. The law also prohibits the prosecutions of 'any person for conduct relating' to a legally consented to abortion.

Today, 38 U.S. States legally recognize a human fetus or 'unborn child' as a crime victim, at least for the purpose of homicide or feticide laws.^[57] According to progressive media watchdog Media Matters for America, 'Further, a prenatal personhood measure might subject a woman who suffers a pregnancy-related complication or a miscarriage to criminal investigations and possibly jail time for homicide, manslaughter or reckless endangerment. And because so many laws use the terms 'persons' or 'people,' a prenatal personhood measure could affect large numbers of a state's laws, changing the application of thousands of laws and resulting in unforeseeable, unintended, and absurd consequences.' ^[58]

In the United States, the 1992 United States Supreme Court case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey held that a law cannot place legal restrictions imposing an undue burden for 'the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.'^[59] This standard was also upheld in the Supreme Court case of Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt (2016) in which several Texas restrictions were struck down.^[60]

See also[edit]

• Abortion debate

References[edit]

1. ^Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity, Harvard University Press, 1992.
2. ^Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, New York: Picador, 2005.
3. ^The question could also be put historically. The concept of 'personhood' is of fairly recent vintage, and cannot be found in the 1828 edition of 1828 edition of Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, nor even as late as 1913Archived 10 July 2012 at Archive.today. A search in dictionaries and encyclopedia for the term 'personhood' generally redirects to 'person'. The American Heritage Dictionary at Yahoo has: 'The state or condition of being a person, especially having those qualities that confer distinct individuality.'
4. ^Susan Bordo, 'Are Mothers Persons?', Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2003, 71-97.
5. ^Nikolas Kompridis, 'The Idea of a New Beginning: A romantic source of normativity and freedom,' Philosophical Romanticism, New York: Routledge, 2006, 48-49.
6. ^ ^abClift, Dean; Schuh, Melina (2013). 'Restarting life: Fertilization and the transition from meiosis to mitosis'. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology. 14 (9): 549–562. doi:10.1038/nrm3643. PMC4021448. PMID23942453.
7. ^'1578-1657 A.D. William Harvey'. Understanding Heredity. Nova online. 2001. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
8. ^ ^abCobb, M (2012). 'An Amazing 10 Years: The Discovery of Egg and Sperm in the 17th Century'. Reproduction in Domestic Animals. 47: 2–6. doi:10.1111/j.1439-0531.2012.02105.x. PMID22827343.
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29. ^[2] Paragraph 2270
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