Transcript A Reconstruction of the Self

A Reconstruction of the Self
Laurens Landeweerd
Discussion of the last chapter (7) of my thesis:
‘Reconstructing the Self: Eugenics and the Ontology
of Moral Agency’
October 2008: Rathenau panel discussion
on human enhancement technologies
(prenatal diagnosis), advice to STOA
Ethical aspects of enhancement through
selective reproduction
– Issue of risk
– Issue of democracy
– Issue of prevention and cure as defining criteria
for medicine
– Issue of health-disease distinction
– Issue of human identity
• My first encounter with bioethics (medical ethics):
Practical ethics in medicine was Chinese to me
– Limits itself to procedural accounts of what should be done
– No accounts of what should be done, merely of what
methods may be applied to answering that question
– Has no explicit concept of the person (only an implicit one in
the sense of a general rational moral agent)
Background to this chapter
• Basis
Rift between German-French and Anglo-American philosophy
(around 1917)
• Anglo-American philosophy abandoned metaphysical accounts
of being: no solid concept of the self, eliciting procedure over
content
– Background: problem of substantialism vs. poceduralism
• Adorno & Horkheimer: Dialektik der Aufklärung
- The ideals of the enlightenment seem to turn into their opposites
Adorno
- Philosophy has become a melancholic science (Minima Moralia)
because it can no longer redefine a new universalistic ethical point of
view.
- As a consequence, philosophy has retired to the investigation of
formal properties of processes of self understanding, without taking a
position on the contents of these processes.
Defences of a liberal Eugenics often
based on John Rawls philosophy of
justice
(‘A Theory of Justice’)
• Still defending a universalist ethics, but from a pseudoprocduralism
• Enhancing equality of opportunity in society
• People are essentially driven by self-interest. To counter this:
– Rawlsian concept of a ‘veil of ignorance:
• Whilst not knowing one’s postition in society, one tests a
rule that needs to be applicable as a general rule
– Daniels, Buchanan, Brock etc.
• Equalise natural inequalities rather than compensate for them
Discussion on eugenics
conducted from a ‘procedural’
perspective
• No account of personhood
• No view on relation of a person to how he was
conceived
• Traits seen as separate from the person one is, the
person as a general rational moral agent
• Choice as the main paradigm, rather than willing
First 6 chapters
A short archaeology
•
•
•
•
•
1. Problem of current medical ethical framework
2. Problem of autopsy of old eugenics
3. Problem of defining ‘eu’
4. + 5 Problem of choice and fate
6. Problem of applying a rule / restriction to
methodology
1. Problem of current medical ethical framework
The existing ethical framework on selective reproduction
through prenatal diagnosis does not exclude the possibility
of eugenics
2. Problem of autopsy of old eugenics
Selective reproduction motivated by an ideologically
burdened concept of the good society leads to an
instrumentalisation of individual life to this ideology. This
means the liberal eugenicist’s proposal for selection of
human traits to equalise future generations’ chances of
opportunity and wellbeing renders the person instrumental
to these goals of equality, whilst these goals should remain
instrumental to the person
3. Problem of defining ‘eu’
The idea of a liberal eugenics is contradictory in so far as
one accepts that concepts of the perfect body are culturally
determined: either one lays down what counts as
‘eu’genics, therefore illiberally excluding certain options,
or one allows for all conceivable reproductive choices, be
they generally considered as ‘eu’ or ‘dys’genics.
4. and 5. Problems with the concept of choice
Since it creates a separation between the traits one has and
the person one is, the concept of autonomous moral agency
as presented by analytic proponents of a liberal eugenics is
flawed: the concept of autonomy cannot be defined
through the concept of ‘free choice’. One has to define it
on the basis of a concept of a ‘self’ that ‘wills’… (DanCohen)
6. Problem of applying a rule / restriction to
methodology
The emphasis on developing methodologies for bioethics
has obscured the necessity of an ethical understanding of
the subjects at hand.
7. Problems with the concept of identity in contemporary
ethics
Sloterdijk, Heidegger, Sartre and Habermas on
ethics, identity and eugenics
American liberal eugenics contrasted with
European approach, seen issues of
metaphysics and identity
Peter Sloterdijk:
‘Rules for the Human Theme-Park: A Reply to the
Letter on Humanism’
Elmau, Bavaria, July 1999
‘Jenseits des Seins - Exodus from Being,
Philosophie nach Heidegger’
Peter Sloterdijk
Building on Heidegger
Biology as the new locus for a
grounding of ethics as a move away
from humanism (post-humanism)
Brief über dem Humanismus
Martin Heidegger
• On the nature of ethics, the possibility of an
ethics, and on the discussion between
essencialism and existentialism (a hidden
polemic with Sartre.
…
• 1946: l‘existentialisme est un humanisme’ (J.
P. Sartre): marking the beginning of the
existentialist movement
• 1949: ‘Brief über dem Humanismus’ (M.
Heidegger), answering Jean de Beaufret on
the issue of ethics
1999: Auf dem Weg zu einem liberalen
Eugenik (Habermas)
Became the basis for ‘The Future of
Human Nature’ (2003)
• Demonstrating a different grounding for ethics
through Kierkegaard
• Critical of liberal eugenics, indirectly
criticisizing Sloterdijk’s defence of eugenics
The self not as essence but as
relation
• “[…] If this relation which relates itself to its own self is
constituted by another, the relation doubtless is the third term,
but this relation (the third term) is in turn a relation relating
itself to that which constituted the whole relation. Such a
derived, constituted, relation is the human self, a relation
which relates itself to its own self, and in relating itself to its
own self relates itself to another.” (Kierkegaard 1849)
Propositions with regard to a new eugenics
•
The problem of a liberal eugenics does not lie in that one cannot define what can
objectively be defined as eugenics, but in an inequality between parent and child:
eugenics may be liberal for the prospective parents, but it will not be so for the person
that results from their choices. What will remain fate for the eugenically created or
selected was choice for the parents and this creates an intergenerational asymmetry
•
The connection between practical ethics, theoretical ethics and metaphysics is necessary
to answer the question ‘what would be wrong with designing people?’ since practical
ethics cannot deal with the age-old Diogenesian question ‘what is a person?’
•
One should ask whether it is ethically justifiable to make decisions for future people that
will determine their identity in a specific way. Therefore, selective reproduction should
not go beyond the prevention of individual suffering (this does not exclude all types of
eugenics)