Knowing There Is No God, Still We Should Not Play God? Habermas on the Future of Human Nature

Authors

  • Robert Song University of Durham

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/ecot.2006.11.2.191

Keywords:

Habermas, genetic engineering, liberal eugenics, human nature, Creation

Abstract

Jürgen Habermas’s recent critique of human genetic enhancements reaches similar conclusions to many Christian theological analyses of genetic technologies. However, his use of categories drawn from his general theory of communicative action fails to justify central distinctions such as those between the natural and the artificial, and between environmental and genetic enhancements. In fact he holds much in common with the more libertarian approach of ‘liberal eugenics’ which he rightly rejects: this is traced to the deficient account of nature and the body which they both share. By contrast Christian theology, by drawing out the significance of the goodness of creation, offers an alternative narration of the distinctions which places them in the context of a theology of the body of Christ.

Author Biography

  • Robert Song, University of Durham
    Department of Theology and Religion, University of Durham, Abbey House, Palace Green, Durham, DH1 3RS

References

Agar, Nicholas 1999 ‘Liberal Eugenics’, in Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer (eds.), Bioethics: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell): 171-81.

Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement (Oxford: Blackwell).Habermas, Jürgen [1981] 1984 The Theory of Communicative Action. I. Reason and the Rationalization of Society (trans. Thomas McCarthy; Cambridge: Polity Press).

Postmetaphysical Thinking (trans. William Mark Hohengarten; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

a The Future of Human Nature (trans. William Rehg, Max Pensky and Hella Beister; Cambridge: Polity Press).

b ‘Are There Postmetaphysical Answers to the Question: What is the “Good Life? ”’, in Habermas 2003a: 1-15.

c ‘The Debate on the Ethical Self-Understanding of the Species’, in Habermas 2003a: 16-74.

d ‘Postscript (January 2002)’, in Habermas 2003a: 75-100.

e ‘Faith and Knowledge’, in Habermas 2003a: 101-15.

Harris, John 1998 Clones, Genes, and Immortality: Ethics and the Genetic Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Junker-Kenny, Maureen 2005 ‘Genetic Enhancement as Care or as Domination? The Ethics of Asymmetrical Relationships in the Upbringing of Children’, Journal of Philosophy of Education 39: 1-17.

Kass, Leon 1997 ‘The Wisdom of Repugnance’, The New Republic (2 June); repr. in Gregory E. Pence (ed.), Flesh of My Flesh: The Ethics of Cloning Humans: A Reader (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998): 13-37.

Nussbaum, Martha 2001 ‘Disabled Lives: Who Cares?’, New York Review of Books 48.1 (11 January): 34-38.

O’Donovan, Oliver 1984 Begotten or Made? (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press).

Scott, Peter Manley 1998 ‘Imaging God: Creatureliness and Technology’, New Blackfriars 79: 260-74.

Song, Robert 2002 Human Genetics: Fabricating the Future (London: DLT).

forthcoming ‘Genetic Manipulation and the Resurrection Body’, in Ip King-Tak and Jonathan Chan (eds.), Ethical Reflections on Regenerative Medicine (Studies in Applied Ethics; Amsterdam: Rodopi).

Waldron, Jeremy 2002 God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke’s Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Whitebook, Joel 1979 ‘The Problem of Nature in Habermas’, Telos 40 (Summer): 41-69.

Published

2006-06-24

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Song, R. (2006). Knowing There Is No God, Still We Should Not Play God? Habermas on the Future of Human Nature. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 11(2), 191-211. https://doi.org/10.1558/ecot.2006.11.2.191