Bioethics after Posthumanism
Natural Law, Communicative Action and the Problem of Self-Design
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/ecot.9.2.178.38068Keywords:
Fukuyama, Gregory Stock, Habermas, biotechnology, Peter ScottAbstract
Three recent books by prominent social and political theorists (Francis Fukuyama, Gregory Stock and Jürgen Habermas) have engaged with the impact of biotechnology on our very concepts of human nature, and the corresponding challenges to ethical discourse of the so-called ‘posthuman condition’.
All three writers raise important questions about the role of concepts of ‘human nature’ in moral discourse, and the paper will subject their claims to theological critique. I conclude by proposing, after Peter Scott (2003), that to consider humanity as ‘un/natural’ serves to affirm human interdependence with, rather than transcendence or dominion over, nature; but that similarly, talk of nature itself as ‘post/human’ restores to it a divinely-conferred integrity, liberated from the self-serving interests of technoscientific objectification.
References
Baker, Robin 1996 Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict and Bedroom Battles (London: Fourth Estate).
Bayertz, Karl 2003 ‘Human Nature: How normative might it be?’, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 28.2: 131-50.
Becker, Gerhold K. 1996 ‘Biotechnology—The New Ethical Frontier’, in G.K. Becker (ed.), Changing Nature’s Course: the Ethical Challenge of Biotechnology (Hong Kong University Press): 1-14.
Borgmann, Albert 2003 Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press).
Caplan, Arthur 2002 ‘Revulsion is Not Enough’, American Journal of Bioethics 2.3: 57-61.
Cruz, Eduardo 2002 ‘The Nature of Being Human’, in Ted Peters and Gaymon Bennett (eds.), Bridging Science and Religion (London: SCM Press): 173-84.
Davis, Erik 1998 Techgnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information (London: Serpent’s Tail).
Fukuyama, Francis 2002 Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (London: Profile Books).
Graham, Elaine L. 2002 Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press).
Gribbin, M., and J. Gribbin 1998 Being Human: Putting People in Evolutionary Perspective (London: Phoenix, 2nd edn).
Habermas, Jürgen 2003 The Future of Human Nature (Cambridge: Polity Press).
Halberstam, Judith M., and Ira Livingston (eds.) 1995 Posthuman Bodies (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press).
Haraway, Donna 2004 ‘Otherworldly Conversations; Terran Topics; Local Terms’, in Donna Haraway (ed.), The Haraway Reader (London: Routledge): 125-50.
Hefner, Philip 2003 Technology and Human Becoming (Minneapolis: Fortress Press).
Hubbard, Ruth, and Elijah Wald 1997 Exploding the Gene Myth (Boston: Beacon Press, 2nd edn).
Hunt, Ian 2003 ‘Our Responsibility for Future Lives’, The Drawing Board: An Australian Review of Public Affairs (online, 21 July) available at: <http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/drawingboard/digest/0307/hunt.html> [accessed 16/11/03].
Jackelén, Antje 2002 ‘The Image of God as Techno Sapiens’, Zygon 37.2: 289-302.
Jantzen, Grace 1998a Becoming Divine (Manchester: Manchester University Press).
b ‘Necrophilia and Natality’, Scottish Journal of Religious Studies 19.1: 101-21.
Krull, Anne 2002 ‘Speaking Cyborg: Technoculture and Technonature’, Zygon 37.2: 79-87.
Löw, Reinhard 1996 ‘Anthropology as the Basis of Bioethics’, in G.K. Becker (ed.), Changing Nature’s Course: the Ethical Challenge of Biotechnology (Hong Kong University Press): 147-58.
Lyotard, Jean-François 1986 The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi; Manchester: Manchester University Press).
Parekh, Bhikhu 1981 Hannah Arendt and the Search for a New Political Philosophy (London: Macmillan).
Peters, Ted 1997 Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom (New York: Routledge).
Pope, Stephen J. 2001 ‘Natural Law and Christian Ethics’, in R. Gill (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 77-95.
Reiss, M.J., and R. Straughan 1996 Improving Nature? The Science and Ethics of Genetic Engineering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Russell, Robert John, and Kirk Wegter-McNelly 2002 ‘Natural Law and Divine Action’, in Ted Peters and Gaymon Bennett (eds.), Bridging Science and Religion (London: SCM Press): 49-68.
Scott, Peter Manley 2003 A Political Theology of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Shakespeare, Tom 1998 ‘Choices and Rights: Eugenics, Genetics and Disability Equality’, Disability and Society 13.5: 665-81.
Simon, B. 2003 ‘Toward a Critique of Posthuman Futures’, Cultural Critique 53: 1-9.
Stock, Gregory 2002 Redesigning Humans: Choosing Our Children’s Genes (London: Profile).
Waldby, Catherine 2000 The Visible Human Project: Informatic Bodies and Posthuman Medicine (London: Routledge).
