Authenticity and ambivalence: Toward understanding the enhancement debate

Hastings Center Report

Volumn 35, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 34-41

  Parens, Erik ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; ATTITUDE; BIOETHICS; COMMUNICATION DISORDER; CONSENSUS; ETHICS; GENETIC ENHANCEMENT; HEALTH CARE AND PUBLIC HEALTH; HUMAN; MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY; PUBLIC OPINION; UNITED STATES;

HEALTH CARE AND PUBLIC HEALTH;

ATTITUDE; BIOETHICAL ISSUES; BIOMEDICAL ENHANCEMENT; COMMUNICATION BARRIERS; CONSENSUS; GENETIC ENHANCEMENT; HUMANS; PUBLIC OPINION; UNITED STATES;

EID: 23844517204     PISSN: 00930334     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3528804     Document Type: Review

References (34)

1. C. Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 29.
2. C. Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity Ibid., 18.
3. C. Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity Ibid., 16.
4. C. Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity Ibid., 17.
5. C. Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity Ibid., 17-18.
6. Here I will do no more than say I'm keenly aware (a) that Rawls has responded to this sort of charge, switching his focus over the years from justice to legitimacy, from metaphysical to political conceptions, and so on (Jim Nelson, personal communication)
7. and (b) that Taylor is but one of many who level this sort of charge. Another is Michael Sandel in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
8. I believe one finds this sort of argument in Ronald Dworkin's Life's Dominion (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993); I'm referring to his claim that we disagree so profoundly about abortion because "we interpret the idea that human life is intrinsically valuable in different ways" (70).
9. President's Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (New York: Regan Books, 2003), 238-39.
10. Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness Ibid., 253.
11. Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness Ibid., 255.
12. Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness Ibid., 294.
13. C. Elliott, Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream (New York: Norton, 2003), 48.
14. C. Elliott, Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream ( Ibid., 49.
15. C. Elliott, "The Tyranny of Happiness," in Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. E. Parens (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1998): 177-88.
16. C. Elliott, Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, Ibid., 180.
17. P. Kramer, "Goodbye, Darkness: The New Science of Exuberance," Slate, September 20, 2004, at http://slate.msn.com/id/2106883.
18. P. Kramer, Listening to Prozac (New York: Viking, 1993), 40.
19. P. Kramer, Listening to Prozac Ibid., 258.
20. In another essay ("Kramer's Anxiety," in Prozac As a Way of Life, ed. C. Elliott and T. Chambers [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004]) I have tried to show that Kramer sometimes suggests that Prozac can be used to "discover" the authentic self (that is, to free the self from genetic and environmental constraints) and at other times suggests that Prozac can be used by an individual to "create" her authentic self. Whether talking in terms of discovering or creating the self, Kramer seeks to show that Prozac can promote as opposed to thwart "authenticity."
21. D. DeGrazia, "Prozac, Enhancement, and Self-Creation," in Prozac As a Way of Life, ed. C. Elliott and T. Chambers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004): 33-47, at 41.
22. M. Nussbaum, "Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism," Political Theory 20 (1992): 202-46;
23. and M. Nussbaum, "Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach," in The Quality of Life, ed. M. Nussbaum and A. Sen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993): 242-69.
24. E. Parens, "Creativity, Gratitude, and The Enhancement Debate," in Neuroethics in the 21st Century, ed. J. Illes (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
25. M. Sandel, "The Case Against Perfection," Atlantic Monthly (April 2004): 51-62, at 60.
26. P. Ramsey, Fabricated Man: The Ethics of Genetic Control (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970).
27. J. Fletcher, The Ethics of Genetic Control: Ending Reproductive Roulette (New York: Prometheus Books, 1974).
28. Sandel, "Case Against Perfection," 56.
29. M. Loe, The Rise of Viagra: How the Little Blue Pill Changed Sex in America (New York: New York University Press, 2004).
30. G. Harris, "Pfizer Gives Up Testing On Women," New York Times, February 28, 2004, C1-2.
31. J. Edwards, "Concepts of Technology and Their Role in Moral Reflection," in Surgically Shaping Children, ed. E. Parens (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming).
32. J. Green, Becoming a Visible Man (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004), 169.
33. E. Parens, "Is Better Always Good?" A Special Supplement to the Hastings Center Report 28, no. 1 (1998): S1-S16.
34. A. Frank, "Emily's Scars: Surgical Shaping, Technoluxe, and Bioethics," Hastings Center Report 34, no. 2 (2004): 18-29.