Liberal eugenics human nature: Against Habermas

Hastings Center Report

Volumn 36, Issue 6, 2006, Pages 35-42

  Fenton, Elizabeth ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BIOTECHNOLOGY; ETHICS; EUROPE; EVOLUTION; FREEDOM; GENETIC DISORDER; GENETIC ENGINEERING; GENETIC ENHANCEMENT; HUMAN; HUMAN CHARACTERISTIC; LEGAL ASPECT; MEDICAL GENETICS; POLITICS; REVIEW; UNITED STATES;

BIOTECHNOLOGY; EUGENICS; EUROPE; EVOLUTION; FREEDOM; GENETIC DISEASES, INBORN; GENETIC ENGINEERING; GENETIC ENHANCEMENT; HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS; HUMANS; POLITICS; UNITED STATES;

EID: 33846127121     PISSN: 00930334     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. G.J. Annas, American Bioethics: Crossing Human Rights and Health Law Boundaries (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2005), 41.
2. J. Habermas, The Future of Human Nature (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2003), 27.
3. F. Fukuyama, "How to Regulate Science," The Public Interest (Winter 2002): 3-22.
4. N. Agar, Liberal Eugenics (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 2004), 5.
5. Ibid., 16.
6. Fukuyama, "How to Regulate Science," 4.
7. Annas, American Bioethics, 56; emphasis added.
8. Fukuyama, "How to Regulate Science," 4; emphasis added.
9. Annas, American Bioethics, 37.
10. Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, 27.
11. Ibid., 25.
12. Ibid., 26.
13. Ibid., 33.
14. Ibid., 33.
15. Paul Lauritzen, "Stem Cells, Biotechnology, and Human Rights: Implications for a Posthuman Nature," Hastings Center Report 35, no. 2 (2005): 25-33.
16. Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, 51.
17. Lauritzen, "Stem Cells," 27.
18. Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, 40.
19. It is important to note that human rights are not being wrongfully invoked in this criticism. For while human rights are often assumed to flow from the notion of a fixed and stable human nature, they do not do so necessarily; and, more importantly, their foundation in universally shared human characteristics does not imply that those characteristics have a strong normative status. Asymmetries and inequalities in human relationships can be overcome by human rights without those rights being viewed as a reflection of the moral status of a fixed human nature. What it is to be human may be alterable or malleable, or even indefinable, but the implication that follows is not that human rights are impossible, or impossibly weak, but rather that their content and range will also not be fixed.
20. K. Bayertz, "Human Nature: How Normative Might It Be?" Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 28, no. 2 (2003): 131-50.
21. Ibid., 146.
22. Annas, American Bioethics, 40.
23. Fukuyama, "How to Regulate Science," 7.
24. Annas, American Bioethics, 40.
25. Bayertz, "Human Nature," 144.