A Reconstruction of the Self Laurens Landeweerd

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A Reconstruction of the SelfLaurens Landeweerd

• Discussion of the last chapter (7) of my thesis
  Reconstructing the Self Eugenics and the
  Ontology of Moral Agency

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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

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• 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)

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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

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• 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.

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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
  pseudo-procduralism
• 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 ones 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

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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

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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

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1. Problem of current medical ethical framework

• The existing ethical framework on selective
  reproduction through prenatal diagnosis does not
  exclude the possibility of eugenics

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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 eugenicists 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

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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 eugenics,
  therefore illiberally excluding certain options,
  or one allows for all conceivable reproductive
  choices, be they generally considered as eu or
  dysgenics.

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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
  (Dan-Cohen)

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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.

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7. Problems with the concept of identity in
contemporary ethics

• Sloterdijk, Heidegger, Sartre and Habermas on
  ethics, identity and eugenics

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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

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Elmau, Bavaria, July 1999

• Jenseits des Seins - Exodus from Being,
  Philosophie nach Heidegger

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Peter Sloterdijk

• Building on Heidegger
• Biology as the new locus for a grounding of
  ethics as a move away from humanism
  (post-humanism)

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Brief über dem HumanismusMartin Heidegger

• On the nature of ethics, the possibility of an
  ethics, and on the discussion between
  essencialism and existentialism (a hidden polemic
  with Sartre.

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• 1946 lexistentialisme 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

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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 Sloterdijks defence of eugenics

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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)

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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)