Leon kass the wisdom of repugnance. The Wisdom of Repugnance 2022-10-31
Leon kass the wisdom of repugnance
Rating:
6,8/10
1537
reviews
Leon Kass is a physician, bioethicist, and former chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics. In 1997, he published an essay in The New Republic titled "The Wisdom of Repugnance," in which he argued that certain moral values and beliefs are not only rational, but also intuitive and emotional. These values, he claimed, are often expressed through feelings of "repugnance" or disgust, and should not be dismissed or ignored.
Kass argued that modern society has become too focused on the pursuit of technological and scientific progress at the expense of ethical considerations. He argued that this pursuit has led to a disregard for the "natural limits" that have traditionally governed human behavior, and has allowed for the development of technologies and practices that are morally questionable or even repugnant.
One example that Kass cited is the possibility of cloning human beings. He argued that the idea of cloning is repugnant to many people because it violates the natural order and disrupts the bond between parents and their children. Kass argued that this repugnance is not simply a matter of personal preference, but rather a deep-seated moral intuition that has evolved over time to protect the integrity of the human species.
Kass also discussed the possibility of using animal-human hybrids for scientific research, arguing that such practices would violate the natural order and create beings that are neither fully human nor fully animal. He argued that the repugnance that many people feel towards these practices is a natural response to the violation of fundamental moral values.
Kass's essay sparked a significant amount of debate and controversy, with some critics arguing that his reliance on repugnance as a moral guide is misguided and arbitrary. Others argued that Kass's ideas were overly nostalgiciac and failed to take into account the potential benefits that could come from pursuing new technologies and scientific advances.
Despite the criticisms, Kass's essay remains an important contribution to the fields of bioethics and moral philosophy. It serves as a reminder of the importance of considering the ethical implications of scientific and technological progress, and the need to balance the pursuit of progress with respect for fundamental moral values.
KASS: THE WISDOM OF REPUGNANCE Pages 1
The proposal for such a legislative ban is without American precedent, at least in technological matters, though the British and others have banned cloning of human beings, and we ourselves ban incest, polygamy and other forms of reproductive freedom. Sexuality, by contrast, means perishability and serves replacement; the two that come together to generate one soon will die. These are not healthy growths, as growths go; these are cancers. But it would at least place the burden of practical proof where it belongs: on the proponents of this horror, requiring them to show very clearly what great social or medical good can be had only by the cloning of human beings. Thanks to the sexual revolution, we are able to deny in practice, and increasingly in thought, the inherent procreative teleology of sexuality itself.
Next
Analysis Of Leon Kass's The Wisdom Of Repugnance
He cites examples such as father-daughter incest, sex with animals, mutilating a corpse or eating the flesh of another human being. Rather, the real question is whether new technologies like reproduction by somatic cell nuclear transfer are presumptively morally wrong or presumptively morally right. For McCloskey, interjecting the problem of evil into his argument should squash our belief in an all powerful and loving God. The National Bioethics Advisory Commissions recommendations regarding this matter should be watched with the greatest care. .
Next
The Wisdom of Repugnance
Rights generally belong to individuals, but this is a right which before cloning no one can exercise alone. Truth to tell, the only powerful justification for objecting is that genotype really does have something to do with identity, and everybody knows it. In natural procreation, human beings come together, complementarily male and female, to give existence to another being who is formed, exactly as we were, by what we are: living, hence perishable, hence aspiringly erotic, human beings. Yet our practices are governed by a norm of health. Sexual desire humanly regarded is thus sublimated into erotic longing for wholeness, completion and immortality, which drives us knowingly into the embrace and its generative fruit as well as into all the higher human possibilities of deed, speech and song. An Argument: Some of these examples are clearly things people found repugnantbecause of unjustifiable prejudices.
Next
The Wisdom of Repugnance Reading childhealthpolicy.vumc.org
Social identity and social ties of relationship and responsibility are widely connected to, and supported by, biological kinship. It shows itself forth in our distinctive appearance through which we are everywhere recognized; it is revealed in our signature marks of fingerprints and our self-recognizing immune system; it symbolizes and foreshadows exactly the unique, never-to-be-repeated character of each human life. We are now ready for the more specific objections to cloning. The prospect of human cloning, so repulsive to contemplate, is the occasion for deciding whether we shall be slaves of unregulated progress, and ultimately its artifacts, or whether we shall remain free human beings who guide our technique toward the enhancement of human dignity. Would the argument work if premise 2 were true? The technical stumbling block, overcome by Wilmut and his colleagues, was to find a means of reprogramming the state of the DNA in the donor cells, reversing its differentiated expression and restoring its full totipotency, so that it could again direct the entire process of producing a mature organism.
Next
The Wisdom of Repugnance: Why We Should Ban the Cloning of Humans
What harm is done the donor, if genotype is not me? To read the entire article, I suggest If it is true that there is immutable value to personhood, it is to be found in the One who made us for Himself. And yet, as a matter of policy and prudence, any opponent of the manufacture of cloned humans must, I think, in the end oppose also the creating of cloned human embryos. Page numbers referto a reprint of this paper which appears in Sherlock, R and John Morrey, Eds. In other cases, it will be mischievous and downright tyrannical. Moreover, if laboratory research on human cloning proceeds, even without any intention to produce cloned humans, the existence of cloned human embryos in the laboratory, created to begin with only for research purposes, would surely pave the way for later baby-making implantations. The stakes are very high indeed. Opponents of cloning need therefore to be vigilant.
Next
The Wisdom Of Repugnance By Leon R. Kass
We have become accustomed to new practices in human reproduction: not just in vitro fertilization, but also embryo manipulation, embryo donation and surrogate pregnancy. But despotism the control of another through ones will it inevitably will be. The wisdom of repugnance Offensive. Much harm is already done by parents who try to live vicariously through their children. Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder. Asexual reproduction may be seen as a continuation of the activity of self-preservation.
Next
The wisdom of repugnance: why we should ban the cloning of humans.
If cloning technology were perfected, would the arguments against the practice still carrysufficient weight to justify regulation or legislative prohibition? Similarly, Hegel believes that the history of us human beings and our society as a whole is just the history of God himself. In this respect, even germline gene therapy, though practiced not on a human being but on egg and sperm, is less radical than cloning, which is in no way therapeutic. The two become one through sharing generous not needy love for this third being as good. For the real question raised by human cloning has nothing to do with the moral permissibility of human cloning per se. Needless to say, working out the details of such a ban, especially a global one, would be tricky, what with the need to develop appropriate sanctions for violators. In so doing, we shall have the backing of the overwhelming majority of our fellow Americans, and of the human race, and I believe of most practicing scientists.
Next
Medical Ethics Exam 3 Flashcards
Yet each new port of call desensitizes voyagers to what they have left behind, and makes them less able to value the treasures they embarked with. In order to build a fence around the law, prudence dictates that one oppose for this reason alone all production of cloned human embryos, even for research purposes. The Wall Street Journal , IS CLONING BAAAAAAAAD? It can also be an important support for living a worthy and dignified life. Flesh of their flesh, the child is the parents own commingled being externalized, and given a separate and persisting existence. The risks of producing a "genobility," genetic overlords ruling a vast genetic underclass, are real.
Next