Man as His Own Maker

By David Heyd

By allowing humanity to fashion itself, technology expresses what is truly unique about our species.

Making a straw man out of scientism can be, as stated earlier, an interesting intellectual exercise, but it can also be a dangerous one. Prof. Kass’s hyperbolic style could cause the reader to adopt an anti-scientific position. If, for instance, “many biologists” exploit powerful ideas from the fields of genetics and neuroscience in order to contest the values of “human life and human dignity,” then perhaps their activity should be brought to an end before any serious trouble occurs. I do not believe that Prof. Kass truly wishes to stifle scientific research in general, but his inclusion of the practices of in-vitro fertilization, surrogacy, and the use of Ritalin and Prozac in his concept of “scientism” is a bad sign. For if this scarecrow is brought down, so will all of these practices be brought down with it. Again, I do not claim that all uses of genetic engineering and other alternate means of conception are morally proper. As at every technological turning point in history, there is a legitimate debate to be had over the significance of new technology, as well as over its appropriate normative restraints. Genetic engineering certainly presents us with new horizons for which our ethical tradition fails to provide adequate tools. Yet, if Pico della Mirandola is correct, our human uniqueness lies precisely in our ability to fashion such tools (no less than in our ability to create the technologies themselves) and to reestablish the concepts of family, life expectancy, health, and self-fulfillment. In this self-fashioning, man does not undermine his freedom and dignity. On the contrary, he manifests them in a most succinct manner. Man’s control over his own development—control that is in any case quite limited—allows him to free himself from being an accident on the stage of evolution. By way of genetic engineering, man can even overcome “the selfish gene.”

Prof. Kass, like many others, distinguishes between methods of medical intervention that are intended to cure disease and relieve suffering, and the use of biotechnology for the purpose of improving, advancing, and upgrading human functioning. Countless arguments have been made concerning the value of such enhancements as well as the distinction between healing and improving. Although this is not the place to discuss this debate, it is important to note that genetic improvements—of memory, life expectancy, and physical abilities—do not imply a loss of humanity, dignity, or freedom. To be sure, such practices exact a moral cost (for instance, concerning social justice and equality, the distribution of resources, or the possibility that they are altogether futile), but this cost does not include relinquishing the value of man. It will undoubtedly be necessary in the future to apply cautious judgment in determining whether to authorize the use of technologies of genetic enhancement, but Prof. Kass’s line of reasoning fails to convince us that there is cause to prohibit such technologies completely.

Prof. Kass considers “scientism” a threat to religion and to the religious worldview, and thus, in addition to his philosophical defense of humanity, he concludes his essay with an appeal to the Bible as a source for his “human defense of the human.” Philosophy alone, according to Prof. Kass, cannot satisfy man’s need for meaning or provide us with “spiritual food.” Such an argument likely sounds peculiar to philosophers, particularly so to atheists. Either way, I, too, would like to conclude my response with an interpretation, in the spirit of Pico della Mirandola, of the biblical story of the creation of man.⁶ I intend to interpret the concept of the “image of God” according to the three verses describing the creation of man in the first chapter of Genesis:

And God said, Let us make mankind in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.⁷

The image of God—or, to use non-religious terminology, the essential nature of man and the source of his unique value—is typically understood as the spiritual foundation of humanity. This concept further defines man as a creature with a soul (to use Prof. Kass’s wording), who is free and enjoys free will; in secular terms, it is an intelligent creature who possesses consciousness and speech. These ideas, however, lack textual basis in the verses quoted above. The grouping of these verses together explicitly suggests only two aspects of the image of God: one, governing the natural world, i.e., conquering the land and subjugating the animals that inhabit it; and two, the ability to procreate. I would like to concentrate on the second component, which seems to me to be of greater importance and highly relevant to our matter at hand.

According to this idea, the image of God is none other than the joining of male and female; that is, the ability to produce offspring. Man is devoid of power to create in the full, divine sense of the word; he is unable to create an entire world out of nothing. Procreation is therefore the closest man can come to shaping a new reality from scratch. Although animals also possess the ability to reproduce, as many commentators have observed, only man is commanded to do so, meaning that man has both free will and the understanding of what it is to procreate, as opposed merely to the instinct to do so. According to my reading, birth is not simply biological perpetuation in which man is a passive vessel in the hands of nature, as the proponents of the “selfish gene” doctrine maintain. Birth is, rather, the expression of man’s control over his ability to shape himself. More boldly, one could claim that once God completes the act of creation, man—from within the world—is the one who picks up where God left off, utilizing his freedom for self-fashioning, just as he does to subjugate nature.

Furthermore, spreading the image of God worldwide through the commandment “Be fruitful and multiply” is interpreted in this reading of the text as a way of ensuring that the world has an ethical meaning—a meaning that is absent unless man introduces his values into the world. This is why it is only after the creation of man, on the sixth day, that God could see that “it was very good” as opposed to just “good.” Only after the creation of man does the world in and of itself have value, as opposed to holding a meaning known only to God. Only then does the world become meaningful for someone within it, and not just from a transcendent perspective.

Thus, while it would be absurd to claim that the Bible justifies the types of genetic engineering that Prof. Kass is so concerned about, it does offer a conceptual framework that is more flexible in terms of the notion of the “nature of man.” This framework allows for understanding the centrality of human decision to man’s ability to fashion himself and fellow mankind. Undoubtedly, this is an anthropocentric approach—even though the Bible justifies it on a theocentric basis—and, as such, it places man at the highest level of the cosmic hierarchy in a way that would certainly cause environmentalists to flinch. Yet this understanding of man as the “lord of creation” is a profound and deeply rooted aspect of Western culture. Man’s uniqueness and significance are fixed not in a stable and eternal essence, but rather in his ability to “fashion thyself,” as Pico della Mirandola put it.

Again, my intention here is not to deny the urgent need to deal carefully and directly with the unprecedented ethical challenges presented by new technologies of conception and genetic design. The limits of permitted and forbidden, desirable and dangerous, appropriate and offensive are unclear precisely because we lack the traditional tools to delineate them. But the attempt to deny their legitimacy and their value so extensively is both baseless and dangerous. For in the end, neither the philosophical argument nor the religious or moral view justifies such an attempt.

David Heyd is a professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Notes

1. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, “Oration on the Dignity of Man,” in Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, eds., The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago: Chicago, 1948), p. 225.

2. Mark Henderson and Francis Elliot, “MPs Back Creation of Human-Animal Embryos,” The Times, May 20, 2008.

3. Pico della Mirandola, “Oration,” p. 225.

4. Even if cloning becomes a commonly accepted practice that enables exact genetic replication of humans, it is unclear why cloned persons will be less “human,” as they will possess the exact dignity and freedom that we enjoy. They will surely not be raw material for manipulation, as Prof. Kass’s essay implies, at least no more than “normal” children who are arguably manipulated in part by their parents.

5. It is Prof. Kass who claims that “the reasons for doing science rest on a picture of human freedom and dignity that science itself cannot recognize.” It is doubtful whether many scientists would deny this.

6. I presented this interpretation in the first chapter of my book Genethics: Moral Issues in the Creation of People (Berkeley: University of California, 1992).

7. Genesis 1:26-28.

PDF Format

previous (page 2 of 2 - view all)