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Author: Michael J Sandel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674043065
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature—to enhance our genetic traits and those of our children. Although most people find at least some forms of genetic engineering disquieting, it is not easy to articulate why. What is wrong with re-engineering our nature? The Case against Perfection explores these and other moral quandaries connected with the quest to perfect ourselves and our children. Michael Sandel argues that the pursuit of perfection is flawed for reasons that go beyond safety and fairness. The drive to enhance human nature through genetic technologies is objectionable because it represents a bid for mastery and dominion that fails to appreciate the gifted character of human powers and achievements. Carrying us beyond familiar terms of political discourse, this book contends that the genetic revolution will change the way philosophers discuss ethics and will force spiritual questions back onto the political agenda. In order to grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view in the modern world. Since these questions verge on theology, modern philosophers and political theorists tend to shrink from them. But our new powers of biotechnology make these questions unavoidable. Addressing them is the task of this book, by one of America’s preeminent moral and political thinkers.
Author: Michael J Sandel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674043065
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 177
Get Book
Book Description
Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature—to enhance our genetic traits and those of our children. Although most people find at least some forms of genetic engineering disquieting, it is not easy to articulate why. What is wrong with re-engineering our nature? The Case against Perfection explores these and other moral quandaries connected with the quest to perfect ourselves and our children. Michael Sandel argues that the pursuit of perfection is flawed for reasons that go beyond safety and fairness. The drive to enhance human nature through genetic technologies is objectionable because it represents a bid for mastery and dominion that fails to appreciate the gifted character of human powers and achievements. Carrying us beyond familiar terms of political discourse, this book contends that the genetic revolution will change the way philosophers discuss ethics and will force spiritual questions back onto the political agenda. In order to grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view in the modern world. Since these questions verge on theology, modern philosophers and political theorists tend to shrink from them. But our new powers of biotechnology make these questions unavoidable. Addressing them is the task of this book, by one of America’s preeminent moral and political thinkers.
Author: Michael J. Sandel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067425595X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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Book Description
Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature—to enhance our genetic traits and those of our children. Although most people find at least some forms of genetic engineering disquieting, it is not easy to articulate why. What is wrong with re-engineering our nature? The Case against Perfection explores these and other moral quandaries connected with the quest to perfect ourselves and our children. Michael Sandel argues that the pursuit of perfection is flawed for reasons that go beyond safety and fairness. The drive to enhance human nature through genetic technologies is objectionable because it represents a bid for mastery and dominion that fails to appreciate the gifted character of human powers and achievements. Carrying us beyond familiar terms of political discourse, this book contends that the genetic revolution will change the way philosophers discuss ethics and will force spiritual questions back onto the political agenda. In order to grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view in the modern world. Since these questions verge on theology, modern philosophers and political theorists tend to shrink from them. But our new powers of biotechnology make these questions unavoidable. Addressing them is the task of this book, by one of America’s preeminent moral and political thinkers.
Author: Michael J. Sandel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674036387
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
A profile of Henry Ford (1863-1947), the Ford Motor Company founder whose Model T in 1908 changed the auto industry. He also instituted the assembly line (an idea borrowed from the meatpacking industry), introduced the $5/8-hour workday, and investigated employees through his company's Sociological Department. (Anyone who failed to pass muster had wages withheld and/or were fired.) The documentary also details his anti-Semitism, including a newspaper he purchased in order to publicize his views. ~ Jeff Gemmill, Rovi
Author: Michael J. Sandel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674976142
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
In Michael Sandel the Chinese have found a guide through the ethical dilemmas created by their swift embrace of a market economy—one whose communitarian ideas resonate with China’s own rich, ancient philosophical traditions. This volume explores the connections and tensions revealed in this unlikely episode of Chinese engagement with the West.
Author: Thomas H. Murray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000151980
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 524
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Book Description
This volume presents articles which focus on the ethical evaluation of performance-enhancing technologies in sport. The collection considers whether drug doping should be banned; the rationale of not banning ethically contested innovations such as hypoxic chambers; and the implications of the prospects of human genetic engineering for the notion of sport as a development of ’natural’ talent towards human excellence. The essays demonstrate the significance of the principles of preventing harm, ensuring fairness and preserving meaning to appraise whether a particular performance enhancer is acceptable in the context of sport. Selected essays on various forms of human enhancement outside of sport that highlight other principles and concepts are included for comparative purpose. Sport enhancement provides a useful starting point to work through the ethics of enhancement in other human practices and endeavors, and sport enhancement ethics should track broader bioethical debates on human enhancement. As a whole, the volume points to the need to consider the values and meanings that people seek in a given sphere of human activity and their associated principles to arrive at a morally grounded and reasonable approach to enhancement ethics.
Author: Michael J. Sandel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674744020
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
In this book, Michael Sandel takes up some of the hotly contested moral and political issues of our time, including affirmative action, assisted suicide, abortion, gay rights, stem cell research, the meaning of toleration and civility, the gap between rich and poor, the role of markets, and the place of religion in public life. He argues that the most prominent ideals in our political life--individual rights and freedom of choice--do not by themselves provide an adequate ethic for a democratic society. Sandel calls for a politics that gives greater emphasis to citizenship, community, and civic virtue, and that grapples more directly with questions of the good life. Liberals often worry that inviting moral and religious argument into the public sphere runs the risk of intolerance and coercion. These essays respond to that concern by showing that substantive moral discourse is not at odds with progressive public purposes, and that a pluralist society need not shrink from engaging the moral and religious convictions that its citizens bring to public life.
Author: John Harris
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9781400836383
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
In Enhancing Evolution, leading bioethicist John Harris dismantles objections to genetic engineering, stem-cell research, designer babies, and cloning and makes an ethical case for biotechnology that is both forthright and rigorous. Human enhancement, Harris argues, is a good thing--good morally, good for individuals, good as social policy, and good for a genetic heritage that needs serious improvement. Enhancing Evolution defends biotechnological interventions that could allow us to live longer, healthier, and even happier lives by, for example, providing us with immunity from cancer and HIV/AIDS. Further, Harris champions the possibility of influencing the very course of evolution to give us increased mental and physical powers--from reasoning, concentration, and memory to strength, stamina, and reaction speed. Indeed, he says, it's not only morally defensible to enhance ourselves; in some cases, it's morally obligatory. In a new preface, Harris offers a glimpse at the new science and technology to come, equipping readers with the knowledge to assess the ethics and policy dimensions of future forms of human enhancement.
Author: Francis Fukuyama
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847653707
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Is a baby whose personality has been chosen from a gene supermarket still a human? If we choose what we create what happens to morality? Is this the end of human nature? The dramatic advances in DNA technology over the last few years are the stuff of science fiction. It is now not only possible to clone human beings it is happening. For the first time since the creation of the earth four billion years ago, or the emergence of mankind 10 million years ago, people will be able to choose their children's' sex, height, colour, personality traits and intelligence. It will even be possible to create 'superhumans' by mixing human genes with those of other animals for extra strength or longevity. But is this desirable? What are the moral and political consequences? Will it mean anything to talk about 'human nature' any more? Is this the end of human beings? Our Posthuman Future is a passionate analysis of the greatest political and moral problem ever to face the human race.
Author: Michael J. Sandel
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374720991
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
A Times Literary Supplement’s Book of the Year 2020 A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020 A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020 A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020 The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good? These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that "you can make it if you try". The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time. World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success--more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.
Author: Maxwell J. Mehlman
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801892635
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Few would question the necessity of artificial limbs for amputees. But what of surgery to lengthen the legs of children who are merely shorter than average? Hardly anyone would challenge the decision to prescribe Aricept to people with dementia. But is it acceptable to give the same medication to airline pilots seeking sharper mental focus on long-haul flights? Humans have engaged in biological self-improvement since long before recorded history, from the impotence-curing wild lotus brew of the ancient Egyptians to the herbal energy drink favored by early Olympians. Now biomedical enhancements are pushing the boundaries of possibility and acceptability. Where do we draw the line? How do we know the true ramifications of pioneering medicine? What price are we willing to pay for perfection? Maxwell J. Mehlman's provocative examination of these issues speaks to fundamental questions of what it means to be human. He finds public officials ill-equipped to handle the ethical, scientific, and public policy quandaries of biomedical enhancement. Instead of engaging difficult questions of morality, access, fairness, and freedom, elected officials have crafted toothless and counterproductive laws and regulations. Mehlman outlines policy options to boost the societal benefits and minimize the risks from these technologies. In the process, he urges the public to face the ethical issues surrounding biomedical enhancement, lest our quest for perfection compromise our very humanity.
