The Case against Perfection

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.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Other editions

• 

  The Case Against Perfection

  • 2009
  • 162 pages
  • Paperback
  • Harvard University Press

Similar books

• 

  Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on what it is and why it Matters

  By Karen Warren

  Wijkman and Timberlake , Natural Disasters , 27 . 32. Wijkman and Timberlake , Natural Disasters , 49 . 33. Seager , New State of the Earth Atlas , 121 .

• 

  Each Day a Renewed Beginning: Meditations for a Peaceful Journey

  By Karen Casey

  7. Sometimes the things that frighten you the most can be the biggest sources of strength. —Iris Timberlake or Most of us learn as we mature that strength.

• 

  Emerging Trends in Continental Philosophy

  By Todd May

  28 It is therefore not difficult to reconcile Badiou«s references to historical ... On the one hand, Badiou«s major essays on Rancière all deal with the ...

• 

  Pierre Bayle's Cartesian Metaphysics: Rediscovering Early Modern Philosophy

  By Todd Ryan

  Bayle offers a similar assessment in a letter to Minutoli: There has just been ... touchant la tran[s]substantiation, et leur conformité avec le calvinisme.

• 

  Negotiating a Settlement in Northern Ireland, 1969-2019

  By John Coakley, Jennifer Todd

  However, acceptance of the deal was driven in part by threats of worse to come should agreement ... see Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2006, s.

• 

  The Philosopher's Way

  By Pearson Education, Pearson Education Staff, Inc.

  Several versions of Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products exist for each title, including customized versions for individual schools, and registrations are not transferable.

• 

  Swimmer in a Dark Sea

  By Pierce Timberlake

  Take a tour through the mind of America's undiscovered philosopher: Pierce Timberlake. Swimmer in a Dark Sea is a dizzying ride through a dazzling array of profound concepts.

• 

  Bringing Peace Home: Feminism, Violence, and Nature

  By Karen Warren, Duane L. Cady

  "This collection of works is ambitious, well documented, thoroughly—though not turgidly—referenced, and comprehensively indexed.

• 

  Ecological Feminism

  By Karen Warren, Barbara Wells-Howe

  The essays in this volume deal with a wide variety of subjects - the essential distinction between the "ecofeminist" and the "ecofeminine," the link between violence and environmental exploitation, feminism's relationship to animal rights ...

• 

  Catharine Macaulay's Republican Enlightenment

  By Karen Green

  6 Davies, Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren, 228; Franklin Bowditch Dexter (ed.), The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, ...