MORALIZING HUMAN NATURE?
Jürgen
Habermas
Recent developments in
biotechnology and genetic research are raising complex ethical questions which
concern the legitimate scope and limits of genetic intervention. Thus as we
begin to contemplate the possibility of intervening in the human genome to
prevent diseases, we cannot help but feel that the human species might soon be
able to take its biological evolution in its own hands. As a result playing God
is the metaphor commonly used for this self-transformation of the species,
which, it seems, might soon be within our grasp.
Today we all realize
that due to the spectacular advances of molecular genetics, more and more of
what we are by nature is coming within the reach of biotechnological intervention. Thus from the perspective of experimental sciences, this
technological control of human nature is but another manifestation of our
tendency to extend continuously the range of what we can control within our
natural environment. From a life world perspective, however, our attitude
changes as soon as this extension of our technological control crosses the line
between outer and inner nature.
Throughout
our modern times, new technological developments have created new regulatory
needs. Till this date, however, changes in normative regulation have been
produced as adaptions to societal transformation. It has always been social
change from technological innovation in the fields of production and exchange,
communication and transport, the military, and medicine, which took the lead.
Even the post traditional conceptions of law and morality have been described
by classical social thinkers as a product of cultural and societal realization
acting in the same direction as the advances of modern science and technology. Institutionalized
research was perspective of the liberal state, the freedom of science and
research is entitled to legal guarantees. Any enhancement of the scope and
focus of the technological control of nature is bound up with the economic
promise of gains in productivity and increasing prosperity, as well as with the
political prospect of enlarging the scope of individual choice. And since
enlarging the scope of individual choice fosters individual autonomy, science
and technology have, to date, formed an evident alliance with the fundamental
credo of liberalism, holding that all citizens are entitled to equal
opportunities for an autonomous direction of their own lives.
The wish to be autonomous in the conduct of
one’s own life is always connected with the collective goals of health and of
prolongation of lifespan. The history of medicine, therefore strongly suggests
that skeptical attitude towards any attempt at “moralizing human nature”.
Moralizing human nature here means dubious sanctification. After science and
technology have enlarged the scope of our freedom this irresistible tendency is
now to be brought to a standstill.
A
quite different scenario, however, emerges if moralizing human nature is seen
as the assertion of an ethical self-understanding of the species which is
crucial for our capacity to see ourselves as the authors of our own life
histories, and to recognize one another as autonomous persons. The attempt to
rely on legal means to prevent liberal eugenics from becoming normalized and to
ensure the contingency or naturalness of procreation that is of the fusion of
the parents sets of chromosomes would then express something quite different
from a vague antimodernistic opposition.
From
a liberal perspective, the new reproductive technologies, like substituted
organs or medically assisted suicide, are seen as increasing individual
autonomy. We distinguish between what nature, including evolution, has created
and what we, with the help of these genes, do in this world. In any case this
distinction results in a line being drawn between what we are the way we deal,
on our own account, with this heritage. Thus this decisive line between chance
and choice is the back bone of our morality. Moreover we are afraid of the
prospect of human beings designing other human beings, because this option
implies shifting the line between chances and choice which is the basis of our
value system.
To
say that genetic modification that have as their goal the enhancement of a
human life are able to change the overall structure of our moral experience is
a strong claim today. It can be understood to imply that genetic engineering
will confront us in certain respect with practical question concerning some presupposing
of moral judgment and action. Consequently shifting the line between chance and
choice affects the self- understanding of persons who act on moral grounds and
are concerned about their life as a whole. Whether or not we may see ourselves
as the responsible authors of our own life history and recognize one
another as persons of equal birth that
is of equal dignity, is also dependent on how we see ourselves
anthropologically as members of the species.
