by The various questions of bioethics– concerning genetic engineering, stem cell research, and the like– are among the large class of very important and difficult questions that I have self-consciously left for others who are more competent to think about. The issues I do try to address– concerning religious freedom and so forth– are already too hard for me: why take on even more intractable questions? Recently, though, a colleague strongly recommended Michael Sandel’s The Case Against Perfection. Because I respect my colleague’s judgment, and because I’ve long admired Sandel’s work (and, yes, because the book is very short), I got the book and read it. I’m now passing the recommendation along.
While distinguishing between healing and enhancement, Sandel articulates serious reservations about the various forms of genetic engineering. His reservations center on the idea of life as a “gift,” and on what distancing ourselves from that idea will do to our humility, our sense of responsibility, and our sense of solidarity with each other.
One doubt I had through most of the book was whether this approach necessarily depends on religious presuppositions that Sandel doesn’t articulate or defend. (I had a similar question about the healing/enhancement distinction.) Doesn’t a “gift” presuppose a “giver”? Towards the end of the book, (ca. p. 93) Sandel directly though briefly confronts this doubt. He denies the necessity of religious premises: “ We commonly speak of an athlete’s gift, ” Sandel says, “or a musician’s, without making any assumption about whether or not the gift comes from God. What we mean is simply that the talent in question is not wholly the athlete’s or the musician’s own doing; whether he has nature, fortune, or God to thank for it, the talent is an endowment that exceeds his control.”
Sandel’s response doesn’t wholly quiet my doubts, but he does provide a thoughtful, respectful (albeit quite summary) treatment. And of course the issue isn ’t limited to bioethics; similar issues arise with respect to whether, say, human rights and human dignity can plausibly be understood except on religious foundations. (Some readers of this blog may be familiar with the work of Michael Perry and Nicholas Wolterstorff on that subject.) Sandel’s book is one engaging doorway into this sort of vital question.
Interesting post. I think “gifts” do presuppose “givers,” and that life is a gift, and that all of this leads inexorably to God.
But — I wonder about the lines between “healing” and “enhancement.” My youngest son is one of the most precious gifts God ever gave me — but he has a serious neurological disorder that has taken away much of his ability to speak or to comprehend language. If a genetic process came along that could give him speech, would that be “healing” or “enhancement?” I chafe at any suggestion that my son is any less a gift because of his “disability,” but I think it would be my duty to give him the gift of language if it were within my power to do so. Would I be spurning God’s gift of a “disabled” son if I accepted this genetic process for him?
When you start to think about the ways in which we construct the categories of “able” and “disabled,” “well” and “ill,” in light of the fact that we all live in a fallen creation, it’s harder to draw lines, I think.
“When you start to think about the ways in which we construct the categories of “able” and “disabled,” “well” and “ill,” in light of the fact that we all live in a fallen creation, it’s harder to draw lines, I think.”
Exactly. The distinction between healing and enhancing seems to depend on some baseline or conception defining what’s normal, against which some attributes (or their absence) can be deemed deficiencies or illnesses and others can be deemed extraordinary assets or virtues. But how to draw that distinction? Sandel begins the book discussing a case in which a deaf couple deliberately conceived a deaf child. They wanted a child who was deaf, and didn’t regard deafness as a deficit; but the adverse public reaction suggests that most people did regard it as a deficit. For myself, I think a life in which someone could not hear a meadow lark or Mozart’s Requiem would clearly be less rich. So I wouldn’t approve a deliberate decision to conceive a child without that ability. But even if I’m right, the observation doesn’t really distinguish between deficiencies and enhancedments. So it’s a hard question.
I have always been touched by Malcomb Muggeridge’s description of his visit to a home for the mentally disabled. He (as a new Christian, who moved in the most influential twentieth-century social circles) said that the felt much more at home with those with mental disabilities than in the faculty lounges of elite academic institutions. The folks in the mental institution reflected a simple dependence on God that is much more appropriate to the human situation than the arrogance of the faculty lounges.
Many of us have probably had experiences like Muggeridge’s. And yet I doubt that many of us would draw the conclusion that if we had the choice and the power, we should prefer that our children, or any children, be born mentally disabled. Or, looking at the other side of the ledger, I suspect most of us consider extraordinary intelligence to be a valuable asset in a child, even if we also believe that this quality increases the likelihood the the child will end up like the people Muggeridge encountered in faculty lounges. So, are we being inconsistent? Or what’s the underlying logic here?
How about this hypo: what if there were a cheap, readily available substance that could boost mood and mental performance with relatively few side effects? Would it be ethical for “able” persons to use that substance in their daily lives?
I ask this as I sip my morning cup of coffee….
BTW, as to faculty lounges — I tried in vain this year to get my associate dean to pay to renovate an unused room with a coffee machine and couches, so at present I have no lounge in which to be elitist! (Thus, I blog..)
Steve — the idea that a gift requires a giver reminds me of the point in debates about interpretation that only an author can be the source of an intention. Do you know anyone who has made this point?
*Does* a gift presuppose a giver? I think too much may ride on a figure of speech here. I think perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the *perception* of a gift presupposes the *perception* of a giver, although our perception of the giver can vary widely: God, fate, a somewhat anthropomorphic view of chance, the natural world, karma, etc. I gather that some argue that the perception of life as a gift is evidence either of the existence of God or of a universal yearning for God. I am not willing to sign on to either of those conclusions strongly, but it is fair to say there is a cultural and perhaps a human trait of perceiving certain things as gifts, which sometimes can (and sometimes doesn’t) lead us to feel a sense of agency in the gift. I do tend to believe this sense of gifts in our lives can indeed valuably lead to a sense of humility and appreciation for God and/or the world, as opposed to, say, treating one’s height (Steve) or remarkable good looks (me) as just being one’s desert or a product of merit. But I am less willing to draw any strong conclusions from this about what is, as opposed to how we can best experience what is; and I think we are still entitled to interrogate the notion of “gift” and “giver” from an outside and skeptical perspective.
I agree the issues of genetic engineering and such are difficult. When I think about dark visions of the future and what I should worry about (on behalf of humanity), our increasing ability to change our own nature is at the top of the list. It’s very hard to guess where that will lead. But my concerns aren’t directly moral, they’re practical.
I haven’t read Sandel’s book, but I just ran through his even shorter and probably more roughly worked out Atlantic article by the same name:
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2004/04/sandel.htm
I find his argument unconvincing. I’m willing to grant that a sense of giftedness is related to humility, responsibility and solidarity in some ways or others, as he claims, but I don’t think it follows that this is a good basis for deciding questions about genetic engineering. For one thing, it’s not at all clear how to draw a line with the idea, as others have pointed out. Some of his remarks brought to mind the old line, “If man were meant to fly he’d have wings.” Is flying too Promethean (or rather too Icarean–the same question can be asked about man-made fire, of course)? Second, if technology that increases our abilities is a problem for humility, responsibility and solidarity, it’s been a problem for millennia. Even clothing materially alters the way we come into this world to make us more able, and arguably less humble (most of us, anyway). In myriad ways we’ve been more than willing to weigh the moral costs against the advantages and go ahead and fly, as it were, which has its own moral advantages.
Given those issues, I don’t think the question whether Sandel’s premise requires a giver matters so much in regard to genetic engineering. But that question does relate to some other issues more directly, I think. Whether we view Nature as having a personality and intention towards us does affect our attitude towards it. We might still have a sense of awe in either case, but worship can’t quite be the same, if it makes any sense at all without a personality to worship. Some see worship as a bad thing anyway, which is a further question.
Philosopher and classicist Paul B. Woodfruff, an admirer of Plato and classical traditions East and West, wrote a book explaining and recommending reverence that not only doesn’t recognize any God but is critical of religious belief. I didn’t finish it (no reflection on the quality of the book), but through the part I read I kept wondering whether merely recognizing not being in full control and the relative greatness of things-not-me was really a sufficient ground for reverence. I’m not sure Woodruff intended it to be sufficient directly. His view may be in part that the recognition of our place opens the door to humility and reverence, and we should go through it because it’s part of a better whole (by some unspecified standard) than life without those qualities. Even if that’s true, reverence without some more objective value such as might be found in Plato’s Good or God, both beyond what Woodruff posits, seems less compelling (in more ways than one). Certainly there can’t be the same sense of immanence of coherent purpose and regard for us that comes with reverence for God.
As with worship, to which this is closely related, people have different views about the value of such reverence, but it’s different, at the least.
I meant to add gratitude in the mix. If there’s no giver, our sense of gratitude for gifts has to be more narrow or at least different. Again, it’s not obvious what the overall effects of the difference are.
Steve’s thoughtful post reminds me of a conversation I had with a former colleague about the Thanksgiving holiday. This colleague, an agnostic, told me she appreciated the holiday because, unlike Christmas, it had no religious overtones. I responded that “thank” is a transitive verb that requires an object — one must thank someone or something — and that Thanksgiving thus presupposed a person or thing to whom one gives thanks. She said she had never really thought about the holiday that way, and I guess many Americans don’t, either. (That’s probably why you don’t hear people complaining in November that we’ve taken the “Thanks” out of “Thanksgiving.”). Why is that, I wonder? Is it possible to cultivate a feeling of thankfulness, without being thankful to anyone in particular?
Mark — do you think that gratitude either “for” certain states of being or “to” abstract ideas are possible? For example, could one say that one is grateful for the past, or maybe even at a greater level of remove, that one lives one’s life with an attitude or disposition of gratitude for one’s heritage or for one’s present existence? Abstracting the idea of thankfulness in this way individualizes it. It makes it possible to be in a state of gratitude all by your lonesome. “I’m just generally thankful for my life” seems to be a common manner of expression. Channelling a little Vischer, the relational component of gratitude has become less important, and what one is really saying is that one is thankful to oneself.
This is very tentative, but it seems to me that although we do often speak loosely of fortuitous benefits or assets as “gifts,” and although we do speak loosely of being “grateful” or “thankful” for benefits or desirable states of affairs not conferred by any person, if we were to try to be more precise we would make some distinctions. If I’m hungry and broke and my friend gives me $10 for lunch, this is a “gift” for which I will be “thankful.” If I’m hungry and broke and the wind happens to blow a $10 bill my way (it came from someone, of course, but no one intended to send it to me), I’ll be happy, or glad, but not thankful, strictly speaking. The words aren’t important, though; what matters is that my attitude will be different in these cases.
For some purposes these distinctions might not matter. (I get my lunch either way, feel satisfied, etc.) But for other purposes they may matter. Gratitude might well elicit responses (humility, for example, or love) and entail obligations (like an obligation to reciprocate, for example) that mere happiness or gladness at good fortune would not elicit or entail. If these responses or obligations matter, then it will be important that an actual “gift” be involved, presupposing a “giver.” And if we find people blurring the distinctions to try to claim some of the implications of “gifts” even when there is no “giver,” then we may suspect that a little well-intentioned cheating or smudging is going on, and that the argument is parasitic on some assumptions it declines to acknowledge.
Maybe that’s what’s happening in Sandel’s analysis. As I said, I offer this very tentatively.
Steve, I agree with your point about the possibility of smuggling, to use one of your terms, but I would use another of your terms, namely the possibility of layered believing. In The Razor’s Edge, Maugham has a quote to the effect that people are not used to someone who does things for the love of a God in whom he does not believe. It seems to me that one can have a sense of the gift and of a non-specific giver, can acknowledge it and honor it, and yet not believe it is true. The sense of gift and giver can be a powerfully felt response to our universe, but one can experience it as a sensation without believing it describes the fact of the matter. I think that’s different from declining to acknowledge certain assumptions; it involves acknowledging but not agreeing absolutely with those assumptions.
I think the sort of “layered” approach Paul describes is possible, and for some it may be the most honest, authentic approach to take. I might think, “Well, I just do feel a sense of gratitude– not just gladness for things, but actual gratitude– but I’m really unsure about to what or whom this gratitude is directed, or whether there really is a Something or Someone at all.”
So this approach seems possible. (And as they say, “I’ve seen it done.”) But is this position coherent (in case that matters)? My tentative response is that the approach can be coherent if the person is genuinely uncertain on one level, i.e., about the Something or Someone, but on another level lives “as if” the answer is yes. But if the person really doesn’t believe in the Someone or Something but still tries to live “as if,” I think there’s a problem.
Steve — I think you’re right about the agnostic posture being incoherent with respect to whether the sense of “giftedness” must refer to a “giver.”
It seems to me that there are only a few possibilities:
(1) St. Paul, Augustine, C.S. Lewis, et al., were right about the sense of “giftedness” — it is part of the common human experience of God the Giver;
(2) The eastern (Buddhist, etc.) religious traditions are right: the sense of “giftedness” is an illusion to be overcome;
(3) the materialist view is right: whatever we call a “sense of giftedness” is ultimately only a biochemical adaptation that has somehow increased the survivability of our genes.
I don’t think there’s any final, conclusive way to adjudicate among these options, but for my money option (1) is ultimately the most complete and coherent. In part I think this because only option (1) can also encompass all the other options. It’s possible that a feeling of giftedness is sometimes misdirected, as Augustine also aptly showed, and it’s also possible that God designed our evolutionary history to facilitate feelings of giftedness that point towards Him. Option (1) therefore envelopes and explains the insights of options (2) and (3), whereas options (2) and (3) standing alone are mutually exclusive of all other options.
David’s breakdown of possibilities is helpful, I think. Although it seems to me that the agnostic posture– the posture of genuine uncertainty but active, open-minded engagement (an approach Paul explores at length in a forthcoming book)– is not necessarily incoherent. I am inclined to agree that a more affirmatively atheistic, or totalistically naturalistic, view does not cohere with the sense of gratitude or giftedness.