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Editors’ Introduction: A Language for Our Biotechnological Future: Rhetoric, Religion, Science, and Ethics
- Baylor University Press
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1 Michael J. Hyde, James A. Herrick A lAnGuAGe for our BiotechnoloGicAl future Rhetoric, Religion, Science, and Ethics Editors’ Introduction 1 The rapidity with which biotechnological advances appear and make their way into our lives is changing not just the ways we experience life, but also how we understand ourselves. Many of these same technologies promise, or perhaps threaten, to change the nature of what it means to be human. in its 2003 report titled Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness , the President’s Council on Bioethics (PCB) would thus have us keep in mind two related questions: “Does our ability to flourish as human beings depend on our ability to improve upon the human form or function? Or might the contrary be true; does our flourishing depend on accepting—or even celebrating—our natural limitations?”1 Ontological urgency marks the debate over the benefits and burdens of today’s biotechnology revolution. The language that informs and is informed by this debate is itself a biotechnology. Rooted in the physiological workings of the brain, language functions first and foremost as a tool, an instrument, a means to an end whereby it facilitates meaning and understanding and in so doing demonstrates what the cultural and literary critic Kenneth Burke terms its “perfectionist ” capacity: “The mere desire to name something by its ‘proper’ name, or to speak a language in its distinctive ways, is intrinsically ‘perfectionist.’ What is more ‘perfectionist’ in essence than the impulse, when one is in dire need of something, to so state this need that one in effect ‘defines’ the situation?”2 The language of the biotechnology debate certainly displays a perfectionist impulse: be it directed toward improving the form and function of human being or celebrating our natural limitations. So, for example, in its first report, Human Cloning and Human Dignity (2002), the PCB abides by this impulse in making much of its use of “fair 2 g After the Genome and accurate terminology”—“especially because the choice of terms can decisively affect the way questions are posed, and hence how answers are given. We have sought terminology that most accurately conveys the descriptive reality of the matter, in order that the moral arguments can proceed on the merits.” The PCB also emphasizes that “we have resisted the temptation to solve the moral questions by artful redefinition or by denying to some morally crucial element a name that makes clear that there is a moral question to be faced.”3 A wonderful illustration of such linguistic behavior is found when, expanding on its understanding of “human dignity” in a later report, the PCB associates the phenomenon with what it terms the “the giftedness of life.” The PCB’s fair and accurate definition of this gift reads as follows: Acknowledging the giftedness of life means recognizing that our talents and powers are not wholly our own doing, nor even fully ours, despite the efforts we expend to develop and to exercise them. it also means recognizing that not everything in the world is open to any use we may desire or devise. Such an appreciation of the giftedness of life would constrain the Promethean project and conduce to a much-needed humility. Although it is in part a religious sensibility, its resonance reaches beyond religion.4 With this definition, however, certain questions come to mind: Who or what else is at work here? How is it that its presence requires us to recognize “that not everything in the world is open to any use we may desire or devise” and that “humility” is thus called for? What else is called for? indeed, there seems to be a “religious sensibility” associated with the giftedness of life. But this gift “reaches beyond religion.” To whom, what, where? Are there normative standards for perfect behavior to be found at the gift’s source? Religion makes much of how what is beyond itself is the basis of its existence: God. Science, on the other hand, is content with the otherness of nature in its search for truth. Who or what is the ultimate giver of the giftedness of life? When it comes to associating human dignity with the giftedness of life, the PCB’s discourse becomes somewhat ambiguous, rather than straight-out fair and accurate. Why coin a phrase that begs to be associated with religious transcendence and redemption when you insist that your terminology is objectively oriented? The PCB denied that it had a religious agenda up its sleeve...