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Rethinking "Liberal Eugenics": Reflections and Questions on Habermas on Bioethics
- Hastings Center Report
- The Hastings Center
- Volume 35, Number 6, November-December 2005
- pp. 31-42
- 10.1353/hcr.2005.0113
- Article
- Additional Information
In the new "liberal eugenics," children could be genetically improved as long as the enhancements let children choose from among a wide range of ways to live their lives. The German political philosopher Jürgen Habermas has opened a debate with the proponents of this view. Habermas suggests that a person could not really regard her life as her own if she lived with a body that somebody else had, without asking her opinion, "enhanced" for her.