Christopher Donohue, PhD; National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) & National Institutes of Health (NIH)
(Hybrid event- Zoom information provided upon registration)
Moral Radicalism and Enhancement for Disability
This talk will raise two arguments. First, it charts a historical path from ancient to Kantian ethics to argue that ethics generally, rather than being concerned with following a “mean,” has as its goal the articulation of and putting into practice extreme-appearing, absolute principles. The first part of the lecture will then trace this idea that ethics (and especially bioethics) should not be concerned with
middling solutions but concerned with “moral radicalism” (Schwarzschild). Moral radicalism demands that we take Kant (and others) precisely at their word: we cannot lie to the murder at the door. Moral radicalism is as importantly a robust ethical tradition, which has its beginnings in Platonic ethics, and which continues as part of the natural law tradition especially in the work of John Finnis and his “moral
absolutes.” Second, this talk applies this position of “moral radicalism” to the idea of enhancement for disability. Building from the work of Joe Stramondo, it contends first that it should be morally and socially permissible to enhance for any and all disabilities, with the argument that if we indeed think of disabilities as “neutral” or “good” we should not get to pick and chose which “disabilities” are worthy goals of enhancement, while others not. As importantly, it argues that any societal and ethical objections to enhancing for specific disabilities are also useful (to call it such) in letting us know what disabilities society thinks positively or negatively about.
