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Title: Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics by Leon R. Kass ISBN: 1-893554-55-4 Publisher: Encounter Books Pub. Date: September, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.75 (8 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: More of the same from Kass
Comment: I'm really surprised that this book has received such positive reviews. Although it has some good points, 'Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity' suffers from some very serious flaws.
The main focus of this book (which is actually a collection of previously published articles, so don't bother buying it if you've been keeping up with Kass's other works) is human dignity. Kass believes that all human life has an inherent dignity that transcends our scientific understanding, and that we should be wary of new technologies that would violate our dignity. This is certainly an appealing concept, but Kass fails utterly in his attempt to transform it into a coherent bioethics policy.
How do we know if something violates human dignity? If it gives Kass a creepy feeling. That's the main problem with this book; although Kass talks a great deal about the importance of human dignity, he isn't interested in rational, coherent analysis of ethical issues. Kass seems to be writing primarily to fellow religious conservatives who already share his technophobic views. If you don't already agree that cloning, stem-cell research, organ sales, in vitro fertilization, euthanasia, and genetic engineering are morally repugnant, there really isn't anything in this book that would cause you to change your opinion. Although Kass toys with various philosophical justifications for his views throughout the book, in the end he always seems to base his opinions on his own visceral emotional reactions. This isn't just my opinion; Kass plainly admits it himself. On page 61 Kass criticizes conventional ethicists for their reliance on logic and failure to take human emotions into account:
"Philosophical ethics today is rationalist, I would say hyper-rationalist, and I allege, unreasonably so. The dominant mode of American philosophizing today remains analytic. It concerns itself with the analysis of concepts, the evaluation of arguments and the criticism of justifications, always in search of clarity, consistency, coherence. It spends little time on what genuinely moves people to act - their motivations and passions, that is, loves and hates, hopes and fears, prides and predjuces, matters that are sometimes dismissed as nonethical or irrational because they are not simply reducable to logos. Revulsions and their correlative taboos are often overlooked; since they cannot give incontrovertible logical defenses of themselves, they tend to fall benieth the floor of ethical discourse. As a result, that discourse focuses almost exclusively on matters conceptual and logical."
Yes, you read that correctly: Kass is taking a heroic stand against rationality, clarity, and coherence. Apparently Kass has forgotten that in a liberal democracy we don't generally base policy decisions on what we find creepy or unappealing. The sort of rational, analytical examination of contemporary issues in medical ethics that one would expect in a serious policy discussion is sorely lacking. Kass spends an entire chapter (which he titles 'The Wisdom of Repugnance') trying to explain why rational discourse should be put aside in favor of emotional reactions, but it isn't very convincing.
Many of Kass's views are extreme, even for a conservative. Kass not only opposes controversial practices like euthanasia and human genetic engineering, but also relatively mundane things like in-vitro fertilization and organ transplants. Although the subject isn't brought up in this book, it's worth mentioning that in the past Kass has even come out against medical students dissecting human cadavers.
Although 'Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity' gives a fascinating look into the mind of President Bush's head bioethics advisor, I can't recommend it to anyone looking for a serious discussion of contemporary issues in medicine or biotechnology.
Rating: 3
Summary: Formidable Book to Disagree With!
Comment: In his book Life, LIberty and the Defense of Dignity, Leon Kass cites a few times that 2/3rds of the population are opposed to cloning. Well, I am not one of them. There is much to disagree with here and I've done much of it. But unlike those shoddy books like Fukuyama's Our Posthuman Future, or Bill McKibben's laughable diatribe, Enough, I can disagree with Kass while still respecting him as a thinker. I even nod my head at some of his points.
About half of this book deals with abstract, and half, concrete, issues. His abstract sections I was almost in total agreement with. Ethical philosophy, he writes, long ago lost track of how to deal with issues rather than theories, and real peoople rather than 'rational man' constructs. Minutia is argued on a quest to develop a consistent theory of the human right and good. BUT NO SUCH THEORY NEED TO BE CREATED! We are dealing with people who make most decisions on a hearty combination of feeling (not amenable to intellectualization) and rational thought. This is where Kass comes from.
Add to this that biology has gone on so well with the reductionist program that even it has started to lose track of how to deal with the whole person. Like wantling to understand a person-in-full by studying the small minutia of their lives seperately, event-by-event; you won't get the feel of the whole person that way; she must be studied as a whole person. Biology, by breaking us down to the smallest constituent parts, don't explain us, so much as break us down to the type of bite-sized chunks they find helpful in THEIR studies.
So Kass starts from the philosophy of the whole person. It is here that I feel he uses this more as an excuse to be inarticulate than a tool to REALLY examine the issue. Whether it is cloning, euthenasia, the selling of organs; he keeps taling about how our human dignity is threatened but never even attempts to explain what in the world he means.
He argues that our instinctual revulsion to such processes may reflect a deeper wisdom that intellect can't articulate. But didn't we also feel revulsion to the idea of heart transplants too? Many of us feel revulsed by the very idea of surgery (going under the knife and all). Does that mean that we are expressing a 'deeper wisdom' and should not have surgury at all? I think our revulsion to biotech comes more from the thought of the unknown and our desire to hold on to the "natural order of things".
Life, he tells us, is precious. Thus, we must be very careful with how we treat it. I agree. But why does it follow that we have to, then, leave birth up to the chance process that causes miscarriages, deformities, premature deaths, and...let's be honest...unwanted babies that may well grow up to abuse? And why does it follow that an old woman who is nearing a painful end to her life (with only a glimpse of hope for recovery) be made to live out her last days when she wants to end it?
To be sure, there are quite a few philosophers who are just as sensitive to human dignity as Kass is who take the opposite conclusions. John Lachs ("Community of Individuals", "Relevance of Philosophy to Life") and Sidney Hook ("Convictions") are two notable examples.
To close, though I agree with Kass's theoretical goals, I disagree on virually everything else. This book, though, is professionally writte, gives some (some, that is) strong points and never comes off as zeolous, abrasive, or mean-spirited toward critics. Read this - even if you don't agree with Kass.
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful Introduction
Comment: It is just as easy to dismiss Kass, now head of the President's Council for Bioethics, as a "technophobe" searching for justification. The opposite is true: while the groundwork for modern bio-deontological thought is firmly in place in the writings of the founding bioethical and environmental scholars, such writings are largely unapproachable to the layperson, analytic rather than continental in approach.
Kass does just the opposite. In the spirit of CS Lewis and his "The Abolition of Man," which Kass references, Kass paints a clear and understandable picture, suitable as an introduction to the subject. However, such a statement is misleading: the book is by no means just an introduction. Simply, Kass sets out to synthesize a workable and, more importantly, objective ethos that is not simply "ivory-tower," but applicable in day-to-day functioning. That such a book is coherant and pleasurable to read is simply icing on the cake.
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Title: Human Cloning and Human Dignity: The Report of the President's Council on Bioethics by Leon R. Kass ISBN: 1586481762 Publisher: PublicAffairs Pub. Date: 22 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis by Leon R. Kass ISBN: 0743242998 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 27 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future by Gregory Stock ISBN: 061806026X Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 15 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution by Francis Fukuyama ISBN: 0312421710 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature by Leon R. Kass ISBN: 0226425681 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: May, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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