Jürgen Habermas. Translated from German and added introduction: Adam Tannenbaum. United Kibbutz Publishing House, Ko Adom Library, 156 pages, NIS 65
Ovadia Ezra
Rarely does one of the greatest philosophers of our generation take the time to conduct a poignant discussion of a burning concrete issue. Even more rarely does this discussion appear in Hebrew not long after its appearance in the original language. Two lectures given by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, the first in September 2000, and the second in June 2001, on the meaning of "eugenics" which teaches in a general sense about the improvement of the human race, were edited into articles shortly after, and their publication in Hebrew is a refreshing breath of fresh air in the field of moral philosophy in Israel.
Habermas, motivated by the recognition that the systemic dynamics of science, technology and economics create fait accompli, which leave no room for normative accountability, turns to examine one of the most dramatic developments in science: the alliance that biogenetic research has forged with the interests of investors and with the pressure of national governments to succeed.
In his eyes, this alliance raises the concern that the biotechnological development will precede the normative discussions about it. When he examines the new developments in two specific areas of genetic engineering: research on the need for embryos, and the method of genetic diagnosis before returning the embryos to the womb, Habermas is convinced that philosophy can no longer avoid taking meaningful positions regarding the proper perception of the cultural way of life as it is.
This is a constraint that arises from the new technologies, and Habermas emphasizes that he asked the philosophers to leave this issue in the hands of the life scientists and engineers who are enthusiastic about science fiction. The complacency of the philosophers and the rejection of the normative discussion of the consequences of eugenics, both the negative (whose goal is therapeutic) and the positive (whose goal is the improvement of the human race), may lead them to a situation where they will be caught unprepared for the "Hiroshima of the genetic engineer".
Without illusions and studying past experience, Habermas doubts the possibility that the normative debate will stop technology, because he accepts the assumption that "what is made technologically available through science, should become normatively inaccessible again, through moral control" (p. 66). Therefore, Habermas believes that there is room for legislative intervention in the freedom of biological research and the development of genetic engineering. This is because in these areas lies the danger that humans will draw life plans for other humans, or even lead to the technologization of human nature. From here to an instrumentalist approach to people's lives, the road is short. In this context, Habermas quotes the President of the German Republic, Johannes Rao, who warned that "those who once began to instrumentalize human life, those who began to distinguish between what is worthy of life and what is not worthy of life, are on a bottomless path" (p. 59). It is not unreasonable to assume that past experience has influenced the fact that legislation in Germany prohibits not only pre-uterine diagnosis and research-need-embryos, but also medical cloning, surrogacy and euthanasia, which are permitted elsewhere.
It is clear to Habermas that the scientific achievements in the fields of genetic engineering have created a situation in which technology changes the self-ethical perception of the human race. He just fears the possibility that we will no longer be prepared to understand ourselves as ethically free, morally equal beings. Such a technologization of human nature will no longer allow our normative self-perception as people living autonomously and acting responsibly. The possibility of manipulating the composition of the human genome and the expectation of some genetic researchers to take evolution into their own hands directly threaten our basic moral distinctions, such as the distinction between subject and object, between natural growth and artificial product. These are distinctions so rooted in our self-perception that until now we have tended to think of them as unchangeable. Genetic engineering presents us with a threat to our ability to perceive ourselves as the sole creators of our personal lives, and as equal members of the moral community.
Habermas is aware of the dilemma between the reality of ideological pluralism, which no longer allows the fetus to be guaranteed absolute life protection "from the beginning", which people with fundamental rights enjoy, and between our deep moral intuition, which dictates that prepersonal human life should not be made simply accessible to utilitarian needs Competing. Therefore, he is not opposed to the very interventions of genetic engineering, but strives to monitor the types of its applications, and the operating range of these applications. Therefore, he will not oppose genetic intervention in the fetus with a curative purpose (negative eugenics), but will limit it to cases of preventing "extreme evils only". However, the problem he identifies with liberal eugenics, which advocates the neutrality of the state, is that it may blur the line between negative and positive eugenics, because it includes very general goals, such as strengthening the immune system or extending life expectancy - which are positive assertions that belong to the framework of clinical goals. Such interventions - prevent evil, and therefore are therapeutic - but are already tangential to better interventions, which already belong to the field of positive eugenics.
The two fundamental assumptions of the ethics of the human race that establish our moral perception of ourselves - that we are the sole creators of our lives, and that we perceive all other people as equal to us without exception - are based on the assumption that Habermas questions Arendt's camp, which holds that with the birth of every baby not only a story begins Another life, but a new life story. Birth, as a watershed between nature and culture, marks a new beginning. Then begins the differentiation between a person's social destiny and the natural destiny of his organism. Genetic intervention in the design of a person endangers his ability to see himself as an actor who is responsible for his actions and as a source of his authentic claims, because doubt will arise regarding the continuity of his identity, which is no longer clear if it has remained the same throughout his life. The same freedom from which we perceive ourselves as the sole source of validity for our moral claims presupposes the inaccessibility of our natural destiny, which appears to us as a kind of ancient past immune to inaccessibility. Challenging this inaccessibility, as a result of genetic intervention, threatens our perception of freedom, and perhaps even our ability to be ourselves as we were.
According to Habermas, genetic interventions for the purposes of improvement, being irreversible and one-way, deprive the person of ethical freedom, deny the person the possibility of perceiving himself as the sole creator of his life, and may determine definite life plans for him in advance. His identity has been shaped to some extent by someone else, and in a certain sense his self-definition may be replaced by a foreign definition that will inevitably damage his subjectivity. Nor will he be able to see himself as equal to another person. His moral self-perception will change completely.
Habermas summarizes the discussion of improved genetics with a warning: "The perfecting self-instrumentalization of the human race, which is carried out by the scattered preferences of buyers in the genetic supermarket (and by the development of habits in society), changes the moral status of future people, and is still a startling prediction: 'Life in the void Moral, in a way of life even if you don't know what moral cynicism is, they will no longer be worthy of living" (p. (149).
Habermas's book can be seen as the rallying cry of humanism in its fight against the commercialization and objectification of everything that was once perceived as valuable, including human life or even the fate and future of the human race. It is a desperate call to limit the trend of profit maximization, at least in the area where this trend may deny our human image in the most basic sense: the possibility of our perception of ourselves as moral beings.
These days, the Knesset's Science and Technology Committee, chaired by Knesset member Mali Polischuk-Bloch, is supposed to re-discuss restrictions on research activity in the field of human cloning of all kinds. The members of the committee would do well to consult the book - or at least the sixth chapter of its second part - before making any decision in the field. This will present to them at least some of the moral consequences of every decision they make. Nevertheless, this is one of the fateful decisions that will be made in this institution.
The Hebrew version of the text is obviously influenced by the syntax of the original language - German. It is not uncommon to find forty-fifty word sentences, with three or more subordinate clauses, connected clauses and subordinate clauses. This is typical of philosophical texts originally written in German, especially those of Habermas. The translator did well by attaching the original term to each term translated into Hebrew. In doing so, he made reading the sequence less fluent, but clearer. The reader skilled in texts from the field of continental philosophy will not always immediately recognize the original professional term in its Hebrew form, but for a reader who is not from the field of philosophy, this will certainly make reading much easier. Presenting Habermas as readable (even to a certain extent), is certainly a worthy task.
Eugenics? Jurgen Habermas Auf dem Weg zu einer liberalen Die Zukunft der menschlichen Nature: Dr. Ovadia Ezra lectures in the Department of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University
