Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  • Cited by 4
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
January 2018
Print publication year:
2018
Online ISBN:
9781108385916

Book description

In public debates over biotechnology, theologians, philosophers, and political theorists have proposed that biotechnology could have significant implications for human nature. They argue that ethical evaluations of biotechnologies that might affect human nature must take these implications into account. In this book, Gerald McKenny examines these important yet controversial arguments, which have in turn been criticized by many moral philosophers and professional bioethicists. He argues that Christian ethics is, in principle, committed to some version of the claim that human nature has normative status in relation to biotechnology. Showing how both criticisms and defences of this claim have often been facile, he identifies, develops, and critically evaluates three versions of the claim, and contributes a fourth, distinctively Christian version to the debate. Focusing on Christian ethics in conversation with secular ethics, McKenny's book is the first thorough analysis of a controversial contemporary issue.

Reviews

'Well written and with sound scholarly apparatus, this text will serve ethics and philosophy professionals as well as upper-level students.'

M. LaBar Source: Choice

'Eschewing both cheap moralizing and cynical resignation, McKenny offers his readers a variety of descriptive frameworks which are fully attuned to the ambiguities of … a bioethical quandary. The vitality of Christian moral discourses is shown precisely in how the language of witness and attestation are able to uphold such ambiguity, and to do so in our rapidly changing world.'

Source: Marginalia Review of Books

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
×

Contents

Bibliography

Agar, Nicholas, Humanity’s End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010).
Albertson, David, and King, Cabell, eds., Without Nature? A New Condition for Theology (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010).
Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).
Augustine, , City of God against the Pagans.
Augustine, , On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis.
Baillie, Harold W., and Casey, Timothy K., eds., Is Human Nature Obsolete? Genetics, Bioengineering, and the Future of the Human Condition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).
Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, Vol. III, Part 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958).
Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, Vol. III, Part 2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960).
Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, Vol. III, Part 4 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960).
Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, Vol. IV, Part 3.1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961).
Bostrom, Nick, “Transhumanist Values,” Review of Contemporary Philosophy 4 (2005): 87101.
Buchanan, Allen, Beyond Humanity? The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
Buchanan, Allen, Brock, Dan, Daniels, Norman, and Wikler, Dan, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Butler, Judith, Bodies That Matter (New York: Routledge, 1993).
Canguilhem, Georges, The Normal and the Pathological, Fawcett, Carolyn R., tr., in collaboration with Cohen, Robert S. (New York: Zone Books, 1991).
Centers for Disease Control, National Vital Statistics Reports 61.3 (2012).
Coeckelbergh, Mark, Human Being @ Risk: Enhancement, Technology, and the Evaluation of Vulnerability Transformations (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013).
Cole-Turner, Ronald, The New Genesis: Theology and the Genetic Revolution (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993).
Cole-Turner, Ronald, ed., Transhumanism and Transcendence: Christian Hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011).
Davis, Lennard J., Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body (London: Verso, 1995).
Davis, Lennard J., “Introduction: Disability, Normality, and Power,” in Davis, Lennard J., ed., The Disability Studies Reader, 4th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 114.
Deane-Drummond, Celia, and Scott, Peter Manley, eds., Future Perfect? God, Medicine, and Human Identity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2006).
de Grey, Aubrey, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence: Why Genuine Control of Aging May Be Foreseeable (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 2004).
de Grey, Aubrey, and Rae, Michael, Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin Press, 2007).
Dehaene, Stanislas, et al., “How Learning to Read Changes the Cortical Networks for Vision and Language,” Science 330 (2010): 359–64.
Dupuy, Jean-Pierre, On the Origins of Cognitive Science: The Mechanization of the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).
Elster, Jon, Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
Foot, Philippa, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Fukuyama, Francis, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002).
Glover, Jonathan, Choosing Children: Genes, Disability, and Design (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Graham, Elaine, Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002).
Graham, Elaine, “Bioethics after Posthumanism: Natural Law, Communicative Action and the Problem of Self-Design,” Ecotheology 9 (2004): 178–98.
Graham, Elaine, “In Whose Image? Representations of Technology and the ‘Ends’ of Humanity,” in Deane-Drummond and Scott, eds., Future Perfect?, pp. 56–69.
Graham, Gordon, “Human Nature and the Human Condition,” in Deane-Drummond and Scott, eds., Future Perfect?, pp. 33–44.
Grant, George, “Thinking about Technology,” in Technology and Justice (Concord: House of Asansi Press, 1986), pp. 1134.
Groll, Daniel, and Lott, Michael, “Is There a Role for ‘Human Nature’ in Debates about Human Enhancement?,” Philosophy 90 (2015): 623–51.
Gunton, Colin, The Christian Faith: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002).
Habermas, Jürgen, “The Debate on the Ethical Self-Understanding of the Species,” in The Future of Human Nature (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), pp. 16100.
Habermas, Jürgen, “Faith and Knowledge,” in The Future of Human Nature, pp. 101–15.
Haraway, Donna J., Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991).
Haraway, Donna J., Modest_Witness @ Second_ Millenium. FemaleMan_Meets_Oncomouse: Feminism and Technoscience (New York: Routledge, 1997).
Haraway, Donna J., The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003).
Harris, John, Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
Hayles, Katherine, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
Hefner, Philip, The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).
Hefner, Philip, Technology and Human Becoming (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).
Heidegger, Martin, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, translated and with an introduction by Lovitt, William (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), pp. 335.
Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies.
Jeeves, Malcolm, ed., Rethinking Human Nature: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011).
Jersild, Paul, The Nature of Our Humanity: A Christian Response to Evolution and Biotechnology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009).
Jonas, Hans, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (New York: Harper and Row, 1966).
Jonas, Hans, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for a Technological Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
Kaebnick, Gregory, ed., The Ideal of Nature: Debates about Biotechnology and the Environment (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011).
Kaebnick, Gregory, “Human Nature without Theory,” in Kaebnick, ed., The Ideal of Nature, pp. 49–70.
Kamm, Frances, “What Is and Is Not Wrong with Enhancement?,” in Savulescu, Julian, and Bostrom, Nick, eds., Human Enhancement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 91130.
Kass, Leon, Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs (New York: The Free Press, 1985).
Kass, Leon, “The Wisdom of Repugnance,” The New Republic 216 (June 2, 1997), pp. 17–26.
Kass, Leon, Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002).
Kass, Leon, “Biotechnology and Our Human Future: Some General Reflections,” in Sutton, Sean D., ed., Biotechnology: Our Future as Human Beings and Citizens (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), pp. 9–29.
Kroes, Peter, and Meiers, Anthonie, eds., The Empirical Turn in the Philosophy of Technology (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 2001).
Kurzweil, Ray, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (New York: Penguin, 2000).
Lewis, C. S., The Abolition of Man (London: Macmillan, 1947).
Meilaender, Gilbert, Should We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013).
Messer, Neil, Flourishing: Health, Disease, and Bioethics in Theological Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013).
Mill, John Stuart, “On Nature,” in Lerner, Max, ed., Essential Works of John Stuart Mill (New York: Bantam, 1961), pp. 367401.
Mittelstrass, Jürgen, “Science and the Search for a New Anthropology,” in Jeeves, ed., Rethinking Human Nature, pp. 61–69.
Moravec, Hans, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).
Mueller, Laurence D., Rauser, Cassandra L., and Rose, Michael R., eds., Does Aging Stop? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
Newman, Stuart A., “Renatured Biology: Getting Past Postmodernism in the Life Sciences,” in Albertson and King, eds., Without Nature?, pp. 101–35.
Nussbaum, Martha C., “Transcending Humanity,” in Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 365–91.
Nussbaum, Martha C., The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
O’Donovan, Oliver, Begotten or Made? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
O’Donovan, Oliver, Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline of Evangelical Ethics, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994).
Peters, Ted, GOD—The World’s Future: Systematic Theology for a New Era (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992).
Peters, Ted, Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1997).
Peterson, James C., Changing Human Nature: Ecology, Ethics, Genes, and God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010).
Porter, Jean, Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005).
President’s Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).
Rahner, Karl, “The Experiment with Man: Theological Observations on Man’s Self-Manipulation,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 9: Writings of 1965–1967, Harrison, Graham, tr. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), pp. 205–24.
Ridenour, Autumn, “The Coming of Age: Curse or Calling? Toward a Christological Interpretation of Aging as Call in the Theology of Karl Barth and W. H. Vanstone,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 33 (2013): 151–67.
Ridenour, Autumn, “Union with Christ for the Aging: A Consideration of Aging and Death in the Theology of St. Augustine and Karl Barth,” unpublished PhD dissertation, Boston College (2013).
Sandel, Michael J., “Mastery and Hubris in Judaism: What’s Wrong with Playing God?,” in Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), pp. 196210 (originally published in Malino, Jonathan, ed., Judaism and Modernity: The Religious Philosophy of David Hartman [Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004], pp. 121–32).
Sandel, Michael J., The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).
Savulescu, Julian, Sandberg, Anders, and Kahane, Guy, “Well-Being and Enhancement,” in Savulescu, Julian, ter Meulen, Ruud, and Kahane, Guy, eds., Enhancing Human Capacities (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 318.
Scherz, Paul, “Living Indefinitely and Living Fully: Laudato Si’ and the Value of the Present in Christian, Stoic, and Transhumanist Temporalities,” Theological Studies (forthcoming 2018).
Sharon, Tamar, Human Nature in an Age of Biotechnology: The Case for Mediated Posthumanism (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014).
Soloveitchik, Joseph B., Halakhic Man, Kaplan, Lawrence, tr. (New York: The Jewish Publication Society, 1983).
Song, Robert, Human Genetics: Fabricating the Future (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2002).
Song, Robert, “Knowing There Is No God, Still We Should Not Play God? Habermas on the Future of Human Nature,” Ecotheology 11 (2006): 191211.
Song, Robert, “Technological Immortalization and Original Mortality: Karl Barth on the Celebration of Finitude,” in Ziegler, Philip G., ed., Eternal God, Eternal Life: Theological Investigations into the Concept of Immortality (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2016), pp. 187209.
Steckel, Richard H., “Health, Nutrition and Physical Well-Being,” in Carter, Susan, Gartner, Scott, Haines, Michael, Olmstead, Alan, Sutch, Richard, and Wright, Gavin, eds., Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition, Vol. 2 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 499620.
Steinbock, Bonnie, “The Appeal to Nature,” in Kaebnick, ed., The Idea of Nature, pp. 98–113.
Stiegler, Bernard, Technics and Time, I: The Fault of Epimetheus (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994).
Tanner, Kathryn, Christ the Key (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Tanner, Kathryn, “Grace without Nature,” in Albertson and King, eds., Without Nature?, pp. 363–75.
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Phenomenon of Man, Wall, Bernard, tr. (London: Collins, 1965).
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, Activation of Energy, Hague, René, tr. (London: Collins, 1970).
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, Toward the Future, Hague, René, tr. (London: Collins, 1975).
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Future of Man, Denny, Norman, tr. (New York: Doubleday, 2004).
Thweatt-Bates, Jeanine, Cyborg Selves: A Theological Anthropology of the Posthuman (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012).
Verhey, Allen, Nature and Altering It (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010).
Waters, Brent, From Human to Posthuman: Christian Theology and Technology in a Postmodern World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006).
Waters, Brent, Christian Moral Theology in the Emerging Technoculture: From Posthuman Back to Human (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014).
Williams, Bernard, “Must a Concern for the Environment be Centred on Human Beings?,” in Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 233–40.
Zoloth, Laurie, “The Duty to Heal an Unfinished World: Jewish Tradition and Genetic Research,” Dialog 40 (2001): 299300.
Zoloth, Laurie, “The Ethics of the Eighth Day: Jewish Bioethics and Research on Human Embryonic Stem Cells,” in Holland, Suzanne, Lebacqz, Karen, and Zoloth, Laurie, eds., The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 95112.
Zoloth, Laurie, “Go and Tend the Earth: A Jewish View on an Enhanced World,” Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics (2008): 1025.

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.