The psychology of ownership is rooted in self-ownership. The human brain has an evolved interoceptive sense of owning the body that supports self-ownership and the ownership of external things as extensions of the self-owning self. In this way, evolutionary neuroscience supports a Lockean liberal conception of equal natural rights rooted in natural self-ownership.

We are not born virtuous or vicious. But we are born with innate temperaments and capacities that influence our acquisition of virtue by learning and judgment. As Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics, “virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature; but by our nature we can receive them and perfect them by habituation.”

“In the theatre,” Giuseppe Verdi once explained, “long is synonymous with boring. And boring is the worst of all styles.” Those who read scholarly journals must be more patient than opera audiences, and this surely must be true of those who have just read my long article and the nine commentaries. I will not test the limits of that patience, however, by responding at length to all the comments. I am grateful to all the commentators for their instructive remarks, which I will be pondering for a long time. But now I can only answer briefly some of the most prominent objections.

A memorial fund in honor of Thomas C. Wiegele has been established at Northern Illinois University. Income from this endowed fund will be used to provide an annual dissertation completion award for a graduate student studying biopolitics. Those wishing to contribute to this fund should make their checks payable to the “NIU Foundation” and send them to the NIU Foundation, Thomas C. Wiegele Memorial, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA.

I am grateful to the three commentators for raising many good questions that I shall have to ponder for a long time. In this brief response, I can comment on only a few of their points.

Modern Darwinian biology seems to promote nihilism, for it seems to teach that there is no rationally discoverable standard in nature for giving meaning to life. The purpose of this article is to argue for a revival of Aristotle's biological teleology as a reasonable alternative to biological nihilism. The article begins with Edward Wilson's vain struggle against nihilism. Then it is argued that a teleological understanding of nature is assumed in the practice of medicine, as illustrated by one case from Oliver Sacks' neurological practice. The article then considers the importance of biological teleology for Aristotle's moral and political philosophy, and attention is given to some points of agreement and disagreement with contemporary sociobiologists. The main part of the article is then devoted to a defense of Aristotle's biology against the five objections that might be made by a Darwinian biologist. Finally, the article illustrates the practical implications of this issue for bioethics by considering the recent work of Engelhardt.

This article develops a theoretical framework for biopolitical science as a science of political animals. This science moves through three levels of deep political history: the universal political history of the species, the cultural political history of the group, and the individual political history of animals in the group. To illustrate the particular application of biopolitical science, this essay shows how this science would help us to understand Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863.

Primatology supports a feminist ethical naturalism rooted in evolutionary biology. Patriarchal exploitation can be condemned as contrary to women's natural needs and capacities, although prudence is required in recognizing how ecological circumstances limit the range of practicable reform. Donna Haraway's history of primatology, however, illustrates the tendency of some feminists to reject naturalistic realism in favor of nihilistic relativism. Such relativism is disastrous for the feminist position, because it deprives the feminist of any ground in nature for criticizing patriarchal customs. The scenario of “Woman the Gatherer” illustrates feminist naturalism in primatology. Judging female circumcision as frustrating the natural needs of both men and women illustrates the power of feminist naturalism for cultural critique.

John Hibbing's essay is a persuasive defense of biopolitical research. I argue, however, that Hibbing does not go far enough in recognizing the broad vision of biopolitical science as a science of political animals. We need to see this as a science that moves through three levels of deep history: the natural history of the political species, the cultural history of a political community, and the biographical history of political actors in a community. I illustrate this by discussing Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation at these three levels of biopolitical science.