Life Liberty & the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics

by Leon R. Kass

We are walking too quickly down the road to physical and psychological utopia without pausing to assess the potential damage to our humanity from this brave new biology.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Social Issues

297 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

American physician, scientist, educator, and public intellectual, best known as proponent of liberal education via the "Great Books," as an opponent of human cloning, life extension and euthanasia, as a critic of certain areas of technological progress and embryo research, and for his controversial tenure as chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005. Although Kass is often referred to as a bioethicist, he eschews the term and refers to himself as "an old-fashioned humanist.

Reviews

[The American Conservative]

'There is so much that Dr. Kass covers in this book—including many wonderful and illuminating insights—that this review simply cannot do it justice. For example, his discussion of the permanent limits of biology and its uncritical incorporation of philosophical materialism in its theory and practice is alone worth the price of the book. Although one may find oneself disagreeing with Dr. Kass on occasion, one will never cease to be impressed with, and sometimes moved by, his winsome discourse and deep understanding of medicine, science, and philosophical anthropology. Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity should be required reading for anyone who is concerned about the numerous issues that come under the heading “bioethics.”'

Read the full review, "Pulling the Plug on Bioethics," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...

[Jacob Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book in highlighting how nonteleological and mechanistic much of modern biology is.

But for a book that leans so heavily on C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man, you can feel the lack of resurrection in his ethics in a profound way. The final chapters start to sound like death is actually a human good, which is just weird.

While I agree with him on many practical questions and like the overall frame of his book, he really lacks a lot of the moral punch and clarity you would hope for. Also, the book just seems poorly edited. Lots of typos and weird sentences. Makes it harder to enjoy the argument.

[Zach Tentor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A multitude of essays concerning bioethical issues of life and death, mortality and immortality. Kass generally argues for a more Aristotelian understanding of nature with a focus on the knowing subject. He draws on Brave New World and The Abolition of Man for arguments against cloning, physician assisted suicide, and permanent genetic engineering. As usual, Kass weaves together pre-Enlightenment philosophy with a Jewish understanding of life exceedingly well.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a heavy and rich work. I found Dr. Kass to have a profoundly well-though out explanation of his philosophical perspectives in many areas of bioethics. One complaint I had overall, however, was the tedious nature of his writing, and sometimes I wished he had more specific examples or practical applications for the points he was making. Granted, I agree with him that the defense of dignity is a hard thing, seeing as it is a value he describes as a “soft”, even “symbolic” (p15).
One strength of his writing for the Christian bioethicist is that the defense that he makes for human dignity is frequently made through moral reasoning rather than from Biblical sources, which makes for usefulness in conversation with those who have no belief in divine inspiration of Scripture. Also I appreciated the challenge he makes to Christian bioethicists who becomes “just like everybody else” in their discussion of the issues. (p61)
From his discussion in “The Meaning of Life-in the Laboratory,” I appreciated his pointing out the new beginning that occurs in fertilization, which is entirely different from the separate sperm and egg, that there is a new individual after fertilization is complete. I found his comparison of the in vitro blastocyst with the aborted fetuses (p89), to be painfully obvious—of course a live blastocyst is more viable than a dead fetus! Also I would have liked more elaboration on his mention that the thin-edge-of-the-wedge argument as being faulty or weak (p104). I also liked his approach in regard to legislation, that “not every folly can or should be legislated against.” It seems like there are areas of biotechnology that shouldn’t be funded by taxpayers but also can’t be legislated against (for instance because some would be impossible to regulate), though certainly experimentation on human embryos and human cloning are not among those areas. He provided very clear reasons to object to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, in response to each of the major arguments in favor of it. He made the excellent point that funding should first go to preventing the causes of infertility (i.e. blocked oviducts from STDs) rather than to expensive high-tech/low-yeild treatments (IVF) (pg 111). Also I believe this is the only place I’ve read that stated that actual cost of funding all these IVF treatments if the government were to pick up the tab, and it is sobering. He ends this chapter with a candid summary of how difficult this discussion has been to him, and I appreciated and felt his honesty.
In his section on genetic technology, he discussed the concerns of having too much knowledge of our own genome and genetic disposition, and it’s dangers. I hadn’t considered this aspect of the matter, but rather had thought only of privacy issues. But the idea of people living life with the knowledge of their genetic future (dementia, etc.) is concerning.
While reading the chapter on cloning, it struck me several times how much has developed even in the seven years since Kass wrote this volume. This was in my opinion one of his best chapters, and the basis of his arguments against cloning was strong. Toward the end of the chapter he pointed out that scientists whose names we don’t know and in places we don’t know are currently working behind closed doors and in secrecy to clone humans. This is a chilling but certainly valid concern. Equally chilling was the discussion on the next chapter on maintain perfusion and respiration mechanically in the newly dead in order to maintain an organ supply.
One of the strengths of Kass’ writing is the candid way in which he admits his personal difficulty with some of the arguments he makes, yet his honestly only serves to strengthen his perspective. For instance, on page 210, he points out his “weakening on the subject of euthanasia is precisely this: I would confess a strong temptation to remove myself from life to spare my children the anguish of years of attending my demented self and the horrible likelihood that they will come, hatefully to themselves, to resent my continued existence.” He notes these reasons might lead him to think he might have a duty to die, but argues against this thought in that “What principle of family life am I enacting and endorsing with my ‘altruistic suicide’?” and also points to another article for further discussion of this concern (210). Later he has a very balanced view as he states he “defends the practice of allowing to die while opposing the practice of deliberately killing.” (p227)
One argument that did appear weak which he used in regard to several issues was that deep within us we find the idea of certain things (i.e. cloning) repugnant, and that this feeling should be taken into consideration and even have possible moral value. This seems a stretch; since there are a lot of things which we may find repugnant but certainly have no moral opposition to.
Overall this is a book I will frequently refer to as I work through these issues, and the insight and candor with which Dr. Kass examined the issues is a rich resource to any who would read it.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eloquent and insightful! I believe anyone interested in bioethics should read this primer for a unique and well-articulated perspective on human dignity.

[Mary Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was thought provoking, but in a way that brought me to realize how strongly I disagreed with the author.

[A.E. Reiff · Rating 2 out of 5]

The fantastic apparatus of intellect and imagination comes after birth. I remember the years before five brightly lit, but with no understanding. Subsequently I knew a large number of 90 year olds, people unenhanced, as we should say, without medical interventions. They did not mentally feel any older, but they were. Essentially it was a lesson in courage. None complained about their lot, but as you approach it you find that seventy is old, doubt it not. Youth replaced with being means austerity in everything physical, which means less of it. Youth itself however is puerile. If you need evidence of this go to Chuang Tzu here http://humanbotany.blogspot.com/2010/...

Something Higher Than Life

Leon Kass says of immortality what absolutely draws a line between the human and the H+ (trans-human) "although we believe that life is good and long life is better, we hold something higher than life itself to be best" (273). This sounds to to me identical to Socrates http://www.elimae.com/essays/Reiff/Ba.... Kass says "we are obliged to accept death rather than commit idolatry, murder or sexual outrage" (273). He speaks this out of traditional Jewish wisdom, not so different from the Greek, which itself places him outside the bounds of the H+. The dust jacket of Citizen Cyborg by James Hughes (2004), written two years after Kass, makes the point that he opposes "the use of genetics to enhance human beings...invitro fertilization, stem cell research, and life extension," as if this were a horror, which after various propaganda wars waged since sounds like a stone age attitude. But many scientists would switch to the stone age if they knew the intent of the agenda that attracts them. Hence Kass, though written before 2002, has an understanding that the extraordinary four horsemen of the Trans-human were even then old hat. This book is an antidote for those who have informed themselves about that agenda and its outcome.

Bodily Immortality

Kass has already given this agenda away with the word that, "unlike the death-defying Egyptians, those ancient precursors of the quest for bodily immortality, the Children of Israel do not mummify or embalm their dead" (273). I am privy to this death-defying through a friend from whose manuscript I borrowed this sentence:

"What is so important about symbolic Egyptian intercourse to bring back a defeated god that it should attract such support in later cultures spanning thousands of years to express itself in massive architectural monuments intertwining the great political and religious powers?"

I wish I could get him to explain this in a quote, but the manuscript is wild and wooly http://www.scribd.com/doc/83826992/TR... with references to Kafka, Swift and Yeats if you don't count Ezekiel and H. G. Wells mixed in with all the science.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book. I will be using it as one of my resources for a talk that I'm doing on personhood and genetic engineering. Kass relies on some biblical theology but also moral philosophy as his moral foundations for his ethic. And while he does not write from a distinctly Christian worldview (he's Jewish), his views on human dignity and his appeals to the fact that man's inherent dignity is based on our being made in the image of God is very useful. I can understand why scientists (who hold to a purely materialistic worldview) would not like this book. He is educated, articulate, knowledgeable, and unashamedly appeals to the moral law of man's heart and to value beyond something empirically measurable.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

LRK speaking for himself:

Fewer people yet worried about the effects on our .. society of coming to look upon nascent human life as a natural resource to be mined, exploited, commodified... We are desensitized and denatured by a coarsening of sensibility that comes to regard these practices as natural, ordinary and fully unproblematic. People who can hold nascent human life in their hands coolly and withour awe have deadened something in their souls.
...
For the desire to prolong youthfulness is .. an expression of a childish and narcissistic wish incompatible with devotion to posterity.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read Leon Kass. Read everything he wrote. If anyone deserves to be called an original thinker it's him. A secular Jew that reinvented the study of bioethics.