Rethinking "Liberal Eugenics": Reflections and Questions on Habermas on Bioethics

Abstract

In the new “liberal eugenics,” children could be genetically improved as long as the enhancements let children choose from among a wide range of ways to live their lives. The German political philosopher Jürgen Habermas has opened a debate with the proponents of this view. Habermas suggests that a person could not really regard her life as her own if she lived with a body that somebody else had, without asking her opinion, “enhanced” for her.

The impact of Jürgen Habermas’s scientific production: a scientometric review

“…4 there is a connection between different disciplinary origins, also with an emphasis on Medicine, which culminate in the most representative circle of destination, moving on to other areas that are also different. Prusak ( 2005 ), for example, uses foundations proposed by Habermas to debate Bioethics.…”

Yesterday’s Child: How Gene Editing for Enhancement Will Produce Obsolescence—and Why It Matters

“…In this, he argues, it is to be distinguished from parenting, which -although it may have its instrumental moments -is regulated by a communicative relation to the child as a future member of the kingdom of ends (Malmqvist 2007). Habermas also claims that the transformation wrought by enhancement would be detrimental to human freedom insofar as, he suggests, understanding ourselves -and each other -as free and equal agents requires that our genomes not reflect the decisions of third parties (Prusak 2005).…”