Abstract
This chapter examines the implications of the ‘natural’ and the ‘unnatural’ for human enhancement and doping. In public discussions, the natural often seems to have a moral bonus. However, this bonus is far from self-evident, because the natural can be seen as morally neutral and has positive as well as negative consequences for human life circumstances. In the case of human beings, it is also difficult to define, what their actual nature is, because humans are in general the source of the artificial and the cultural sphere. In the article, three different meanings of the natural are distinguished and analysed in the context of doping and enhancement measurements. With reference to Boorse’s naturalistic approach, it is shown, that the ‘normal’ state of the human body (in the sense of Boorse’s theory) in contrast to non-therapeutic body modifications can indeed have some normative implications, i.e. that doping interventions which interfere with the body’s natural state may be dangerous and therefore also unethical regarding the interests of the concerned person.
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Notes
- 1.
Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language (1996: 1558) gives as synonyms for unnatural the words inhuman, heartless, and brutal.
- 2.
Boorse (1977: 554f). “From our standpoint, then, health and disease belong to a family of typological and teleological notions which are usually associated with Aristotelian biology and viewed with suspicion. Often this suspicion is excessive. Informal thinking in the life sciences constantly uses typological and teleological ideas with profit, and much recent philosophical work has been done on concepts of function and goal-directedness in modern biology. This work suggests that aseptic substitutes can be found for ancient notions that continue to have a scientific use. […] Our version of the nature of the species will be a functional design empirically shown typical of it.” For a more detailed analysis of Boorse’s position, see also Lenk (2002), chapter III.
- 3.
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Lenk, C. (2013). Is Human Enhancement Unnatural and Would This Be an Ethical Problem?. In: Tolleneer, J., Sterckx, S., Bonte, P. (eds) Athletic Enhancement, Human Nature and Ethics. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 52. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5101-9_3
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