Abstract
This chapter argues that uneasiness about enhancement in sport is linked to a sense of the normal that is inherent to perceptual experience itself. Using Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, I argue that normality is a structural component of our experience of the world and most significantly, others in the world. Nonetheless, what the normal is, its actual content, is a matter of historical contingency that is developed over time in social relations with others. On the basis of the phenomenological conception of normality, I argue that the possibility of sharing a world of common projects and goals with others is dependent on perceiving them as normal in the relevant sense. Normality, in this case, is based on the possibility of strong empathic relations with another: being able to imagine the structure and flow of another’s experiences as my own. On the grounds of this analysis, I argue that while some enhancements may stretch the ties of empathy, it is difficult to imagine them being broken completely. The concepts of normality and empathy ground what I call a phenomenological species concept that may exceed the boundaries of a biological species definition. I argue that it is the phenomenological species concept and not the biological one which holds ethical significance. Following from this, I hold that ethical arguments that appeal to the unity of the biological species as having an ethical significance are unfounded.
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Notes
- 1.
A phenomenological species is a group of beings that share a world or could potentially do so. It remains to be explained then what a phenomenological sub-species would entail.
- 2.
The strong definition of enhancement refers to interventions that move the enhanced individual or population beyond the normal scope of species functioning, or at least to its outer limits in relation to one or more particular capacities. An enhancement within the normal scope of species functioning would be considered as weak. I readily concede that the Pistorius case is certainly a borderline or problematic one insofar as my strong definition of enhancement is concerned.
- 3.
Scare quotes here to alert the reader to a possible set of concerns that arise in this case and point to its difficulty: what is running? Does running require legs, and if so how much of a leg? What constitutes a leg? According to one study, Pistorius’s prosthetics generate an energy savings of 25% over ‘normal’ (read: natural) limbs (Camporesi 2008). But the ‘natural’ limbs of most elite athletes have been thoroughly worked-over by technology, to the extent that the bodies of elite athletes must also be considered technological objects.
- 4.
Pistorius and Semenya are both South African athletes whose eligibility for competition has been brought into question: Pistorius because he has had both legs amputated below the knees and runs with the aid prosthetic lower legs, Semenya because her status as a women was questioned and she was asked to undergo ‘gender testing’ (a misnomer) following her victory in the 800 m at the 2009 IAAF World Championships. Semanya was ruled eligible to compete as a woman in July 2010. Pistorius was ruled ineligible for competition by the IAAF in January 2008, the decision was then overturned in May 2008.
- 5.
Very generally speaking, the lifeworld is the world as experienced in an ‘everyday’ manner, that is, in relation to the interests, values, and practices of experiencing subjects. In this sense, it is the world as we encounter it intuitively in experience. For an elaboration, see, for example, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Husserl 1970).
- 6.
I am grateful to Andreas de Block for this comparison between doping and counterfeiting, see Chap. 8, this volume.
- 7.
A similar point is made in Wasserman (2008).
- 8.
“[W]e can no longer assume that there will be a single successor to what has been called human nature. We must consider the possibility that at some point in the future, different groups of human beings will follow divergent paths of development through the use of genetic technology. If this occurs, there will be different groups of beings, each with its own ‘nature,’ related to one another only through a common ancestor (the human race), just as there are now different species of animals who evolved from common ancestors through random mutation and natural selection.” (Buchanan et al. 2000: 95).
- 9.
The instauration of L’Olympiade de la République is roughly contemporaneous with the Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen.
- 10.
This is an important point. Our species may have a greater stability than others precisely due to the fact that our horizon of normality is sedimented or concretised in sense-structures (culture, science) though we may not be the only species with stabilising sense-structures.
- 11.
In much of the literature surrounding the case of Semenya there seems to be an error surrounding the commonplace distinction between sex and gender. What is put into question by those demanding that Semenya undergo testing to verify her status as a female is her sex not her gender. As far as I know, Semenya’s gender identification is unambiguous. She identifies herself as a woman (see, for example, Camporesi and Maugeri 2010).
- 12.
See, Camporesi (2008). Locatelli was quoted as saying “next will be another device where people can fly with something on their back”.
- 13.
Pistorius’s image recently graced billboards around the United Kingdom advertising super fast broadband. There is a certain amount of unnoticed irony here, as Pistorius does not run as fast as the fastest ‘whole’ and ‘natural’ athletes. On the other hand, the image of the technologically modified human is presented alongside superfast broadband as an analogy of humanity’s progress—a progress which in its technological development may take humanity beyond man and beyond its traditional (human) form. I have yet to see Semenya on any billboards as the symbol of the next development in the teleological development and evolution of womanhood (and by extension humanity), one that overcomes the physical inferiority (in terms of strength and speed), which perhaps lies at the root of much sexual oppression and violence.
- 14.
I am grateful to Pieter Bonte for this point.
- 15.
The position dubbed speculative post-humanism does postulate such a creature while admitting that we would be able to say almost nothing about how it would experience the world precisely because it would be so far outside of our scope of normality.
- 16.
Although even at this most subject relative level Husserl maintains that normality is constituted in relation with others, the first other for most being the mother.
- 17.
This is a similar point to the one that Nicholas Agar raises as an argument against “radical enhancement” in Humanity’s End, Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement (2010).
- 18.
Thus the question here is more about ‘sex diversity’ or sexual polymorphism as a deviation from the normal than Semenya’s eligibility to compete.
- 19.
See, the ‘Olympic Movement Factsheet’ http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Reference_documents_Factsheets/The_Olympic_Movement.pdf [last accessed 20/12/2011].
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Meacham, D. (2013). Outliers, Freaks, and Cheats: Constituting Normality in the Age of Enhancement. 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_7
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