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Enhancement, Human Nature, and Human Rights

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Human Rights and Human Nature

Part of the book series: Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice ((IUSGENT,volume 35))

Abstract

Enhancement technologies are not only object of fundamental controversies but also affect both the boundaries of the human and the concept of individual rights. They range from plastic surgery, smart pills, genetic diagnostics and intervention, clones and chimeras to the production of cyborgs or the creation of artificial life. Human enhancement proves to be a complex, inherently reflexive concept. It also sets off new debates with regard to other key concepts. A closer analysis of the enhancement debates shows that human nature, human dignity, identity, autonomy or equality are the origin of oppositional arguments. The problem of enhancement reveals how varied and in need of contextualization these concepts are. The relationship between the concept of human nature on the one hand and human rights on the other has always been complex, and in the present-day human rights discourse “human nature” might be assigned a particular role just because of its ambiguity and rich implications. The enhancement problem can be seen as a catalyst for reflexivity because it sets off new discussions on fundamental questions. It enriches the discourse on human nature and human rights and, in turn, benefits from being part of such a discourse.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Of course, we always deal with a future which is a specific part of each present – a present future – and constructed on the basis of, i.e., available knowledge, imaginations, value judgments or interests, see Grunwald 2013, 211 ff.

  2. 2.

    Expansion strategies take pains to justify cosmetic surgery by emphasizing that it is basically health-related in view of its effects on psychological well-being; promoting this well-being through measures which have no medical basis in themselves is, however, not the task of medicine (Devereaux 2008, 162 ff., 165 f.). Especially in the area of cosmetic surgery, we can observe vigorous discussion of professional ethics (see, for example Little 1998; Juengst 1998, 29 ff.; Ach 2006; Lanzerath 2011).

  3. 3.

    This is a historical chronological description. From an analytic point of view, this distinction is not necessary; human-machine interfaces, for example, can arise independently in an information technology context.

  4. 4.

    Originally, the understanding of “disease” as a social construction was motivated by an interest in preventing discrimination. Having said that, it would be expected that the problem of perfection should cease to exist and that there would be no necessity for any human enhancement. Surprisingly, in modern society an awareness of disease as a social construction and the quest for enhancement emerged simultaneously. An explanation might be that both approaches have in common the fact that they draw attention to the constructed and contingent nature of how humans are conceptualized.

  5. 5.

    In order to make the constellations clearer, Grunwald describes this as “doping” to distinguish it from enhancement in the narrower sense, see Grunwald 2013, 204 f.

  6. 6.

    See also the early remarks of David Hume: “‘Nature’ means something different when the concept is used as the opposite of ‘miracle’, ‘what is unusual’ or ‘what is artificial’” (Hume 1739/1740, 475).

  7. 7.

    In his famous and influential essay on “Nature” John Stuart Mill differentiated between two principal meanings of the word nature. In one sense, “Nature means the sum of all phenomena, together with the causes that produce them; including not only all that happens, but all that is capable of happening” (Mill 1874, 5). The other notion of nature refers to “not everything which happens, but only what takes place without the agency, or without the voluntary and intentional agency, of man.” (Mill 1874, 8). The core of this essay is a sharp criticism of the employment of the word Nature as a term in ethics (Mill 1874, 9 ff.) or the “doctrines which make Nature a test of right and wrong, good and evil, or which in any mode or degree attach merit or approval to following, imitating, or obeying Nature” (Mill 1874, 13). However, this critique is based on the implicit assumption that human beings, in principle, are embedded in nature and that “man has no power to do anything else than follow nature” (Mill 1874, 64).

  8. 8.

    See Birnbacher 2008, 101: “Modifying or transforming his own nature more directly and deliberately by means of technology does not constitute a radical change in human nature taken in its comprehensive sense but affirms this nature.”

  9. 9.

    They may be part of a comparative, evaluative assessment of biotechnological enhancement compared with other common and accepted practices, but nevertheless, they are not very productive.

  10. 10.

    Differing moral evaluations or at least differing conclusions are based on these distinctions.

  11. 11.

    See Merkel et~al. 2007, 295: “the improvement implied by an enhancement is relative in at least two senses. First, what counts as an enhancement, i.e. improvement, depends on the standpoint from which the desired enhanced state is defined as advantageous, relative to certain values. […] An enhancement in that particular, value-relative context may, therefore, not appear to be an enhancement for anybody else, or could even amount to a worsening or a disadvantage from the point of view of other people.” Cf. also Holm and McNamee 2011, 291 ff.

  12. 12.

    An approach which bases on the proposal that each individual determines for him- or herself whether the outcome of an intervention can be described as human enhancement or not allows an individualistic definition of enhancement which is independent from definitions of “disease” or “species-typical normal functioning” and tightly linked to (socially influenced) personal considerations. As a consequence, removing a limb is an enhancement if the person undergoing the intervention considers the removal to be an improvement. See Menuz et~al. 2013, 171 ff.

  13. 13.

    Early Glover 1984, 44, 45 ff.: “The set of problems which raises deeper issues centres round the question: if we adopt positive genetic engineering, who is in a position to decide what future people should be like?”

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Albers, M. (2014). Enhancement, Human Nature, and Human Rights. In: Albers, M., Hoffmann, T., Reinhardt, J. (eds) Human Rights and Human Nature. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 35. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8672-0_16

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