Abstract
The extent to which the science of genetics presents challenges to the dominant modern conceptions of the self inaugurated by Descartes and Locke which asserts the individual as sovereign is not widely recognized. Indeed there is a general misperception, widely promulgated by the media, that theories in evolutionary biology such as that of ‘the selfish gene’ lend support to the latter when they do not.
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Notes
- 1.
He elaborates this point elsewhere: “I do not master this language because even if I wanted to do something other than promise, I would promise. I do not master it because it is older than me; language is there before me and, at the moment I commit myself in it, I say yes to it and to you in a certain manner” (Derrida 1995, p. 384).
- 2.
He draws a distinction between therapeutic genetic interventions and genetic enhancements and argues that a retrospective informed consent could be imagined for the former but not the later.
- 3.
For an overview of the main issues in contention between Habermas and Derrida see The Derrida-Habermas Reader (Thomassen 2006). On the particular issue of the status of reason in Derrida’s work and Habermas’ mistaken characterisation of him in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity as an anti-modernist see Evans (2014).
- 4.
The very title of his paper ‘The Aforementioned So-called Human Genome’, a published version of his contribution to a 1992 colloquium, ‘Analysis of the Human Genome: Freedoms and Responsibilities’ organized by Association Descartes, hints at this second concern. Indeed, he underlines that the human genome is one that is 98 % shared with apes and 90 % with mice. Derrida’s anxiety is that genetics will be used to try and isolate what is purportedly uniquely human rather than showing the difficulty of drawing a line between human and animal. The later theme more generally is an important one in his late work and is surveyed in Calacro (2008).
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Evans, M. (2015). The Ethical Self After Genetics. In: Meacham, D. (eds) Medicine and Society, New Perspectives in Continental Philosophy. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 120. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9870-9_5
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