Where do Bioethicists Come From?

Abstract

How bioethicists reproduce themselves is one of the great mysteries of modern metaphysics, and perhaps, one of the greatest miracles of modern medicine. Cultists of both varieties, despite their surface disputes, assert unanimously that we are not our bodies. Their moral projects unite not only in opposing human animality, but in wholly disembodying the transcendent souls and autonomous agents they respectively venerate. In this they assert at once the fact of metaphysical dualism, and the moral demand that we transcend any animal accompaniments of human nature. They follow, thereby, the vast bulk of the Western moral tradition in defining human worth and moral capacity wholly in opposition to human animality. Given that heritage, utilitarianism might seem an attractive alternative to either cult, as it harkens back to the Epicureans who defined persons as their bodies. Historically, however, all such efforts have been dismissed, predictably, as animalistic, as degrading, as beneath human dignity. Epicurus himself advocated a life of comparatively simple pleasures, a life predicated on enjoying experiences in themselves, experiences identified as pleasurable and thus good, or not pleasurable and thus not good, by the human body. Eschewing references to any transcendence beyond our embodied sensibilities, he recommended instead that we seek contentment in easily attained enjoyments, in the time available to us across our natural lifespan.