After receiving suggestions from various people and thinking more about it myself, I now have a revised version of my book project--
NATURAL RIGHT AND BIOLOGY: A DARWINIAN HISTORY OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
1. DARWINIAN HUMAN NATURE
2. ANCIENT NATURAL RIGHT: ARISTOTLE
3. MEDIEVAL NATURAL LAW: AQUINAS
4. MODERN NATURAL RIGHTS: HOBBES, LOCKE, AND ROUSSEAU
5. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS AND POLITICS: HUME, SMITH, AND WESTERMARCK
6. NIHILISM AND NATURALISM: NIETZSCHE
7. SOCIAL DARWINISM: SPENCER, HAECKEL, AND HITLER
8. PHENOMENOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHICAL BIOLOGY: JONAS AND KASS
9. LIBERTY AND JUSTICE: HAYEK, RAWLS, AND NUSSBAUM
10. OUR TRANSHUMAN FUTURE?
Obviously, writing such a book will require more than one year! But I will be able to incorporate material from some previous writing, including some of my blog posts here.
7 comments:
I have a few thoughts regarding your last chapter.
In LIBERATION BIOLOGY Ronald Bailey argues, "Another flaw in the idea of holding some sort of 'national discourse' on biotechnological progress is that humans have terrible foresight. Evolution has so constituted us psychologically that we tend to imagine monsters lurking just over the horizon of technological progress, while failing to see that in reality the Promised Land lies close at hand" (242). Further down on the same page, he accuses bioconservatives of harnessing this evolved aversion to biotechnological progress.
Bailey seems to be opposed to a national discourse on biotechnological progress, since on evolutionary grounds, perhaps the "wisdom of repugnance" is being alluded to here, we are predisposed to feel disgust regarding biotech issues. Yet he seems to think that scientists have a prophetic vision and ought to have their way in politics. Is he thus opposed to deliberative democracy regarding scientific progress? Would this be an example of how democracy and science might be incompatible?
Furthermore, do you think transhumanism, regardless of whether its aspirations are possible, is opposed to the Darwinian science of human nature in that it points beyond an evolved, durable human nature? Bailey seems to grant that evolution has bestowed upon us, for better or for worse, a sentiment of disgust for what lurks around the corner. Would his transhumanism use Darwinian science as a form of enlightenment, in that in the end the knowledge gleaned from evolutionary science would be used to suppress or alter certain feelings within our evolved human nature? Or in other words, are there some forms of artificial selection that are more natural than other ones? Would the transhumanist even take this into consideration?
I am inclined to wonder if a Burkean stance might be the best response to transhumanism, which Bailey describes as a "nascent philosophical and political movement that epitomizes the most daring, courageous, imaginative, and idealistic aspirations of humaninty" (23). Are these political and philosophical ideals really better for politics than our sentiments that seem to intimate caution and prudence?
Congratulations, Larry - this project fills one of the biggest gaps in the philosophy of evolutionary theory and its connections with ethics and "natural law" theory. I eagerly await its publication!
Thanks, Allen. I hope I can pull this off.
Thanks also to Anonymous. I have thought a lot about Bailey's arguments. I have directed two Liberty Fund conferences on "Biotechnology and Liberty," using Bailey's book and Leon Kass's BEYOND THERAPY. My thoughts on these issues are laid out in Chapter 10 of DARWINIAN CONSERVATISM and in a blog post from March 8, 2006.
As an alternative the transhumanist stance, I would defend a libertarian conservatism rooted in human nature. My stance is close to the position taken by Bailey. But I depart from Bailey when he moves towards a transhumanist libertarianism that assumes that somehow human nature will be superseded by a new, superior form of life.
I welcome the prospect of technological chanages in the human condition that will improve the physical and mental functions of life. But rather than expecting the emergence of a transhuman form of life, I foresee that human nature will not only endure but prevail.
I hope your chapter on Social Darwinism will explicitly refute such slanders asthis, from the NYT article onDarwinian Conservatism: Victorian-era social Darwinists like Herbert Spencer adopted evolutionary theory to justify colonialism and imperialism, opposition to labor unions and the withdrawal of aid to the sick and needy.
Notice that the New York Times had to add a correction to this article, which pointed out that, in fact, Spencer opposed colonialism and imperialism.
I have written a post on Spencers anarchist utopianism.
Ooops. Guess a red mist descends when I see stuff like that, and I didn't notice the correction.
I know you have to draw the line at some point, but what about Marx and Peter Singer? Both thinkers have been influenced by Darwin.
Or what about Kant? Esp. Pre-Rousseauian Kant, who has been considered as a moral-sense thinker during this stage in his life. See Kant's Prize-Essay written in 1763, where the ethical section of the treatise seems rather sympathetic towards Hutcheson's moral-sense theory.
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