Distracted by Religion: On Doing Bioethics in Public

The conflict between science and religion dominates public debate about bioethical issues. However, this conflict is a bad guide to the real and sometimes tragic dilemmas of bioethics. It frequently obscures important practical and theoretical differences between otherwise like-minded commentators over such questions as the relative importance of cloning versus abortion, what it means to live well while dying, and whether human dignity is best understood as equal and universal or as comparative and based on particular human excellences. In this article, the author reviews the treatments of several controversies concerning the role of religion in bioethics in the recent work of the President's Council on Bioethics and concludes that these treatments have failed to reach the real questions confronting us in bioethics.     

Beyond Natural Law Talk: Politics and Prudence in St. Thomas Aquinas's On Kingship

Abstract

As second-wave feminism crested in the 1980s, feminist intellectuals began to radically reappraise liberalism by developing a communitarian “ethic of care” that promised to remake American society and politics. The new communitarianism, however, could not be reconciled with feminist defenses of abortion rights. This tension became increasingly untenable in the late 1980s as Roe v. Wade faced new political challenges. Feminist communitarians responded by re-embracing liberalism, especially its emphasis on autonomy and independence. This history suggests that many feminist intellectuals regard their support for abortion rights as something that is prior to their larger philosophical commitments, such as liberalism and communitarianism.     

Artists working with life (sciences) in contestable settings

ABSTRACT

As technology is becoming more lifelike and life is becoming a technology, there is a growing need to culturally scrutinize and articulate the meaning(s) of the concept of life. This happens at a time when fact and fake are becoming interchangeable, and the rhetoric of control over complex systems suggests fantasies about human desire for full dominance over the unintentional and constructed world. When it comes to the concept of life, who is calling the shots? This paper aims to explore the complexities in the relations between meaning makers (let us call them artists), fact makers (let us call them scientists), tool makers (let us call them engineers) and money makers (let us call them opportunists), especially as they relate to the idea of life. Life – an enigmatic concept – is always going through changes, physically and conceptually. How do we understand and articulate these changes through the work of artists using the tools of the fact makers to manipulate living bodies or their parts? What is the role artists play across the boundaries of fact, fiction, exploitation and care? In particular, we ask how art can avoid becoming instrumentalized in the service of the opportunists and the tool makers.