Understanding Federalism

Abstract

Communitarians have expressed deep suspicion over the burgeoning project of human biological enhancement. This is hardly surprising because the best defenses of enhancement have largely treaded on libertarian-consequentialist grounds; they have ignored sentiments that communitarians prize most: features like love, care, belongingness, and solidarity. But defenses of enhancement need not necessarily rely on the liberal image of moral agents; it is possible to defend even evasive biological alterations in ways congenial to communitarian sympathies. The sentiments are elusive things, and they invariably motivate human action in often surprising and unobvious ways. Looking to the history of political thought, a close read of Adam Smith reveals that he defended technological artifice as a means to protect the human propensities toward love and belongingness.