Song Habermas Playing God

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[Ecotheology11.2 (2006) 191-211] Ecotheology (print) ISSN 1363-7320Ecotheology(online) ISSN1743-1689

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2006, Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW.

Knowing There Is No God, Still We Should Not Play God?Habermas on the Future of Human Nature*

Robert Song

Department of Theology and Religion, University of Durham,Abbey House, Palace Green, Durham, DH1 3RS

[email protected]

Abstract

Jrgen Habermass recent critique of human genetic enhancements reachessimilar conclusions to many Christian theological analyses of genetic tech-nologies. However, his use of categories drawn from his general theory ofcommunicative action fails to justify central distinctions such as those

between the natural and the artificial, and between environmental andgenetic enhancements. In fact he holds much in common with the morelibertarian approach of liberal eugenics which he rightly rejects: this is

traced to the deficient account of nature and the body which they bothshare. By contrast Christian theology, by drawing out the significance ofthe goodness of creation, offers an alternative narration of the distinctions

which places them in the context of a theology of the body of Christ.

1. Introduction

In lectures originally delivered in 2001, and translated in The Future ofHuman Nature(2003a), the philosopher and social theorist Jrgen Haber-mas turned his attention to the philosophical and ethical issues of humangenetic engineering. His pronouncements were of particular weight not

just because of his public stature in his native Germany, a country whosehistory has made debate on these issues particularly sensitive. They werealso notable because they represent one of the most serious attempts to

justify the rejection of positive genetic enhancements yet made by aphilosopheran enterprise the more significant inasmuch as he is no

* I am extremely grateful to Maureen Junker-Kenny, Paul Murray, Peter Manley

Scott and Brent Waters for discussions on the theme of this article, and to twoanonymous referees, one of whom provided extensive, detailed and extremely helpfulcomments on an earlier draft.


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Equinox Publishing Ltd 2006.

conservative antimodern, but rather one of the contemporary worldsmost distinguished interpreters and proponents of the project ofmodernity.

For theologians and theological ethicists who share his anxieties aboutenhancement technologies, which is to say probably a majority of thoseworking in thefield, support from a philosopher of such standing comesas something of a relief. Not only may they share his conclusions, at leaston positive genetic enhancements, they may also find themselves sym-pathetic to some of his basic attitudesfor example, his sense of humanfinitude or his fundamental uneasiness about the idea of parents design-ing their children. They may even appreciate the recognition evinced inhis more recent work that religion preserves important sources of mean-

ing, an acknowledgement that forms a salutary contrast to the moreaggressive secularism that still seems to dominate the English-speakingacademy.

However, their welcome of Habermas as a potential ally in certainpublic policy debates should not extend to an uncritical admiration. Herightly believes that we should preserve the distinctions between thenatural and the artificial, therapeutic and eugenic engineering, andgenetic and environmental enhancements. Yet, so I shall argue, hisattempts to justify these distinctions by appeal to categories drawn from

his general theory of communicative action fail. Indeed, they fail in away that shows how much he holds in common with the more libertar-ian approach of liberal eugenics which he rightly refuses: both have anetiolated account of nature which is finally unable to substantiate thecontrast of natural and artificial. However, by drawing out the signifi-cance of the goodness of creation, I will argue that Christian theologyoffers an alternative account of nature which promises a renarration ofthe distinctions, placing them in the context of a theology of the body ofChrist and so providing a grounding for their intelligibility.

2. The Ethical Self-Understanding of the Species

Habermass principal worry is specifically concerned with genetic engi-neering. Unlike the other more established assisted reproductive tech-nologies that cluster around in vitrofertilization, direct intervention inthe human genome threatens to erode a distinction between the natu-rally human and the artificial: as he writes, the dividing line betweenthe nature we areand the organic equipment wegiveourselves is beingblurred (Habermas 2003c: 22 [italics in original]).

One response to this threat has been the effort to remoralize or re-enchant human nature by appealing (perhaps in the name of wisdom)


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to a set of taboos about intervention in the body. But Habermas will havenone of this: the history of medicine shows the unceasing advance oftechnology despite the recurrent opposition to the alleged instrumen-talization of human beings that has been occasioned by developmentsfrom vaccination through heart transplantation to in vitro fertilisation.Ultimately such appeals to feelings of revulsion are part of a vague andarchaizing antimodernism, which merely lends a dubious sanctificationto opposition to the dominant tendencies towards freedom of modernsociety (Habermas 2003c: 25).

Much more promising in his view is a strategy of identifying the pre-conditions of autonomous agency and enquiring whether these will besubverted by genetic manipulation: rather than rejecting modern auton-

omy, this would contribute to the process of modern autonomybecom-ing reflexively self-aware, and in doing so would consort well with hisoverall commitment to the completion of the modern project. Habermassapproach proceeds from the elaboration of what he calls a species-ethic,that is, an ethic which articulates the vision different cultures have ofhumanity in its anthropological universality, based on those intuitiveself-descriptions that guide our own identification as human beingsthatis, our self-understanding as members of the species (Habermas 2003a:39). The question is whether the new instrumentalization of human

nature through genetic enhancement threatens fundamentally to subvertthis shared species-understanding by obscuring the distinction betweenwhat has come to be by nature and what is manufactured (or in histerms, between the grown and the made).

This distinction which we instinctively make is Aristotelian in kind.Aristotle contrasted the theoretical attitude of the disinterested observerwith the technical attitude of the producer or manufacturer and the prac-tical attitude of the moral agent. Yet another kind of attitude is displayedby the farmer who cultivates the soil, the physician who diagnoses dis-eases with a view to healing them, or the breeder of animals or plants. Ineach of these latter three practices, respect needs to be shown towardsthe intrinsic dynamics of the object of attention if there is to be a success-ful outcome. However, the rise of the experimental sciences gave rise toa combination of the observational-theoretical attitude and the technical-productive attitude, and has led to instrumental reason becoming thedominant form of approach to the world in modern societies, one whichhas begun to encroach on areas beyond its proper preserve (Habermas2003c: 44-46).

While the logics of these different modes of action have still been pre-

served, they no longer correlate to different ontological claims about theworld. Nevertheless, Habermas claims, they do enable us to differentiate


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between an attitude of adjustment to the inherent dynamic of an objectsnature on the one hand and technical manipulation of it which lacks con-cern for its intrinsic nature on the other. And it is this contrast which isbeing put into question by intervention in the human genome: the moreruthless the intrusion into the makeup of the humangenome becomes,the more inextricably the clinical mode of treatment is assimilated to thebiotechnological mode of intervention, blurring the intuitive distinctionbetween the grown and the made, the subjective and the objective(Habermas 2003c: 47 [italics in original]).

This does not mean that Habermas wishes to reject genetic interven-tion in the case of disease. For it is one thing to bend nature to instru-mental will, another to intervene under the logic of healing, which

accommodates itself to the intrinsic nature of the body. This suggestsa distinction between therapy and enhancement as goals of geneticmanipulationor, in another nomenclature, between a negative eugen-ics which addresses genetic disorders and a positive eugenics whichseeks to improve on species-typical traits. But in a crucial further step, hefinds support for this distinction from his more general theory of com-municative action, which turns on a contrast between egocentric orinstrumental relationships on the one side, and conversational or com-municative relationships on the other. For one may approach an embryo

with the attitude of a clinician, who may one day encounter the embryoas a Thou, and for whom the presumed consent of the adult the embryomay one day become is essential; or with the attitude of a technician whosees the embryo as an object to be manipulated in accordance with desire,but who cannot presume on that future consent. The clinician is entitledto presume consent, since healing is concerned with the prevention ofevils which one may assume to be subject to general consent (Habermas2003c: 52), whereas the adult-to-be cannot even in principle be relied onto consent to the ministrations of the technician, intrinsically bound asthese are to the unilateral and irreversible choices of the parents.

He pursues this question of consent further by considering whetherthe autonomy of the individual would be inherently compromised bygenetic enhancements. His concern here is with the effects on onessubjectivity of the growing awareness of having been the object of otherpeoples designs, of seeing oneself as in part as something made in away that allows of no response. He argues that ones sense of self wouldbe fundamentally violated, an idea which he explains by reference to themoral logic of the categorical imperative. As expounded by Kant, thecategorical imperative is a matter not only of treating each person non-

instrumentally as an end in himself or herself, but also of recognizing thecapacity of each person to take responsibility for themselves, to own


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themselves, so to speak; and this in turn depends on each person feelingat home in their body, experiencing their body as something naturaland not alien. This would not obtain if ones origins had been at the dis-posal of some other person: only if the person knows herself to be theirreducible origin of her own actions and aspirations will she enjoyauthentic freedom (Habermas 2003c: 58). Drawing on Hannah Arendt,Habermas notes the significance of natality for marking a uniquely newbeginning: birth marks the difference between nature (and the fate of anatural organism) and culture (and the fate of the subject of socializa-tion), and so justifies the distinction between what weare and whathappens to us (Habermas 2003c: 60).

Eugenic interventions designed to improve a child at the fundamental

genetic level cross this boundary, since they insert external intrusionsinto the core of a persons identity. They differ from changes to a childsenvironment which are intended to have the same outcome, since thegrowing child can over time critically appraise and selectively reject suchintentions on the parents part, whereas eugenic genetic intentions areirreversible and admit of no such communicative response. Moreover,there is an irremovable asymmetry in the relationship between parentand eugenic child, a similar asymmetry to that which obtains between amaker and the thing made: even if the eugenic child is scarcely a purely

manufactured object, an element of this subsists, such that it is question-able whether she will feel entirely equal with her parents. And suchinegalitarianism, which is the ultimate implication of eugenic enhance-ment, is in radical discontinuity with the profoundest commitments ofmodern democratic societies.

3. The Claims of Liberal Eugenics

How are we to assess Habermass argument? At least as an account ofour taken-for-granted thought and practice, his claims do have somebasic plausibility. We do make an instinctive differentiation between thegrown and the made, between the natural and the artificial, even if thedistinction is not always straightforward to apply in practice. Similarly,we dofind the contrast between genetic and environmental interventionsrecognizable, even if we are not very clear about what can be deducedfrom this. The anxious sense that some important boundary is beingcrossed with enhancement genetic engineering is widespread, and asfrequent in academic philosophical or theological contexts as in populardiscourse. Whether this reaction to the possibilities of eugenic enhance-

ment is celebrated as the wisdom of repugnance (Kass 1997) or dis-missed as atavistic emotionalism, it stands at the very least as a witness


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to the disruption of our intuitive, settled categories that opens up a spacefor interrogation.

Yet, of course, to find oneself with an inherited distinction is not assuch to be justified in continuing to deploy it (even if in passing wemight also add that in the absence of better alternatives the mere fact ofhaving inherited it would constitute a sufficient reason for keeping it).To explore this question, and to illustrate the kind of alternative scenariowhich Habermas wishes to fend off, I will take as a foil to Habermas thedefence of liberal eugenics recently proposed by Nicholas Agar.1According to Agar, parental choice should be extended beyond theenvironmental conditions in which a child is brought up, and should bepermitted to include modification of the childs genetic constitution not

only for therapeutic but also for enhancement purposes. While Agar isunashamedly a proponent of eugenics, he is quick to distinguish his ownview from more familiar authoritarian eugenics: the latter is typicallystate-sponsored and oriented to the regulation or suppression of repro-ductive freedoms, whereas his liberal eugenics is devolved to individu-als and dedicated to the protection and extension of their reproductiveliberties. Of course, he has little time for conservative responses that playon visceral repugnance: the yuck argument is designed for reactionsof disgust that lack an obvious rationalewe should not translate quea-

siness into moral condemnations.2

But he also does not fully endorse themore expansively libertarian claims of transhumanists: liberal eugenicson his account places limits on eugenic freedoms, based on the sameprinciples that justify those freedoms in the first place.

Agars method of argument involves the use of analogy to deduceconclusions for proposed new practices from firm intuitions we have inother areas. For example, it is widely accepted that we may produce cer-tain traits by modifying our childrens environments, and so by analogywe ought to be entitled to produce those traits by modifying theirgenomes (Agar 2004: 113). If a childs intelligence can be influenced by

1. Agar 2004. At various points in The Debate on the Ethical Self-Understandingof the Species Habermas discusses an earlier version of the thesis of the book which isfound in Agar 1999. I use Agar not because of the uniqueness of his views, but pre-cisely because in terms of their fundamental commitments they are not unique:

allowing for individual variation, they are representative of a much broaderandequally predictablepattern of thought. Compare, amongst many, Harris 1998.

2. Agar 2004: 56, 58. Cf p. 56: Those who are not instinctually repelled by humancloning will complain that Kass is even worse than people who refuse to reflect on

why they find biotechnology disgusting. Kass is presuming to foist his revulsion onothers. Presumably, however, part of Kasss point is that it may not always be easy toarticulate the rationality of claims which are in fact justified.


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the presence of DHA fatty acids in breast milk, we think it proper forthese to be introduced into infant formula. Why should this not beextended to genetic interventions which have the same effect, presumingfor the sake of argument that these can be performed safely and reliably?Equally, if we are happy to accept that there are some who by geneticchance will be much better performers in mathematics or athletics thanothers, then it should also be legitimate for us to introduce those sametraits by genetic choice, again given pragmatic assumptions about feasi-bility and safety.

The thrust of Agars argument is that there are no moral differences ofprinciple between environmental and genetic improvements: if the out-come is the same, whether a trait came to be by genetic chance or genetic

choice is of no moral significance. The difference is solely that the latterin each case remain untried. Of course many problems with the liberaleugenic vision immediately come to mind, and Agar attempts to addressat least some of these: thus he proposes that there should be constraintson genetic changes which reduce real freedom, which would be used toharm others, and which would compromise the reciprocity and mutualrecognition that are essential to continuing as a single moral communityof the human species. There are risks in attempting to realize the eugenicpromise of the new genetics, he concedes, but there are missed oppor-

tunities for the future of humanity in refusing to face them. (If we hadtaken the precautionary principle too seriously, he claims, most majortechnological advances would never have happened, including theaeroplane, all drugs with side-effects, the contraceptive pill, fire, open-heart surgery, the polio vaccine, the telephone, the wheel and x-rays.Fire, as he calls upon a learned professor to point out, is very danger-ous [Agar 2004: 162].) While there will be a risk for those who have thefirst enhanced children, the reality of international competition fromcountries who may take a less moralistic view of these developments, aswell as the likely considerable demand for these products, means thateugenic improvements will happen anyway, whether we like it or not.Pragmatically it may be better to legalize these developments and bringthem under the remit of regulation, rather than drive them undergroundor abroad to countries whose standards may be lower. However ithappens, the ethically impossible passage will be traversed (Agar2004: 158-75).

4. Irreversibility and Co-Authorship

The central question at stake between Agar and Habermas revolvesaround Agars charge that there are no moral differences of principle


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between environmental and genetic enhancements, or between thera-peutic and enhancement interventions. In response Habermas arguesthat the distinction between the logic of healing on the one hand andbending nature to instrumental will on the other saddles usin contrastto the considerable scope left to tolerance by liberal eugenicistswiththe responsibility of drawing a line between negative eugenics andenhancing eugenics (Habermas 2003c: 44). Liberal eugenicists, in liken-ing fate dependent on nature to fate resulting from socialization, havesettled for too easy a solution (Habermas 2003c: 51). Fate which resultsfrom socialization is always a fate to which a child can learn to respondcommunicatively, whereas a geneticallyfixed intervention is irreversibleand deaf to conversational rejoinder. Genetic enhancement is therefore

liable to seem like an alien intrusion into a persons life, an irreversibleand unilateral violation of their subjectivity.

Yet we need to ask how effective Habermass own account is. Hisargument, let us recall, starts from an account of the different logics ofaction that we instinctively assume are involved in healing and instru-mentalizing. He buttresses this by identifying the distinction with thatbetween communicative and egocentric action. The criterion for distin-guishing between the two is that of consent: in the case of genetic thera-pies consent can be reasonably presumed, whereas it cannot in the case

of enhancement: [o]nly in the negative case of the prevention of extremeand highly generalized evils may we have good reasons to assume thatthe person concerned would consent to the eugenic goal (Habermas2003c: 63). And he has specific reasons for thinking that eugenicallyenhanced people could not be presumed to consent to what had hap-pened to them. These reasons, as we saw above, include that a personwould be unable to respond communicatively to an irreversible decisionmade by their parents, might not feel as if they were the sole authors oftheir life, and might not regard themselves as the unconditional equal ofthose who had designed them.

However these reasons are not quite as persuasive as they may seemon first sight. Take the fear about irreversibility. This gains much of itsinitial plausibility from a sense that a genetic constitution represents afixed fate, and therefore that fatalism is the appropriate response. Yetthis represents a deterministic misunderstanding about the nature of therole of genes in the expression of phenotypes, as has become clear fromthe critical study of behavioural genetics and of gene-environment inter-action more broadly. While some genes are highly penetrant and rela-tively impervious to environmental influence, many genesincluding

many for traits which parents might be interested in enhancingaredependent on particular environments if their desired effects are to be


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realized: genetic interventions to increase intelligence will still need to bematched by educational effort if they are to make a difference.

Habermas, we should note, is perfectly well aware that the relation-ship between genes and traits is often predispositional rather than deter-minative. But it is unclear that he draws out the full significance of this.For example, having a particular genetic modification would not preventone choosing against it: while it might make a particular route throughlife more attractive because one was more competent at it, the freedomto choose other routes would remain open. Indeed, Gregory Stock hasspeculatively suggested that gene promoters (the DNA sequences whichact as on/off switches for gene expression) for inserted genes might bedesigned so as to respond only to a chemical which would only be pre-

sent if an enhanced individual deliberately consumed it as part of theirdiet: he or she would then have the freedom to choose whether or not tobenefit from the enhancement (see Agar 2004: 118).3In general the moreopen to environmental influence is the expression of a trait in a pheno-type, the less plausible is the argument from irreversibility, and thereforethe less cogent it would be as a reason for a person to refuse consent togenetic enhancement.

The other side of this concerns environmental influences. Not onlyshould genetic influences not be interpreted in a deterministic way, traits

which are owed to the environment should equally not be regarded asindefinitely plastic. Many environmental interventions are irreversible orall but irreversible, as the Jesuits realized: give me a child until he isseven, and I will give you the man. The effects of early formation on apersons life have of course become a commonplace of post-Freudianpsychology, and in practice it may be that the scope for change of someenvironmentally-induced characteristics is at best exceptionally limited(which is one reason why in discussions about the ethics of homosexu-ality the debate about its origins may be largely misplaced).

But this is also problematic for Habermas. For in order to make hiscontrast of communicative and non-communicative action effective as ameans of contrasting environmental and genetic interventions, he ispushed towards portraying environmental influences as reversible and

3. In fact Habermas appears to concede the point made by such a scenario: The

argument against alien determination becomes irrelevant if we imagine the affectedperson being able to painlessly revoke a genetic intervention carried out conditionally,so to speak, before her birth (Habermas 2003d: 86). But if all positive genetic inter-ventions were to be of this variety, Habermass position would actually allow an

indefinitely extensive variety of enhancementsgainsaying the ostensible meaning ofhis initial opposition to them, and leaving the gap between his position and Agars orStocks ever thinner.


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in principle capable of communicative response. This includes psychiat-ric disorders of considerable intractibility. Even neurotic fixations, hewrites, may be resolved analytically, through an elaboration of self-reflexive insights (Habermas 2003c: 62)about which claim we mightask sceptically whether it does justice to Freuds expectation that psycho-analysis would at best do no more than replace neurotic conflict byeveryday unhappiness, let alone whether it bears much relation to every-day clinical psychiatric experience.

The idea of indefinitely plastic environmental influences also has otherimplausible consequences. Consider the matter of conscious parentalchoices about their childrens upbringing, some of which are liable to beirreversible. If the irreversibility of deliberately chosen parental inter-

ventions is a good reason for refusing consent to genetic interventions, itmust surely also be a reason for rejecting these environmental interven-tions as well. Now, some kinds of deliberate environmental interventionsare rightly regarded as objectionable: intensive educational hothousingof children as a form of artificially accelerating their academic progress isan example. But to say that allparentally-chosen irreversible changes aremorally unacceptable, which consistency requires Habermas to say, isdoubtful. Roman Catholic parents, for example, who bring their childrenup to be faithful Catholics, will likely mark their children with certain

mental habits for life, a fact as amply attested by those who find them-selves scarred by the experience as by those who feel richly grateful forit. Yet it seems dubious to say that their parenting choices are in princi-ple unacceptable. Indeed the fact that children of atheist parents mayalso imbibe certain mental habits, amongst the consequences of whichmay be envy at those who have the capacity for religious faith and genu-ine sorrow at their own incapacity for it, suggests that there is no neutralway of bringing up a child which contains no parentally-chosen butirreversible influences. That influences are parentally-chosen and irre-versible cannot as such be a reason for being opposed to them.4

4. It might be argued that there is a difference between parental decisions aboutreligious upbringing and the decision for genetic enhancement, on the grounds that inthe former case a choice has to be made (even if it is only a laisser-fairechoice not tochoose in one direction or another, with all the possibly irreversible consequences

which this also will have), whereas in the latter there would be an easily availabledefault option, namely not to enhance, and the decision to enhance would have thecharacter of an active choice. However, the contrast is not so clear. If there were asociety in which enhancements were readily available (if necessary by travelling

abroad), choices about whether or not to enhance would in practice become more likechoices about religious upbringing in post-traditional societies: the previous defaultposition of non-enhancement would itself have become a reflexive choice.


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The difference in irreversibility between genetic and environmentalinterventions is not sufficiently strong, therefore, to justify the categoricaldistinction Habermas wants to draw between them. These reflectionsalso have implications if we turn to Habermass argument about co-authorship, that genetically programmed persons might no longerregard themselves as the sole authors of their own life history(Habermas 2003d: 79). In his view it is one thing if the beginning of ourlife can be traced to something like nature or God that is not at thedisposal of another person; it is quite another if we become aware thatanother human being has had a hand in it. But if the arguments of theprevious paragraphs are correct, co-authorship is an inescapable featureof our lives. We find ourselves in a situation in which not only the ran-

dom mixing of our parents genes but also the conscious decisions theytook form the context of our lives; and in which some aspects of eachofthese are capable of communicative response, while other aspects arerelatively impervious to it. The issue then needs to be cast not in terms ofthe potentially narcissistic pursuit of the fantasy of self-authorship overagainst all other influences, but rather in terms of negotiation and accep-tance of ones identity, selectively appropriating the things that can bechanged, and coming to terms withand perhaps even learning grati-tude forthose aspects that cannot. And this is in large part a matter of

learning the attachments we already have by virtue of being children inrelation to parents, and parents in relation to children. Not only are wenot the sole authors of our life histories, that is not even an aspiration toaim for: all our lives are jointly authored, and not as such the worse forbeing so. Of course this does not deny the need for the ethically resoluteconduct of life, which demands that one not remain submerged in thedependencies of an overwhelming environment (Habermas 2003b: 6).And of course such joint authorship can be abused, as casual acquaint-ance with human life will soon verify, but such misuse is no reason forrejecting the underlying point.

Habermas acknowledges in principle that we are born and brought upin mediis rebus, and that the process of living and maturing involves theselective reappropriation of ones history. He harbours no illusions thatthe self can in practice float entirely free of the circumstances of its for-mation. Yet it is difficult not to feel that his emphasis on sole authorshipof ones life rather naturally translates into understanding the idealsituation as one in which all authorial contributions by others are merecontingencies that can in principle be freely rejected. And this is subtlybut importantly different from learning to interpret ones identity as in

part fundamentally constituted by the contributions and intentions ofothers, and recognizing this as intrinsic to the human good.


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5. Instrumentality and Equality

Like the argument from irreversibility, the argument from co-authorshipdoes not therefore provide the basis for the categorical distinctionHabermas desires. Yet the same also arguably applies when we turn tothe third of the reasons he gives for thinking that people would notconsent to having been genetically enhanced, namely the argument fromasymmetry: such persons might no longer regard themselves as uncon-ditionally equal-born in relation to previous generations. Instead, theymight regard themselves as unable to enjoy a fully reciprocal relationwith those who had designed them.

However, it only requires a little imagination to see that this argument

may go in an unexpected direction. After all, bodies are constructedwithin social and economic contexts, and the demands of increasinglycompetitive societies may mean that future people may not regardgenetic enhancements as a disadvantage. Indeed in a society whereenhancements are regularly performed, far from feeling less than fullyhuman because they are in part manufactured, they might even begin tofeel an injustice has been done to them if they had not been enhanced.Habermass claim that we only feel fully at one with our bodies if we cansee them as entirely natural and free from interference by other human

beings may be true of late twentieth century inhabitants of societies withliberal ideals. But in a future more libertarian, enhancing society, suchnon-interference might be a sure guarantee that someone would notfeelat home in their body. Wemight not find such an ideal or such peoplemorally attractive, but that is not as such a constraint on how theymight feel.5

5. We should note here an important question about how to interpret Habermassaccount of consent and autonomy. In a valuable article, Maureen Junker-Kenny (2005)argues that his concern throughout is not autonomy as the empirical capacity forrational choice, but rather the Kantian notion of the capability to be moral. It is theimplications of genetic intervention at a transcendental level, which interferes withones fundamental being able to be oneself (Selbstseinknnen), which worries him.Mere concerns about empirical consent, actual or presumed in advance, would there-fore not be to the point. This interpretation rightly emphasizes that Habermass intel-lectual background is formed by Kant rather than Locke, and explains his belief that

he has discovered a categorical difference between genetic and environmental inter-ventions. However it is also arguable that there is some unclarity in Habermas here.Not only are there the repeated references to consent (e.g. The presumption ofinformed consent turns egocentric action into communicative action [Habermas

2003c: 52]) in contexts which suggest that the reference is to empirical consent. Thereare also other problematic passages for this interpretation: e.g. The argument againstan alien co-authorship for ones life only works, of course, if we assume that the


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It is clear that fundamental questions about the justification of equalityare at stake. As Habermas writes: if eugenic manipulation changes therules of the language game itself, this act can no longer be criticizedaccording to those rulesTherefore liberal eugenics provokes the ques-tion of how to value morality as a whole (Habermas 2003d: 92). Hisresponse to this is at two levels. So long as the egalitarian universalismwhich has been one of modernitys great achievements prevails, themoral point of view which assumes the equality of participants in societycan be justified at the level of publicly accessible reasons. However, werethis to be subverted, other kinds of argument would still be available,which are ultimately non-moral. These start from the idea that somemoral viewpoints are more able to consort with the idea of ourselves as

morally responsible persons than others:

Without the emotions roused by moral sentiments like obligation andguilt, reproach and forgiveness, without the liberating effect of moral

respect, without the happiness felt through solidarity and without thedepressing effect of moral failure, without the friendliness of a civilizedway of dealing with conflict and opposition, we would feel, or so we wouldstill think today, that the universe inhabited by men [sic] would be unbear-able. Life in a moral void, in a form of life empty even of cynicism, wouldnot be worth living. (Habermas 2003c: 73 [my italics])

Even if we could not offer moral reasons to a future self-instrumen-talizing humanity for the justification of equality and solidarity, wecould at least appeal to their self-interest in living in a bearable universe.This is undoubtedly a striking line of thought. Nevertheless the fact thathe qualifies it by reference to what we would still think today surelyindicates his justifiably alarmed recognition that, despite our best effortsto educate rising generations in egalitarian values, future people mightcome to have rather different views about what counts as bearable. And,as he notes, such a situation might evolve not because of a sudden loss of

childs genetic constitution, chosen from among other alternatives, actually reducestherange of her future life choices (Habermas 2003d: 85). Yet if the argument takes placeat a non-empirical level, surely alien co-authorship would be a problem even if a

childs life choices were in fact increased. Beyond the textual questions, however, thereremains the underlying question of why a persons having a partially artificial geneticconstitution should be a reason for considering their capacity for moral agency fun-damentally compromised. In my view, therefore, Habermas is quite correct to

conclude: Above all, the connection between the contingency of a lifes beginning thatis not at our disposal and the freedom to give ones life an ethical shape demands amore penetrating analysis (Habermas 2003d: 75).


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nerve about the value of equality, but because of the hidden, under-mining effects of biotechnological development.6

The problems Habermas faces here rather add force to JeremyWaldrons recent contention that we do not have in contemporary phi-losophy any sustained or plausible justification of basic equality. Whilediscussion of the implications of the egalitarianism almost universallyshared in modern liberal democracies is a major academic industry, theprinciple of basic equality itself is always assumed and almost neverexplained or defended (Waldron 2002: 1-6).7However, for Habermasthis is not just a matter of philosophical justification in the public realm,but also of the content of the ethical views that constitute the back-ground culture of society. What is important in stabilizing morality is the

sustained commitment of those background cultures to the public values,something which cannot be guaranteed by a public theory of justice.8Yetthe process of modernization has led to the weakening and marginaliz-ing of traditional thick sources of identity, notably religion, with theresult that modern societies have to rely on their own secular resourcesto ensure their moral cohesion (Habermas 2003c: 26). And it is preciselythose secular resources which now seem unable to provide the justifica-tions or moral energies that are required.

6. The Limits of Secular Reason

It is perhaps then with a sense of the ground potentially slipping fromunder his feet that Habermas finds himself reappraising the potentialcontribution that religion could make to the problematic raised byhuman genetic engineering. In Faith and Knowledge, a speech deliv-ered in the wake of the September 11th atrocities, he turns to consider

6. We might also note that while Habermass reflections on a bearable universemight have some force against an inegalitarian ultra-competitive society (the parallelsof his thought experiment with Hobbess state of nature are evident), it is not clearthat it justifies egalitarianism as such. After all, one can conceive of inegalitarian socialsystems which still preserved a strong sense of solidarity and mutual respect andloyalty, and were not morally void: European feudalism is sometimes presented asone such.

7. Waldron himself surmises that a religious basis may be a necessary basis forthe justification of equality: I actually dont think it is clear that wenowcan shapeand defend an adequate conception of basic human equality apart from some reli-gious foundation (Waldron 2002: 13 [italics in original]).

8. Theories of justice that have been uncoupled from ethics can only hope thatprocesses of socialization and political forms of life meet them halfway (Habermas2003b: 4 [italics in original]).


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the meaning of secularization in postsecular society (Habermas 2003e).He rehearses his account of the neutral constitutional state, which mustbe distanced from both science and religion in its outcomes, whilst beingopen to learning from both. But he also makes clear that secularism mustlisten to religious voices, not least because religion preserves importantsources of meaning. Something has been genuinely lost in modernity, asis revealed in the experience of the irreversibility of past murderousinjustices committed against innocents: the impossibility of simplyundoing what was done, which finds expression in the unappeasabledesire to receive forgiveness and to make reparation, bears witness to thesense of loss:

In moments like these, the unbelieving sons and daughters of modernityseem to believe that they owe more to one another, and need more forthemselves, than what is accessible to them, in translation, of religioustraditionas if the semantic potential of the latter was still not exhausted.(Habermas 2003e: 111)

The philosophical and political surrogates for religion that haveattempted to translate it into secular terms have always left some irre-ducible residue.9

And so Habermas turns his hand to some theology. Most importantlyfor our purposes, he claims, the language of Creator and creature

expresses a truth that cannot easily be captured in philosophical terms.Because human beings are made in the image of God, they are creaturesand cannot be of equal birth with God (Habermas 2003e: 114). More-over they are created free. If they were emanations from God, their beingwould remain determined by Gods being; but because they are createdby Gods will, there can be an absolute difference between creator andcreature, and Gods determination of them can also be a determinationthat they be free. However, for a human being to intervene in the ran-dom genetic constitution of another human being, as is portended in the

practice of eugenic enhancement, would be for that human being tousurp the role of the Creator and to destroy the equal dignity and free-dom that all persons share. And it is possible to recognize the signifi-cance of this, Habermas claims, even if one does not share its theologicalpresuppositions.

9. Recognition of this goes back earlier in his thought: Philosophy, even in itspostmetaphysical form, will be able neither to replace nor to repress religion as longas religious language is the bearer of a semantic content that is inspiring and even

indispensable, for this content eludes (for the time being?) the explanatory force ofphilosophical language and continues to resist translation into reasoning discourses(Habermas 1992: 51).


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It is not too much to see in all this the secular acknowledgement of thelimits of secularism; indeed Habermas more or less describes it preciselyas this. These limits have a political dimension, on the one hand: if aneutral public realm is to be sustained, it may need moral resources thatsecularized background cultures are unable to provide. But they also arephilosophical and justificatory in nature: it may be that the instinctivedistinction we draw between therapy and enhancement relies ultimatelyon a religious contrast between creature and Creator, and in the finalanalysis can only be justifiedif it can be justified at allon the basis oftheological premises which Habermas is himself unable to provide.

Now we should be clear that he is not endorsing religious faith: hispersona robustly maintains the reasonable attitude of keeping ones

distance from religion without closing ones mind to the perspective itoffers (Habermas 2003e: 113). Nor does acknowledgement of currentlyirresolvable problems within a secular system of thought serve in astraightforward way as an apologia for religious belief: after all, he maybe simply mistaken in trying to defend distinctions between genetic andenvironmental enhancements. Nevertheless it is difficult to resist thetemptation to impute to him in turn the criticism Horkheimer made ofthe school of Critical Theory: Knowing there is no God, still it believesin him. Or, we might say, without needing to enquire whether this

God is the same God as the one whose glory pervades the Jewish andChristian scriptures: knowing there is no God, still Habermas believesthat we should not play God.

7. The Goodness of Creation

Habermass excursion into theology invites one of our own. Here wemight contrast his account with that offered by Oliver ODonovan, towhose work on the ethics of reproductive technologies it bears someconspicuous similarities. For ODonovan also radical equality requiresthat human beings do not manufacture other human beings, but begetand give birth to them, a distinction which he draws out of the clause inthe Nicene Creed that the Son was begotten, not made by the Father.10Something which has been made is alienated from its maker; it is sub-ordinated to the will of its maker, and can never share a relationship offundamental equality with it. By contrast, to speak of begetting is to

10. ODonovan 1984: 1-2: strictly ODonovan uses beget to refer to the whole

human activity of procreation, not just the male involvement. Note further that incontrast with Habermas, ODonovan regards not just genetic engineering but in vitrofertilization also as caught up in the logic of manufacture (1984: 85-86).


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speak of quite another possibility than this: the possibility that one mayform another being who will share ones own nature, and with whomone will enjoy a fellowship based on radical equality (ODonovan1984: 2).

Clearly there are substantial parallels of thought between the theolo-gian and the philosopher here. But it is important to note that the differ-ence between them is not just that for ODonovan the distinction ofCreator and creature is an article of faith, whereas for Habermas it ismerely an illuminating fiction. For ODonovan this opposition to manu-facture is also worked out against a presumption of the goodness ofcreation, of the reality of a world which we have not made or imagined,but which simply confronts us to evoke our love, fear and worship

(ODonovan 1984: 3). As he argues in Resurrection and Moral Order (1986),there is a created reality whose ordering is independent of human fan-tasy and machination, which is vindicated in the resurrection of Christ.Creation is not merely undifferentiated matter and energy, but is also theorder in which that matter is constructed. The resurrection of Christ, asthefirst-fruit of the restoration and eschatological transformation of thiscreated order, confirms that redemption is not a gnostic escape from thisordered and material world, but rather the fulfilment of it (ODonovan1986: 31-32, 53-58).

This has a range of implications which are relevant to the question ofgenetic enhancement. First, the goodness of creationand therefore ofthe bodymakes intelligible a presumption, albeit rebuttable, againstintervening:primum non nocere. As the Western tradition of medicineaffirmed, if the body is healthy, the doctorsfirst obligation is not to act ifsuch action would harm the body. Second, the providential vindicationof this ordering also indicates limits with regard to human responsibilityfor the future. The future is not an artifact which we can mould in itsentirety (ODonovan 1984: 13). Consequently we are justified in distin-guishing consequences brought about by nature and consequencesbrought about by human agency: against the philosophical traditionrepresented by Agar, that something happens naturally does not as suchlegitimate the human choice to bring it about.

Third, the resurrection as the affirmation of the created order alsoopens up space for making intelligible a distinction of therapy andenhancement, between healing what is wounded, on the one hand, andenhancing what is given, on the other. Medicine in a theological settingis to be understood in terms of healing, which in the New Testamenttakes the form of a witness to salvation in Christ. The danger of genetic

enhancements is that they suggest that the body is merely raw materialto be improved on by technological effort: that is, they may symbolize an


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understanding of salvation which sees it as part of a gnostic struggle toescape from human frailty (Song 2002: 67-69). For Christians transcen-dence takes the form not of escape from the vulnerability that accompa-nies embodiment, but of the hope of a transformed body in a divinelyrenewed heaven and earth.

Habermass conception of the body is ultimately different. Certainlyhe does not endorse the notion, characteristic of Cartesian modernity,that the body is distinct from, and therefore the possession of, the agent,in consequence of which the possibility not just of therapeutic interven-tions but also of eugenic enhancements becomes thinkable. Against thishe is happy to assert on the basis of phenomenological investigation thathuman persons arebodies, and do not merely have them (Habermas

2003c: 50), and weif we be feminists or Aristotelians, Jews or Chris-tiansmay rejoice in this recognition. He is also willing to quotefavourably Martha Nussbaums criticisms of the Kantian distinctionbetween the intelligible and the physical realms of the agent inasmuch asit ignores the fact that our dignity is that of a certain sort of animalit isa dignity that could not be possessed by a being who was not mortal andvulnerable, just as the beauty of a cherry tree in bloom could not bepossessed by a diamond (Nussbaum 2001: 35, quoted in Habermas2003a: 120 n. 25). But this appreciation of human physical embodiment

and the consequent frailty of human existence does not of itself explainwhy human bodies should not be improved on; they will after all, despitesome technohumanist fantasies, remain mortal and vulnerable even intheir enhanced condition. Unless there is some sense in which natureor the bodyconfronts us as something whose order is not dependenton our evaluating, we have no final grounds for distinguishing attentionto its inner dynamics from imposition of our instrumental values uponit. And in particular we have no grounds for privileging the naturalover against the artificial.

Of course, he could appeal to a non-instrumental approach to nature,and at times he does talk of an ecological understanding of naturewhich respects its rhythms and acknowledges its inner dynamics, asexemplified in the practices of medicine, cultivation and breeding. Buthere we should demand to know whether this can ever constitute morethan an aesthetic response (or for that matter, in an increasingly con-stricted ecological habitation, a self-interested one), irrevocably severedas it is from any account of immanent teleologies in nature which wouldgive meaning to those inner dynamics. The separation of the logic of thedifferent modes of action from any ontological commitment ultimately

subjects all ordering to the creativity of the human agent.


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Despite his rejection of Webers interpretation of modernity asZweckrationalitt, and the message of resignation and loss of hope thatHorkheimer and Adorno drew from this (Habermas [1981] 1984: 366-99),he never rescinds their fundamental understanding of nature as raw,manipulable material.11Curiously, therefore, and in the absence of anyindependent cogent arguments for the distinction between healing onthe one hand and reifying approaches to nature on the other, he isultimately unable to distinguish himself from Agar and the programmeof liberal eugenics. Both have an instrumentalist attitude towards nature;the difference is that Agar is more clear-sighted about the implications ofthis for our treatment of the body, while Habermas remains saddledwith some decent-minded but undefended prejudices about the wrong-

ness of eugenic enhancement.ODonovans account by contrast makes sense of maintaining some

distinction between intervening in a pathological body and improvingan undiseased one. Within a properly theological setting, this turns inthe first place not on a repristination of Aristotelian ontological catego-ries, but rather on a Jewish-Christian belief in the giftedness of creation.The world is blessed, and not an undifferentiated arena for humantechnological action. This is not to suggest that there is even in principleany simple or readily applicable criterion available for distinguishing

therapy and enhancement. But it does intimate a posture of refusing tobe intimidated by strategies whose implicit or explicit purpose is thewholesale abandonment of the distinction.12And for Christians perhapsthe strongest clues for understanding the distinction are to be foundthrough an understanding of the physical body as incorporated into andinterpreted through the body of Christ. This is the true body, in terms ofwhich all other bodies find their rightful meaning. As the church is thebody of Christ, so the resurrection life which is to be displayed in thechurch will be the source of judgements about the proper use of thephysical body. The use of genetic technologies to reinforce inequitablepower relations, practices which treat the body as indefinitely plastic, or

11. For discussion of Habermas on nature see Whitebook 1979 and Scott 1998:264-65.

12. Agar, for example, demands that we need a principled means of parsing the

infinitely many ways in which a persons genome might be altered, on the groundsthat to refuse to do so is like acquiescing in a justice system that could judge correctlythe obviously guilty and innocent, but was otherwise clueless (Agar 2004: 79). Towhich we should respond that the detailed determination of principles sometimes

requires decisions which are arbitrary but not thereby irrational: it is arbitrary atwhat precise time street lights are lit in the evening, but it is not irrational that a time

is chosen.


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attitudes which engender a cultural denial of thefinal divine transforma-tion of human bodiesall of these are examples of the kind of considera-tions that will become important in the discernment of the life of thebody of Christ.13

8. Conclusion

I do not press these points against Habermas out of any sympathy forliberal eugenics, I should make clear. On the contrary, we should begrateful to Habermas for his many good intuitions on the matter ofhuman genetic intervention. There are many matters about which wewill want to agree with him, from the dangers of manipulating future

children, or of actions that will unilaterally and irreversibly affect them,to the banality of characteristic Anglo-Saxon philosophical accounts ofautonomy. In his belief in egalitarian universalism, we recognize onceagain the debts modernity owes to Christianity, even as its account ofnature represents a decisive rupture with it. Rather the point is to drawattention to what is missing in his account, as a result of which he isultimately unable to distinguish himself from the liberal eugenics hefears. Some intimation of the profundity of the problems posed byhuman biotechnology may be suggested by his recognition that secular

traditions may be unable to provide the moral resources needed toaddress them.

It is not the first job of theology to fill the lacunae secular thoughtcreates for itself, nor of the church to provide the moral stability thatmay be threatened by the creeping effects of technological advance. Thechurch stands on its own witness, and is liable to betray its primarycalling if it seeks to secure public credibility for itself by defining itself interms of secular needs. Yet equally in being a faithful witness in its lifeand practice, it may be that the church will be able to display in thesecular realm an understanding of human enhancement which at oncepicks out characteristic fault lines in modern views of nature and thebody, and also points to the future divine fulfilment of human nature.

References

Agar, Nicholas1999 Liberal Eugenics, in Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer (eds.), Bioethics:

An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell): 171-81.2004 Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement(Oxford: Blackwell).

13. See Song (forthcoming).


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Habermas, Jrgen[1981] 1984 The Theory of Communicative Action. I. Reason and the Rationalization of

Society (trans. Thomas McCarthy; Cambridge: Polity Press).

1992 Postmetaphysical Thinking(trans. William Mark Hohengarten; Cam-bridge, MA: MIT Press).

2003a The Future of Human Nature(trans. William Rehg, Max Pensky andHella Beister; Cambridge: Polity Press).

2003b Are There Postmetaphysical Answers to the Question: What is theGood Life? , in Habermas 2003a: 1-15.

2003c The Debate on the Ethical Self-Understanding of the Species, inHabermas 2003a: 16-74.

2003d Postscript (January 2002), in Habermas 2003a: 75-100.2003e Faith and Knowledge, in Habermas 2003a: 101-15.

Harris, John

1998 Clones, Genes, and Immortality: Ethics and the Genetic Revolution (Oxford:Oxford University Press).

Junker-Kenny, Maureen2005 Genetic Enhancement as Care or as Domination? The Ethics of

Asymmetrical Relationships in the Upbringing of Children,Journal ofPhilosophy of Education39: 1-17.

Kass, Leon1997 The Wisdom of Repugnance, The New Republic (2 June); repr. in

Gregory E. Pence (ed.), Flesh of My Flesh: The Ethics of Cloning Humans:A Reader (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998): 13-37.

Nussbaum, Martha2001 Disabled Lives: Who Cares?, New York Review of Books 48.1 (11January): 34-38.

ODonovan, Oliver1984 Begotten or Made? (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

1986 Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics(Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press).

Scott, Peter Manley1998 Imaging God: Creatureliness and Technology, New Blackfriars79:

260-74.Song, Robert

2002 Human Genetics: Fabricating the Future(London: DLT).forthcoming Genetic Manipulation and the Resurrection Body, in Ip King-Tak

and Jonathan Chan (eds.), Ethical Reflections on Regenerative Medicine

(Studies in Applied Ethics; Amsterdam: Rodopi).Waldron, Jeremy

2002 God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Lockes PoliticalThought(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Whitebook, Joel1979 The Problem of Nature in Habermas, Telos40 (Summer): 41-69.

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