Chapter Four, “Virtually Intimate,” looks at the strengths and weaknesses of Internet matchmaking services. For many people today, these are the best available means of meeting a worthy life partner, and they have already been used successfully to introduce millions of people to their missing other halves. But because Internet matchmaking is a disembodied technological remedy for the isolating deformations of our social lives – deformations resulting in large part from prior technological innovations – it carries dangers of its own, potentially adding a new set of impediments to genuine and full intimacy, whether between lovers or friends.
Looking past courtship to marriage and parenthood, Chapter Five, “What’s Your Name?” (also taken from an essay written with Amy), raises questions about the culturally controversial “marital name” and about the significance of names that parents give their children. Naming is not only an act of identification by which we become known in the world; it also expresses our hopes and wishes both for ourselves as marital partners and parents, and for the children we name. Against the stream, I (we) argue for the once universal practice of having a common marital name, symbolic of a shared new life, to be shared also with all future children of the union. I also explain why it makes more sense for the bride to accept the offer of the groom’s surname than for him to adopt hers, or for both of them to invent some altogether new surname unconnected with a familial past.
The second section of the book moves from private and intimate domains to the more public realm of action, with special attention to human excellence and human dignity, long considered central aspects of a worthy life. According to ancient moral philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, an especially worthy life was most of all a life of virtuous activity, in fulfillment of our given nature. Cultivation and education provided the means to a worthy life; the complete or perfected human being constituted the end. Young people were encouraged to keep their eyes on the heights of human possibility and the peaks of human flourishing, as objects of aspiration and emulation.
Modern moral philosophers, in contrast, were less interested in shining examples of human excellence than in the basic conditions of a worthy life, especially health and prosperity. Struck by the stinginess of nature and the limitations of our given nature, they were more concerned to lift the base of the human condition than to reach the summit of human possibility. They looked to a new quantitative science, pregnant with powerful technological possibilities, to alleviate human misery – to achieve, in Francis Bacon’s words, “the relief of man’s estate.” But they also envisioned ways to overcome all human limitations (including our mortality) and to improve upon our given human nature. Their bold dream of mastering human nature has come of age in our time, as novel biotechnologies – based on amazing progress in molecular genetics, developmental biology, neuroscience, and aging research – hold out the promise not only of cures for deadly diseases but also of major enhancements of body and mind, issuing in superior performance, better children, ageless bodies, and happy souls.
Many people will of course want to avail themselves of these enhancing techniques, which offer easier and more effective ways to improve upon their natural gifts and their chances for worldly success. But a little reflection will show that these are, to say the least, mixed blessings. The technologies that promise all sorts of enhancement of our nature may, paradoxically, diminish the chances for genuine human achievement, human virtue, and human dignity.
The first chapter in this section, “Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls,” provides an overview of the subject of biotechnical enhancement, with special attention to the dignity of human agency and the difference between technologically attained partial goals and full human flourishing. It argues that the pursuit of an ageless body and longer life will turn out to be a distraction from the possibility of living well. And it suggests that the technologically assisted pursuit of an untroubled and self-satisfied soul will turn out to be deadly to all worthy desires.
Chapter Seven explores two accounts of human dignity, often at odds with each other in public discussion. One of these emphasizes the basic dignity of human being (called by some the sanctity or inviolability of human life); the other focuses on the full dignity of being human (of living humanly and excellently). This chapter seeks to discover the basis for each sort of dignity, and it shows why both need our vigorous defense in this biotechnological age. Finally, it argues that the two dignities are mutually implicated and interdependent, both of them reflections of our unique, “in-between” nature as the one godlike animal.
A test case for thinking about human dignity in action is presented in the next chapter, “For the Love of the Game” (written with Eric Cohen). Taking off from the steroid scandal in baseball, this chapter uses the domain of athletics to consider the public pursuit and display of excellence, with and without enhancing technique. It provides a strong defense of the beauty and grace of athletic performance, pursued and appreciated for their own sake, against the deforming single-minded pursuit of victory or statistical records by any means necessary. It articulates the deep humanity of athletic activity (and, by extension, of all embodied human action), and discusses the aesthetics of sport and the character of worthy fandom, concluding with some suggestions about transcendent possibilities in sport (and in many other human activities).
The ninth chapter examines life not at its zenith but at its nadir, with death on the doorstep, as it eventually comes for us all. “A Dignified Death and Its Enemies” argues against giving dehumanization a final victory by embracing a technological fix for our finitude, in the practices of assisted suicide or euthanasia. This chapter aims to show why we esteem the virtues of courage and equanimity in the face of death. It also defends the venerable and intrinsic virtues of the medical profession, which, if it stays true to its calling, will never abandon either its patients or the goodness of their lives. And it argues that a true physician adhering to his ethical calling, especially in difficult straits, can vindicate and preserve the dignity of agent and patient alike, thereby serving as a model of worthy and meaningful work.
Chapter Ten, “A More Perfect Human,” deepens our reservations about enhancement biotechnologies and about the technical solutions of assisted suicide and euthanasia, by looking at an earlier national effort to use science and medicine to achieve the perfect human being and to eliminate deficiency, deformity, and disability. Written as a commentary on “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” the remarkable and disturbing exhibit about German science and medicine between the two world wars, produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the chapter shows the devastating consequences of pursuing so-called human perfection by technological means and of trying to “fix” the human condition by science alone. It examines the dangerous practices of negative and positive eugenics, a topic creeping back into American conversation as we enter the age of genetic engineering, and it exposes the dangerous thinking of “soulless scientism,” which looks to health as our salvation and medicine as the messiah.
The third section of the book, “In Search of Wisdom,” moves from the domain of action to the realm of thought, where many people still seek and find meaning in the life of wonder, inquiry, learning, and reflection. Here, too, we twenty-first-century Americans face serious challenges and obstacles. In higher education, learning for its own sake is culturally disparaged, partly because the costs of getting an education compel students to focus on practical studies aimed at making a living after college rather than on liberal learning aimed at living well. Computer science, economics, and business majors – yes; classics, literature, and philosophy majors – no. In addition, political correctness and academic trendiness among the faculty, especially in the humanities and social sciences, discourage those who would seek truth and wisdom, and generally result in what Allan Bloom called the closing of the American mind. In place of the love of learning,