Relation to oneself· Body and life

Bioconservatism

Axis: Enhancing human nature — Should we use technology to enhance human nature beyond healing?

Technologically altering human nature is a dangerous transgression: it threatens personal dignity, equality between generations, and our relation to what is given. Fragility and finitude are not flaws to be fixed, but conditions of a meaningful human life.

Who holds this position

Philosophers 1

Jonasexplicit

With biotechnologies applied to human beings, technological power is no longer exercised on objects but on its own author. opposes human cloning in the name of a "right to ignorance": he fears the clone would be trapped in the social expectation of reproducing a life already known, without assuming that genetic identity determines a destiny. He rejects the project of abolishing death or prolonging life indefinitely: mortality is the price of life and the condition of its renewal through birth.

The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. I · "Laßt uns einen Menschen klonieren", in Technik, Medizin und Ethik (1985) · "The Burden and Blessing of Mortality" (1992)

Foundations and implications

↑ What grounds it

A leaf — an application that grounds nothing further here.

↑ What grounds it

Explaining nature

If nature is ordered by ends and each organism tends toward its completed form, seeking to technologically remake the human amounts to violating a meaningful order. Finalism supports bioconservatism: for Jonas, finitude and vulnerability are not flaws to be corrected, but conditions of a properly human life.

↓ What it implies

A leaf — an application that grounds nothing further here.