Rethinking reprogenetics with Arendt and Heidegger.

Abstract

In this project, I argue that we have yet to fully appreciate the political significance of assisted reproductive and genetic technologies. To draw out the political questions raised by reprogenetics, I turn to the phenomenological methods of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. Both Arendt and Heidegger's works offer a glimpse at a mode of political thinking that simultaneously resists the urge to master uncertainty at the same time it allows us to take our bearings in response to an ever-changing world. Insofar as the phenomenon of reprogenetics daily calls into question many of the conceptual distinctions upon which ethical thinking is based, reprogenetics requires that we learn to think without these inherited standards of judgment. Thus, while we need to guard against conservative attempts to stifle scientific progress, we also need to pay greater attention to the ways in which these technologies might alter how human beings think and act together in the public realm.