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In a critical intervention into the bioethics debate over human enhancement, philosopher Melinda Hall tackles the claim that the expansion and development of human capacities is a moral obligation. Hall draws on French philosopher Michel Foucault to reveal and challenge the ways disability is central to the conversation. The Bioethics of Enhancement includes a close reading and analysis of the last century of enhancement thinking and contemporary transhumanist thinkers, the strongest promoters of the obligation to pursue enhancement technology. With specific attention to the work of bioethicists Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu, the book challenges the rhetoric and strategies of enhancement thinking. These include the desire to transcend the body and decide who should live in future generations through emerging technologies such as genetic selection. Hall provides new analyses rethinking both the philosophy of enhancement and disability, arguing that enhancement should be a matter of social and political interventions, not genetic and biological interventions. Hall concludes that human vulnerability and difference should be cherished rather than extinguished.
This book will be of interest to academics working in bioethics and disability studies, along with those working in Continental philosophy (especially on Foucault).
List of contents
Introduction: Enhancement, Disability, and Biopolitics
Chapter 1: Dragon Slayers: Exploring Transhumanism
Chapter 2: Rethinking Disability: Dodging Definitions, Muddying Models
Chapter 3: Rethinking Enhancement: A Genealogical Approach
Chapter 4: Choosing, For Choice's Sake: A Case Study
Chapter 5: Disability as/at Risk: The Biopolitics of Disability
Conclusion: Rethinking the Future
About the author
Melinda C. Hall is assistant professor of philosophy at Stetson University.
Summary
This book is a critical intervention into debate over human enhancement and engages bioethics, disability studies, and Michel Foucault. Melinda Hall employs a biopolitical framework to argue that transhumanist thinkers present diminished images of the good life and seriously devalue disabled lives by linking disability with risk and death.
