Abstract
Chai attempts to demonstrate how Zhuangzi can be used to supplement Habermas’s arguments against liberal eugenics. He argues that both Habermas and Zhuangzi would view liberal eugenics as falling on the wrong side of the natural/artificial divide. It is debatable whether his interpretation of Zhuangzi as both fatalist and epistemically modest suits this conclusion. In particular, it is doubtful that someone who is suspicious of whether humans can ever have knowledge of nature would be entitled to assert that liberal eugenics is unnatural. Even if this position is possible, it would be one that equally rejects Habermas. Habermas attempts to isolate genetic engineering from acceptable interventions in a person’s life. Daoism, to the extent that it rejects liberal eugenics, would equally view the latter kinds of interventions as misguided. Chai’s Daoist ethics of human enhancement, therefore, could hardly be used to supplement Habermas’s position.
Translated title of the contribution | A Common Front between Habermas and Zhuangzi? |
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Original language | Chinese (Traditional) |
Pages (from-to) | 113-117 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | 中外醫學哲學 |
Volume | 14 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Dec 2016 |
Externally published | Yes |