Posthuman Nature: frozen embryos, convivial genes and emergent ethics.
I started work on this in mid 2004, helped and supported by colleagues in the
Meanings of Genetics research group at Cardiff University, led by Dr Yulia
Egorovna, and also by looser links with the
Centre for Religion and the Biosciences
at Chester University, and the Centre for
the International Study of Cyberethics and Human Rights . Since then
the idea of the work has broadened from the genetic to an exploration of nature
as a whole, for which ecological considerations seem as important as the
genetic. It has been interrupted by other projects but I hope to return to
work on it soon.
You can see a short current
outline.
Or you can download word files with a more detailed
synopsis
or a proposed chapter by chapter
contents as currently envisaged.
In many ways this more speculative ethical and philosophical book complements
the more personal and theological
Wily Innocence. Both
works explore the dangers of alienation from nature and especially our own
evolved nature; the one by presenting an alternative view of the world and our
place in it, the other by exploring how God in Christ heals our shame regarding
our nature, and lifts us to share in that wider natural world.
Successive chapters explore how 'Nature' can be seen as
1.Norm - the basis of natural law ethics. But nature is 'wild' – more accessible
to parable and poetry than reason.
2.Innocence - an original state but surpassed by social contract theory as
a basis of serious politics and ethics. But such theory gives us only a 'denatured'
humanity.
3.Gene - argued by some to be the 'selfish' basis of human nature.
But the selfish gene is a projection; genes can equally be said to be 'convivial'.
4.Essence - Entelechy, emergence, information and an analysis of how
parts and wholes relate may restore a sense that things have a real nature and an
intrinsic value.
5.Ecology - may supply the key both to nature and to the way a 'common
good' may emerge out of rival needs and claims.
6.Natality - supplies an alternative to 'transhuman' fantasies of escaping
our nature and mortality through technology.
7.Conviviality - a manifesto for an emergent global ethic.
8.Being - Does nature as thus explored tell no story, its own story, or the
story of a transcendent God?
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