Leon Kass on What Makes Humans Special
Leon Kass's piece in Commentary, about which I posted earlier, also contains some very good prose about a philosophical approach to human exceptionalism. He writes:
It is indubitably clear, even to atheists, that we human beings have them [attributes of God in biblical religion such as "reason," "freedom," and the "powers of contemplation"],and that they lift us above the plane of a merely animal existence. Human beings, alone among creatures, speak, plan, create, contemplate, and judge. Human beings alone among the creatures can articulate a future goal and use that articulation to guide them in bringing it into being by their own purposive conduct. Human beings, alone among the creatures, can think about the whole marvel at its many-splendored forms and articulated order, wonder about its beginning, and feel awe in beholding its grandeur and in pondering the mystery of its source. Note well: These self-evident truths do not rest on biblical authority. Rather, the biblical text enables us to confirm them by an act of self-reflection.Me: And this is true whether the awe comes from religion, philosophy, or atheism, as in Richard Dawkins' wonder at what evolution has produced. Moreover, from our recognition of human exceptionalism, we must then grapple with what that special status means.
In this regard, I spoke at a law school a few weeks ago about the animal liberation movement and its attack on human exceptionalism. One student angrily rejected the concept of exceptionalism because, he said, despite my repeated assertions that exceptionalism is what imposes duties on humans, such as treating animals humanely, it really means that we can do whatever we want to animals, however we want. And how dare we think we are "better" than animals!
So, I asked this student three times if being human isn't what gives us the duty to treat animals well, what does? No answer. And what answer could there be? Any moral duties we decide to impose upon our species flow directly from the fact of human exceptionalism. That being so, it is odd that some of those who speak the loudest about all of our moral duties to the planet, are also those most rejecting of the status of human beings as an exceptional species.
If you can, get a copy of Commentary and read the entire essay. Agree or disagree, pondering the wisdom of Leon Kass is always a good use of one's time.
Labels: Leon Kass. Human Exceptionalism.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:13 AM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
This is an overstatement:
"Human beings, alone among creatures, speak, plan, create, contemplate, and judge."
I agree that no other creature in our experience does any of these things to the same magnitude as humans, but other creatures certainly do these things to lesser magnitudes.
If human exceptionalism is understood in such black and white terms, it is simply inaccurate. If, on the other hand, human exceptionalism is understood in terms of magnitudes then it is accurate.
"Human beings, alone among creatures, speak, plan, create, contemplate, and judge."
Interesting, especially how embryos can't do any of these. Newborns can't, either, but at least they don't require a woman's body to sustain life.
Which is why human life has to be considered to have intrinsic value. If we have to "earn" our rights based on "capacities" the weakest and most vulnerable among us are open to exploitation--as has been documented on this blog and elsewhere repeatedly. Human exceptionalism identifies us as on the top of a moral hierarchy. We then have to ask what is the first purpose of human society? I say it is universal equality, leading to at least minimal protections of all human lives at all stages of development simply and merely because they are human. Follow the other approach, and the door is open to oppression, exploitation, and commoditization.
pondering the wisdom of Leon Kass is always a good use of one's time.
Wisdom like this:
Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone ... This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if WE feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior..
Human exceptionalism will be a hard sell if it means giving up ice cream.
Or this:
Here is a (partial) list of the recent changes that hamper courtship and marriage: the sexual revolution, made possible especially by effective female contraception; the ideology of feminism and the changing educational and occupational status of women; the destigmatization of bastardy, divorce, infidelity, and abortion
Many, perhaps even most, men in earlier times avidly sought sexual pleasure prior to and outside of marriage. But they usually distinguished, as did the culture generally, between women one fooled around with and women one married...
Nice! Let's bring back the virgin/whore dichotomy in the interests of saving "courtship". The men get to have premarital sex with the sluts, the good girls have their virtue preserved, and the sluts, well, who cares about them anyway?
Kass is a ridiculously out of touch, sexist alter kocker who nobody should ever take seriously, especially as a moral philosopher -- he could be used as a textbook case of lazy thinking, and an illustration of why "conservative intellectual" is almost an oxymoron.
To address the passage you quoted -- how does human cloning research impinge one way or another on human exceptionalism? A cloned human, if the procedure actually works, will be precisely as exceptional as one conceived in the usual manner.
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