Sandel’s Ethic Of Giftedness And Its Critique Of Human Enhancement

The ability to manipulate nature makes "most people uneasy about some form of genetic engineering",when people use genetic technology to produce offspring or animals that conform to human will or purpose,in order to achieve "better and better" goals.In his book Against Perfection: The Just Battle Between Technology and Humanity,Sandel analyzes the causes of this malaise and points out the danger of human enhancement.The core of his theory is the concept of giftedness,which is fundamentally related to the ethical values of humility,responsibility and solidarity.However,the enhancement of human’s physical,intellectual,artistic and moral abilities achieved by genetic engineering,which uses artificial enhancement to replace the cultivation of human talent,will destroy human’s gratitude for giftedness,and thus undermine the ethical values of humility,responsibility and solidarity.He pointed out that the increased manipulation of human giftedness(man’s natural state)expresses the desire to control nature and manipulate human nature.If we can see from Passmore’s understanding of perfection,Sandel’s criticism of this perfectionism points to a kind of technological perfectionism or the theory of technological perfection.That is,it turns the human pursuit of perfection into a goal of technological progress.This is clearly technological determinism.Although such perfectionism claims to inherit the enlightenment ideal of perfecting human beings,it narifies the enlightenment ideal into a technical goal.Thus,its technological determinism is a kind of nihilism.Sandel’s criticism of human enhancement and his conservative stance of defending human giftedness are also challenged by biological activism.Facing this challenge,this paper tries to defend Sandel’s conservatism on the one hand,and on the other hand relates his ethic of giftedness to a kind of weak conservatism,pointing out its enlightening significance for today’s thinking about technological control.