Character
This chapter articulates and evaluates the claim that the pursuit of enhancement is an expression of defective character, or in more traditional terms, a symptom of vice or at least of the lack of virtue. It argues that once we puncture the inflated rhetoric, serious concerns remain, but that they do not support anything approaching a blanket rejection of biomedical enhancement—not even in the case of what some regard as the most radical biomedical enhancement of all, the genetic engineering of human embryos. Nor do they amount to a cogent case against pursuing the enhancement enterprise.
Keywords: authenticity, biomedical enhancement, character, enhancement enterprise, gratitude, love drug, Sandel, virtue ethics
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