{"id":1379,"date":"2020-10-28T17:57:51","date_gmt":"2020-10-28T17:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=1379"},"modified":"2020-10-28T17:57:56","modified_gmt":"2020-10-28T17:57:56","slug":"what-it-means-to-be-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/28\/what-it-means-to-be-human\/","title":{"rendered":"What It Means to Be Human"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\u201cThe Thinking and Choosing Atomized Self\u201d: \nA Review of What It Means to Be Human\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Though more concerned with political persuasion and the present state of affairs than it is with philosophical proofs, Snead\u2019s book nonetheless offers a valuable contribution to the discussion of American bioethics today.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Robert Smith
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Carter Snead is troubled by our national forgetfulness. His worry is not altogether new, for from one vantage point, America has always been forgetful\u2014a \u201cpropositional nation\u201d throwing off the shackles of history in search of universal values. Tocqueville warned that the individualism engendered by democracy made man not only \u201cforget his ancestors\u201d but his \u201cdescendants\u201d as well. A rootless, atomized America, he thought, could quickly become a despotic America.<\/p>

But Snead is less concerned with a certain idea of the nation than with a certain idea of ourselves<\/em>. In What It Means to Be Human, <\/em>he explains that we have adopted \u201cexpressive individualism\u201d as the \u201cregnant anthropology of American public bioethics.\u201d As a result, \u201cAmerican public bioethics as currently constituted is incapable of responding fully and coherently to the experience of vulnerability, dependence, and natural limits.\u201d The solution, Snead argues, is to recover a proper understanding of what it means to be human, one that recognizes the body as a constitutive aspect of the person. In other words, we need a \u201cremembering\u201d and a \u201cre-membering.\u201d<\/p>

In decrying \u201cexpressive individualism\u201d as the source of our ills, Snead echoes the critique of his Notre Dame colleague Patrick Deneen. But his focus\u2014American public bioethics\u2014is narrower, and he smartly avoids taking sides in the libertarian-communitarian debate. Former general counsel to the President\u2019s Council on Bioethics, Snead analyzes his subject inductively through the topics of abortion, assisted reproductive technologies, and end-of-life decision-making.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The dominant anthropology of American public bioethics is individual because it emphasizes \u201cthe thinking and choosing atomized self.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Snead argues that three research scandals laid the framework for American public bioethics: Henry K. Beecher\u2019s 1966 article \u201cEthics and Clinical Research\u201d in the New England Journal of Medicine<\/em>, the 1972 publication of the details of the infamous Tuskegee Study, and Victor Cohn\u2019s April 1973 article in the Washington Post<\/em> on the use of newly delivered, live fetuses for medical research. Due to the lack of consent in each instance, policymakers \u201clooked primarily to the ethical goods of autonomy and self-determination as the key safeguards against future abuses.\u201d The resulting legal mechanisms were \u201cdesigned primarily to secure the informed exercise of free will by rational, able-minded persons.\u201d<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

Accordingly, the dominant anthropology of American public bioethics is individual because it emphasizes \u201cthe thinking and choosing atomized self\u201d and expressive because it defines human flourishing not in reference to \u201cnatural givens\u201d but by a person\u2019s ability to \u201cfreely create and pursue\u201d projects reflecting \u201cdeeply held values and self-understanding.\u201d This led lawmakers to forget embodiment, Snead writes\u2014especially the fact that we are all born, and will likely die, dependent on others.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

Snead\u2019s treatment of abortion illustrates this point. Among other examples, he points to Anthony Kennedy\u2019s often maligned \u201cmystery of life\u201d passage from Planned Parenthood v. Casey<\/em>. The late justice described the abortion right as stemming from the freedom to \u201cdefine one\u2019s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.\u201d This is expressive individualism par excellence. Snead does not merely propose a more bounded view of human freedom, however. He argues that the Court\u2019s impoverished anthropology obscures the \u201cprimary relationship\u201d of any pregnancy: \u201cthat of parents and children.\u201d While the \u201cCourt conceives of pregnancy and parenthood as a clash of strangers, \u2018clad in the armor of their rights,\u2019\u201d the abortion question is better understood as a \u201cmatter involving a mother and her child.\u201d A public bioethics grounded in a more complete notion of human personhood would not frame the abortion issue based on competing interests in bodily autonomy. Rather, it would ask what society can reasonably expect of parents.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

Likewise, while the law of assisted suicide prioritizes the freedom of the atomized will, a bioethics grounded in the anthropology of embodiment would \u201cencourage and reward the practice of just generosity, hospitality, and accompaniment in suffering.\u201d Expressive individualism offers \u201cthe freedom to choose self-annihilation as a mechanism to control the conclusion of life\u2019s narrative.\u201d A bioethics of the body encourages the dying to \u201csee their own intrinsic and equal dignity despite suffering from a diminished and dependent condition.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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As a \u201cproposal offered in the spirit of friendship,\u201d What It Means to Be Human<\/em> has much to recommend it.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Readers who do not view the body teleologically will find it harder to embrace Snead\u2019s argument. He admits as much when he criticizes our public bioethics as \u201cstrongly anti-teleological.\u201d If the fact of embodiment tells us nothing about moral obligation, if our natural limitations and dependence do not suggest that \u201call living members of the human family are worthy of care and protection\u201d or that \u201cbiological progenitors\u201d are, normatively speaking, parents, the argument falls flat. Snead\u2019s \u201cbody\u201d is, in many respects, a profoundly Catholic one. Whether one accepts his prescriptions\u2014including in the mostly unregulated field of assisted reproductive technologies\u2014depends on whether one accepts his premises. One also wishes Snead had explored how \u201cexpressive individualism\u201d relates to other regnant philosophies, such as critical theory. Insofar as the book\u2019s methodology is inductive, it is constrained by the debates of the last several decades. Still, Snead has written a book about existent law, not philosophy, and his \u201caim is political persuasion rather than apodictic philosophical proof.\u201d<\/p>

The book\u2019s limited scope and admitted premises should not detract from what is otherwise a creative and substantive work\u2014one that ought to be read across the ideological spectrum. Snead has, at the very least, drawn our attention to the way in which American public bioethics fails by ignoring a vital aspect of who we are. As a \u201cproposal offered in the spirit of friendship,\u201d What It Means to Be Human<\/em> has much to recommend it.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Robert Smith<\/strong> is an attorney in Washington, DC.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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What It Means to Be Human <\/strong>was published by Harvard University Press on October 13, 2020.<\/em> Fare Forward appreciates their provision of an advance copy to our reviewer. You can purchase a copy of the book on their website here<\/a>.<\/em>
<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though more concerned with political persuasion and the present state of affairs than it is with philosophical proofs, Snead\u2019s book nonetheless offers a valuable contribution to the discussion of American bioethics today. 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