Human Dignity and Bioethics

330 | Leon R. Kass
Notes
1
Leszek Kolakowski, “What Is Left of Socialism,” First Things 126 (October
2002): 42-46.
2
See, among other places, Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry
(2002), especially chapter 5, “The Ethics of Cloning-to-Produce-Children,”
and chapter 6, “The Ethics of Cloning-for-Biomedical-Research”; Monitoring Stem
Cell Research (2004), especially chapter 3, “Recent Developments in the Ethical
and Policy Debates”; Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness
(2004), all chapters, and especially the discussion of “The Dignity of Human Activity”
in chapter 3, “Superior Performance”; Reproduction and Responsibility: The
Regulation of New Biotechnologies (2005), especially the section on “The Character
and Significance of Human Procreation” in (the introductory) chapter 1, chapter
6 on “Commerce,” and the section on “Targeted Legislative Measures” in chapter
10, “Recommendations”; Being Human: Readings from the President’s Council on
Bioethics (2004), especially chapter 10, “Human Dignity”; and Taking Care: Ethical
Caregiving in Our Aging Society (2005), especially chapters 3 and 4, “The Ethics
of Caregiving: General Principles,” and “The Ethics of Caregiving: Principle and
Prudence in Hard Cases.” All of these books except for Being Human are available
online at www.bioethics.gov.
3
The readings in Being Human were collected and offered to provide the humanistic
wherewithal for thinking about and responding to these and other inadequate
views of our humanity. See especially the chapters on “The Pursuit of Perfection,”
“Are We Our Bodies,” “Among the Generations,” “Why Not Immortality,” “The
Meaning of Suffering,” “Living Immediately,” and, of course, “Human Dignity.”
This anthology has been republished by W. W. Norton, under the title Being Human:
Core Readings in the Humanities (2004).
4
See, among other places, Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge
for Bioethics (San Francisco, California: Encounter Books, 2002), especially the
Introduction, the discussion of the “Profundity of Sex” in chapter 5, “Cloning
and the Post Human Future,” chapter 6, “Organs for Sale: Propriety, Property, and
the Price of Progress,” chapter 8, “Death with Dignity and the Sanctity of Life,”
and chapter 9, “L’Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality”; Toward a More
Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs (New York: The Free Press, 1984),
especially chapters 2, 3, and 4 on reproductive technologies and genetic screening,
chapter 10, “Thinking About the Body,” and most especially chapter 13, “Looking
Good: Nature and Nobility”; an essay on “The Right to Life and Human Dignity,”
in The New Atlantis 16 (Spring 2007), pp. 23-40; The Hungry Soul: Eating and the
Perfecting of Our Nature (New York: The Free Press, 1994; Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1998), especially chapter 2, “The Human Form: Omnivorosus
Erectus”; and The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (New York: The Free Press,
2003; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), especially chapters 2 and 3 on
the anthropology of the Garden of Eden story and chapter 6 on the Noahide Law
and its foundations.