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Kant's antipode: Nietzche's transvaluation of human dignity and its "implications" for biotechnology policy.

Article Excerpt
"What alone can be our doctrine? That no one gives a human being his



qualities." (1)

The idea that the development, control or use of a biotechnology either threatens or violates human dignity is frequently harnessed as an argument for strict regulation or total prohibition on materials or practices in the biotechnology sector. (2) Recent analysis has shown that the conception of human dignity which is marshalled here is out-of-step with traditional conceptions of human dignity as elucidated in the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (3) Instead, it serves as something of a hollow rhetorical trope, a powerful indictment and conversation stopper which pre-emptively casts the ethical stone in hopes of striking the mouth of the opponent and silencing her. (4) The analysis which unmasks dignity-rhetoric, however, often takes for granted that the U.N. idea of human dignity is the "true" or at least a preferable conception. (5) This idea was inherited from Kant, who held that human dignity is inherent and derives from our status as finite rational beings capable of autonomous action, (6) and the Kantian notion was itself anticipated in Christian ideas of individual ethical responsibility and worth under God. (7) However, although this conception has dominated the public debate, it is only one among a myriad of understandings of what constitutes human dignity. In this paper, we take up the challenge posed by Caulfield and Chapman to explore the multiplicity of models for human dignity, (8) beginning with a rewardingly difficult example of how different these understandings can be: the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche....

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