The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of eugenics, abortion, and the Holocaust.

Michael J. Sandel is an American philosopher and professor of political philosophy. Born in 1953, Sandel completed a doctorate at Oxford University in 1985 as a Rhodes Scholar. He began teaching at Harvard University in 1981, where his course “Justice” became one of the university’s most popular; over two decades, more than 15,000 students have taken the course. “Justice” is now available online in a recorded format and has been viewed by millions of people worldwide. Sandel’s philosophy revolves around communitarianism, or the idea that individual social identities are largely formed and influenced by the broader community. It is the opposite of individualism. Sandel’s ideas about community and communitarianism can be seen in his approach to bioethics in The Case Against Perfection. He repeatedly emphasizes the importance of solidarity in human societies and warns that efforts to control human biology could result in “[t]hose at the bottom of society [being] viewed not as disadvantaged, and so worthy of a measure of compensation, but as simply unfit, and so worthy of eugenic repair” (92). To Sandel, human genetic enhancement flies in the face of communitarianism, disrespects the “sanctity of life, and […] of nature” (93), and privileges

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