Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

News

News: Winter 1999/2000

Thinkers in ‘Nazi language’ row • University philosophy threatened • Kojéve was a spy • Exiled philosopher seeks presidential pardon

Prenatal Selection??

A philosophical debate about the ethics of gene technology has turned into a public controversy in Germany, making the newspaper headlines for weeks. It all started at a conference on Heidegger held this July in Bavaria: at the convention, Peter Sloterdijk, professor of philosophy and aesthetics at Karlsruhe University, presented a paper praising the possible merits of gene technology, which could enable an elite community to exercise ‘prenatal selection’. Sloterdijk argued that gene technology would serve as a highly effective technique among more conventional ones, such as education and choice of spouse, to create an improved human race, to optimise human potential. Moral philosopher Ernst Tugendhat commented: “Why does Sloterdijk use the word ‘selection’? When I hear this word in this context, I think instinctively of the selection on the platform at Auschwitz. Is that just my problem?” – Clearly not, as Sloterdijk’s argument has met with widespread criticism and outrage in German intellectual circles, and involved him in a bitter feud with Jürgen Habermas.

…