Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER TWO EUGENICS AND ITS SHADOW
- CHAPTER THREE GENES, JUSTICE, AND HUMAN NATURE
- CHAPTER FOUR POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE GENETIC INTERVENTIONS
- CHAPTER FIVE WHY NOT THE BEST?
- CHAPTER SIX REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM AND THE PREVENTION OF HARM
- CHAPTER SEVEN GENETIC INTERVENTION AND THE MORALITY OF INCLUSION
- CHAPTER EIGHT POLICY IMPLICATIONS
- APPENDIX ONE THE MEANING OF GENETIC CAUSATION
- APPENDIX TWO METHODOLOGY
- References
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER TWO EUGENICS AND ITS SHADOW
- CHAPTER THREE GENES, JUSTICE, AND HUMAN NATURE
- CHAPTER FOUR POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE GENETIC INTERVENTIONS
- CHAPTER FIVE WHY NOT THE BEST?
- CHAPTER SIX REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM AND THE PREVENTION OF HARM
- CHAPTER SEVEN GENETIC INTERVENTION AND THE MORALITY OF INCLUSION
- CHAPTER EIGHT POLICY IMPLICATIONS
- APPENDIX ONE THE MEANING OF GENETIC CAUSATION
- APPENDIX TWO METHODOLOGY
- References
- Index
Summary
We began thinking about writing this book in the spring of 1991 because we believed that new genetic knowledge and technology posed challenges not only to traditional social practices but also to ethical theory. We believed, as nearly everyone does, that ethics should provide guidance for social practice. We also believed that our ethical understanding – the reasons, principles, and theory we draw on – itself has developed in response to specific challenges of social life. Consequently, we thought, the new human capabilities genetics creates requires an examination of ethical theory, not just an application of it. What distinguishes this book is the conviction that we must look deeply inward to the core of our field as moral and political philosophers as well as outward from it toward the engagement of social practices with new genetic powers.
Because our goal was to produce a sustained and systematic analysis, we have produced a multiauthored book, not an anthology of separate articles. Although all four authors collaborated on each chapter, there was a division of labor. Allen Buchanan is the primary author of the Introduction, Chapters 3 and 7, and the appendix on moral methodology. Dan Brock is chiefly responsible for Chapter 6 and shares primary responsiblity with Norman Daniels for Chapter 5. In addition, Daniels is the primary author of Chapter 4. Daniel Wikler is the primary author of Chapter 2 and of Chapter 8 (with some input from Buchanan).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- From Chance to ChoiceGenetics and Justice, pp. xiii - xivPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000