I find it kind of silly that bioethics could be grouped into only three camps and that the two prominent camps are different ends of the spectrum. It seems to me that often in politics different collections of ideas will converge in 2-5 camps and these camps "Win", "Lose" or compromise. Ideas are not considered for their individual merit but instead must be taken as a package deal with a group of politically-branding ideas. I am happy that Foucault didn't fall so easily within a certain palisade, but that might be because he penned his works farther in the past. Could it be that even highly intelligent scholars can succumb to the pressure to pick a competitive side?
Callahan's idea that unconscious beliefs underwrite political policy/ affiliation was very interesting to me. I really believe that to be the case. An example is the unconscious American belief that every person has the same abilities and thus circumstances should be ignored. Everyone is expected to be able to rise from rags to riches and there are folks that absolutely rage over affirmative action. They don't consider that other demographics don't have certain privileges because they assume we are all the same. Even president Obama, arguably a great one-man triumph over circumstance, took time to fawn over Steve Jobs after he died, as both an example and a testament the the potential of the bland everyman. Statistically and logically, that makes no sense. There are countless individuals that worked just as hard (I believe he had a partner that was cut out) but didn't have the series of random luck breaks. Yet many people shape their political opinion around this idea that you, yes you (all of you), can become rich someday and you'll be glad you voted for those tax cuts to high-income households. (Perhaps more so prior to the housing-bubble collapse.)
This overly-competitive governing may have it's origin in the past when people were literally governed by religion. This gives rise to things like the Crusades where one society, including it's government, sought to annihilate the "other"- those that fell outside their government and society. Or it may lie in the polarized "good" and "evil" of western religion. My beliefs are good, so yours must be the only other option, wrong/evil. And evil must be destroyed. Is this reflected in the two most popular camps of bioethics which inhabit either end of the spectrum? Perhaps.
On a side note, I found a website in German on bioethics I'm fairly confident is only slightly above my German reading level. This makes a cultural comparison a possibility for my project, since I'd want to get my information straight from the source.
I take your point about the seeming "silliness" of only a few, competitive camps. Those big-chunk divisions can be helpful as an overview but variations "in the trenches" of moral combat typically muddy such divisions. I suppose if we consider alternatives as diffuse "clouds" of ideas it still makes sense to seek some coherence in the collective composition of that cloud (as messy as that coherence may be). On another of your points it's clear you understand the "unconscious beliefs" argument by Callahan and so there's no need for me to comment on it. And the "us" versus "them" tone of our politics (and much else) does indeed appear to be deeply rooted...which suggests it is likely to persist.
ReplyDeleteMy comment went astray while trying to pass the Comment test as to whether I was a real person or a web bot of some sort. I was "on" about the role of the "unconscious beliefs" that Callahan points to. While I recognize the need to include the "affective" in one's considerations in the face of biopolitical controversies, it is distressing to think that unconscious beliefs could be playing a powerful (perhaps decisive) role. As for the concern about camps...it is likely that many proponents of (and apologists for) camps would agree that in the world of real heat of moral battle, distinctions become fuzzy. Still "camp affiliation" does provide some sense of force backstopping one's position.
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