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Bioethics as Science Fiction

Making Sense of Habermas’s The Future of Human Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 February 2012

DAVID GURNHAM
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Extract

There must be few philosophical projects more serious than Jürgen Habermas’s lifelong effort to realize the lofty universalist ambitions of the Enlightenment in his communicative theory of rational discourse and deliberative democracy.

Type
Special Section: Kant, Habermas, and Bioethics
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 235 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

Notes

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3. See note 1, Gurnham 2009, at 29.

4. See note 1, Gurnham 2009, at 41–2.

5. See note 1, Gurnham 2009, at 51.

6. See note 1, Gurnham 2009, at 53.

7. See note 1, Gurnham 2009, at 61.

8. See note 1, Gurnham 2009, at 61.

9. See note 1, Gurnham 2009, at 66.

10. See note 1, Gurnham 2009, at 65.

11. See note 1, Gurnham 2009, at 73.

12. Harris, J.No sex-selection please, we’re British. Journal of Medical Ethics 2005;31:286–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

13. See note 2, Habermas 2003.

14. See note 2, Habermas 2003, at 108, 4.

15. See note 2, Habermas 2003, at 18, 107–8.

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29. See note 28, Habermas 1987, at 201, emphasis in the original.

30. See note 28, Habermas 1987, at 200, emphasis in the original.

31. See note 28, Habermas 1987, at 201, emphasis in the original.

32. See note 18, Searle 1975, at 327.

33. See note 19, Loxley 2007, at 58.

34. See note 20, Habermas 1997, at 18–19.

35. Capote, T.In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences. London: Penguin Classics; 2000Google Scholar. Quoted remarks made on Acknowledgements page.

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37. See note 26, Ohmann 1971.

38. See note 18, Searle 1975, at 319.

39. A prospect that Habermas (2003, note 2) himself alludes to at 41–2.

40. Particularly irritating for many bioethicists are the headlines that occasionally appear in tabloids such as the Daily Mail.

41. Pratt, ML.Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press; 1977Google Scholar, at 97.

42. See note 2, Habermas 2003, at 33–5.

43. See note 2, Habermas 2003, at 54, emphasis added.

44. Garland, A.Never Let Me Go: The Screenplay. London: Faber & Faber; 2011CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 41.

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48. See note 19, Loxley 2007, at 52, 70.

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52. See note 41, Pratt 1977, at 136, 143–9.

53. See note 41, Pratt 1977, at 54–6.

54. See note 50, Fish 1980.

55. Norris rightly warns of the dangers of embracing the “extreme scepticism” of postmodernism’s reduction of all writing to “textual practise.” Norris, C.Fiction, Philosophy and Literary Theory: Will the Real Saul Kripke Please Stand Up? London and New York: Continuum; 2007Google Scholar, at 118, 112.

56. See note 44, Garland 2011, at 31.

57. Iser, W.The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; 1978Google Scholar, at 142.

58. See note 49, Fish 1989, at 50.

59. See note 55, Norris 2007, at 124.