scholarly journals Engineering Desire: Biotechnological Enhancement as Theological Problem

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-228
Author(s):  
Simeon Zahl
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Means Of Grace ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Ethical Significance

This article argues for the dogmatic rather than just ethical significance of the biotechnological enhancement of human beings. It begins by reflecting on the close theological connections between salvation, sanctification, and affective and bodily transformation in light of the fact that affects and desires are in principle manipulable through biotechnological enhancement. It then examines the implications of this observation for questions of moral responsibility, asking whether biotechnological enhancement can be viewed as a kind of means of grace. The conclusion argues that theological reflection on the relationship between affects, soteriology and bioenhancement reveals limitations of the emphasis on embodiment in recent Christian theology.

scholarly journals TANGGUNG JAWAB ETIS PERUSAHAAN DALAM MENJAGA KEBERLAJUTAN PEMBANGUNAN

KRITIS ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-91
Author(s):  
Ricky Arnold Nggili
Keyword(s):  
Business Ethics ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
Business People ◽  
Doing Business ◽  
The Relationship

Business ethics bring business back to substantially. The essence to ensure their common prosperity and continuity for life next. Business ethics involves not only the role business people, but also involves the role of government and society. Doing business with ethics placing as human beings, civilized and cultured. Doing business with ethics placed man as beings who are able to work together, sensitivity and concern as well as creatures full responsibilities moral responsibility. The relationship between business, society and government will be harmonious, and able to continue the development of the Indonesian people who are responsible, if the company is conducting its activities in an ethical manner.

Grace

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Braine
Keyword(s):  
Natural System ◽  
Personal Relationship ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
General Conception ◽  
Personal Character ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Free Actions

Grace is a gift of personal relationship with God surpassing the powers of nature. Such relationship presupposes the relation every creature has with God as immediately dependent on him for its very existence and continuance, but goes beyond it in its distinctive personal character and the resulting more intimate dependence. Such personal relationship necessarily depends upon some will or expression of will. The development of the relationship must be free in relation to what has gone before – it must in no way be necessitated. Therefore, if the relationship arises within some established natural system involving some degree of conformity to law at some levels of description (physical or otherwise), such a system and laws must leave some degree of indeterminacy. This allows the possibility that free actions, physically and psychologically contingent, should be among the ultimate determinants of what unfolds. For the workings of grace must always be free or contingent in relation to such a system of nature, concordant with and fulfilling nature, but working according to distinct principles – grace and nature are both equally God’s gift, but always distinct. The notion of grace has no place outside some kind of theism. Implicit in Judaism, its explicit development has been in Christian theology, which sees human beings as radically dependent upon God not only for redemption from personal sin, but for any personal or ‘supernatural’ relationship to God at all. This emphasis on grace is peculiar to Christianity, although the general conception seems implicit in most theistic religions; it can perhaps be found in the more theistic forms of Hindu devotion, although it is absent from Buddhism and the stricter forms of Hinduism.

A Rapture of the Nerds? A Comparison between Transhumanist Eschatology and Christian Parousia

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-367
Author(s):  
Roberto Paura
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Point Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Species ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Universe

Transhumanism is one of the main “ideologies of the future” that has emerged in recent decades. Its program for the enhancement of the human species during this century pursues the ultimate goal of immortality, through the creation of human brain emulations. Therefore, transhumanism offers its fol- lowers an explicit eschatology, a vision of the ultimate future of our civilization that in some cases coincides with the ultimate future of the universe, as in Frank Tipler’s Omega Point theory. The essay aims to analyze the points of comparison and opposition between transhumanist and Christian eschatologies, in particular considering the “incarnationist” view of Parousia. After an introduction concern- ing the problems posed by new scientific and cosmological theories to traditional Christian eschatology, causing the debate between “incarnationists” and “escha- tologists,” the article analyzes the transhumanist idea of mind-uploading through the possibility of making emulations of the human brain and perfect simulations of the reality we live in. In the last section the problems raised by these theories are analyzed from the point of Christian theology, in particular the proposal of a transhuman species through the emulation of the body and mind of human beings. The possibility of a transhumanist eschatology in line with the incarnationist view of Parousia is refused.

Dehumanization and Mentalizing Animals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.J. Kasperbauer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mental State Attribution ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Phenomenal States

This chapter applies the psychological account from chapter 3 on how we rank human beings above other animals, to the particular case of using mental states to assign animals moral status. Experiments on the psychology of mental state attribution are discussed, focusing on their implications for human moral psychology. The chapter argues that attributions of phenomenal states, like emotions, drive our assignments of moral status. It also describes how this is significantly impacted by the process of dehumanization. Psychological research on anthropocentrism and using animals as food and as companions is discussed in order to illuminate the relationship between dehumanization and mental state attribution.

Fellow Creatures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Korsgaard
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Good For ◽  
Treat All ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

This book argues that we are obligated to treat all sentient animals as “ends in themselves.” Drawing on a theory of the good derived from Aristotle, it offers an explanation of why animals are the sorts of beings who have a good. Drawing on a revised version of Kant’s argument for the value of humanity, it argues that rationality commits us to claiming the standing of ends in ourselves in two senses. As autonomous beings, we claim to be ends in ourselves when we claim the standing to make laws for ourselves and each other. As beings who have a good, we also claim to be ends in ourselves when we take the things that are good for us to be good absolutely and so worthy of pursuit. The first claim commits us to joining with other autonomous beings in relations of reciprocal moral lawmaking. The second claim commits us to treating the good of every sentient animal as something of absolute importance. The book also argues that human beings are not more important than, superior to, or better off than the other animals. It criticizes the “marginal cases” argument and advances a view of moral standing as attaching to the atemporal subjects of lives. It offers a non-utilitarian account of the relationship between the good and pleasure, and addresses questions about the badness of extinction and about whether we have the right to eat animals, experiment on them, make them work for us, and keep them as pets.

Intellectual Difficulty and Moral Responsibility

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter considers the relationship between intellectual difficulty and moral responsibility. It focuses on this question: if it is difficult for us to come to believe the truth about some matter, and we do not in fact come to believe it, so that we are ignorant of that matter, does that affect our responsibility if we then act from our ignorance? Answering this question requires getting clearer on both intellectual difficulty and moral responsibility for actions done from ignorance. This chapter takes up both tasks, distinguishing three different kinds of intellectual difficulty—skill-related difficulty in performing, effort-related difficulty in performing, and difficulty in trying—and two different families of views regarding moral responsibility: agential control views and agential revelation views. The chapter then considers the interaction between these different kinds of intellectual difficulty and these different views of moral responsibility, focusing particularly on the familiar case of the Ancient Slaveholder.

Religion and Toleration from the Enlightenment to the Post-Secular Era

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Forst
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Pierre Bayle ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter addresses the classical question of the relationship between enlightenment and religion. In doing so, the chapter compares Jürgen Habermas's thought to that of Pierre Bayle and Immanuel Kant. For, although Habermas undoubtedly stands in a tradition founded by Bayle and Kant, he develops a number of important orientations within this tradition and has changed his position in his recent work. The chapter studies this change to understand Habermas's position better. It also draws attention to a fundamental question raised by the modern world: what common ground can human reason establish in the practical and theoretical domain between human beings who are divided by profoundly different religious (including antireligious) views?

Tradition and Human Life

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald O’Collins, SJ
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
New Members ◽  
The Past ◽  
Peter Berger ◽  
Global View ◽  
Anthony Giddens ◽  
Edward Shils ◽  
Traditional Patterns

Help towards understanding the human and religious functions of tradition comes from such sociologists as Peter Berger, Anthony Giddens, and Edward Shils. Tradition by Shils continues to illuminate how, although human beings modify inherited beliefs and change traditional patterns of behaviour, the new always incorporates something of the past. Shils takes a global view of tradition; it embodies everything individuals inherit when born into the world. It is through tradition that new members of society begin to identify themselves. The bearers of tradition may be not only official but also ‘learned’ and ‘ordinary’. Shils dedicates many further pages to changes in traditions and the forces leading to these changes. What sociologists like Giddens say about globalization also affects theological reflection on tradition. Surprisingly, the very few theologians who have published on tradition have ignored the sociologists.

scholarly journals Another Name for Liberty: Revelation, ‘Objectivity,’ and Intellectual Freedom in Barth and Marion

Open Theology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 430-450
Author(s):  
Kristóf Oltvai
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Intellectual Freedom ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
Absolute Truth ◽  
Saturated Phenomenon ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Karl Barth’s and Jean-Luc Marion’s theories of revelation, though prominent and popular, are often criticized by both theologians and philosophers for effacing the human subject’s epistemic integrity. I argue here that, in fact, both Barth and Marion appeal to revelation in an attempt to respond to a tendency within philosophy to coerce thought. Philosophy, when it claims to be able to access a universal, absolute truth within history, degenerates into ideology. By making conceptually possible some ‚evental’ phenomena that always evade a priori epistemic conditions, Barth’s and Marion’s theories of revelation relativize all philosophical knowledge, rendering any ideological claim to absolute truth impossible. The difference between their two theories, then, lies in how they understand the relationship between philosophy and theology. For Barth, philosophy’s attempts to make itself absolute is a produce of sinful human vanity; its corrective is thus an authentic revealed theology, which Barth articulates in Christian, dogmatic terms. Marion, on the other hand, equipped with Heidegger’s critique of ontotheology, highlights one specific kind of philosophizing—metaphysics—as generative of ideology. To counter metaphysics, Marion draws heavily on Barth’s account of revelation but secularizes it, reinterpreting the ‚event’ as the saturated phenomenon. Revelation’s unpredictability is thus preserved within Marion’s philosophy, but is no longer restricted to the appearing of God. Both understandings of revelation achieve the same epistemological result, however. Reality can never be rendered transparent to thought; within history, all truth is provisional. A concept of revelation drawn originally from Christian theology thus, counterintuitively, is what secures philosophy’s right to challenge and critique the pre-given, a hermeneutic freedom I suggest is the meaning of sola scriptura.

"A Dismal Swamp": Darwin, Design, and Evolution in Our Mutual Friend

1994 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard W. Fulweiler
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
Dismal Swamp ◽  
Human World ◽  
Laissez Faire ◽  
Our Mutual Friend ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Mutual Friend

Our Mutual Friend, published just six years after Darwin's The Origin of Species, is structured on a Darwinian pattern. As its title hints, the novel is an account of the mutual-though hidden-relations of its characters, a fictional world of individuals seeking their own advantage, a "dismal swamp" of "crawling, creeping, fluttering, and buzzing creatures." The relationship between the two works is quite direct in light of the large number of reviews on science, evolution, and The Origin from 1859 through the early 1860s in Dicken's magazine, All the Year Round. Given the laissez-faire origin of the Origin, Dicken's use of it in a book directed against laissez-faire economics is ironic. Important Darwinian themes in the novel are predation, mutual relationships, chance, and, especially, inheritance, a central issue in both Victorian fiction and in The Origin of Species. The novel asks whether predatory self-seeking or generosity should be the desired inheritance for human beings. The victory of generosity is symbolized by a dying child's "willing" his inheritance of a toy Noah's Ark, "all the Creation," to another child. Our Mutual Friend is saturated with the motifs of Darwinian biology, therefore, to display their inadequacy. Although Dickens made use of the explanatory powers of natural selection and remained sympathetic to science, the novel transcends and opposes its Darwinian structure in order to project a teleological and designed evolution in the human world toward a moral community of responsible men and women.

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