{"id":10420,"date":"2012-06-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-05T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/love-yiddish-and-the-problem-of-bioethics"},"modified":"2020-09-30T17:48:22","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T21:48:22","slug":"love-yiddish-and-the-problem-of-bioethics","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/love-yiddish-and-the-problem-of-bioethics","title":{"rendered":"Love, Yiddish, and the Problem of Bioethics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A mother and her son were traveling on a bus in Israel. The child chattered away in Hebrew while the mother admonished, \u201cYiddish, Yiddish, speak Yiddish!\u201d The son continued to talk in Hebrew while the mother kept insisting that the child speak Yiddish. A man who was sitting nearby piped up, \u201cExcuse me, lady, but why do you insist that your son speak Yiddish?\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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\u201cI don\u2019t want him to forget that he\u2019s Jewish,\u201d answered mama.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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To think about ethics necessarily involves thinking about where lines should be drawn \u2014 which actions are right and which are wrong. For bioethical inquiry, which considers the moral questions raised by biomedical science and biotechnology, it might seem that a natural place to start would be to draw a line around action itself, dividing science into a theoretical and contemplative component on the one hand, and an experimental and applied component on the other. Such a distinction would aim to respect the liberal democratic value of free inquiry, while reserving the right to intervene at the point at which inquiry seeks to employ unethical practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, separating scientific theorizing from experimentation is hardly simple. Theoretical advance tends to be intertwined with experimentation, rather than strictly prior to it. Furthermore, one of the distinguishing features of modern science is its tendency to depreciate traditional distinctions between theory and practice, knowledge and power, speech and deed. Knowledge, according to modern science, becomes know-how, in the precise sense that one does not have knowledge of what<\/i> something is unless one knows how<\/i> to make it. An ethics that takes its bearings from the putative distinction between theory and practice is therefore bound to prove unsatisfactory in addressing ethical problems unique to the modern scientific age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bioethics at its best is not, in any event, concerned primarily with actions themselves, but rather with the meaning of actions \u2014 that is, with the kind of thinking about the world that actions both reflect and reinforce. For instance, in the case of embryonic stem cell research, bioethics seeks to address not only the potential injustice done to embryos destroyed, but also the damage done to the soul of the destroyers: what might be the effects on how we regard human life (at any stage), not only from such destruction, but from our convincing ourselves that it is a morally weightless act?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While ethics typically focuses on conduct, it follows that bioethics, and scientific ethics more broadly, must especially be concerned with thoughts and ideas \u2014 in a word, philosophy. This is due not only to the meaning of actions conducted in the name of science, but also to the fact that science (unlike the law, business, and most other fields that invite specialized ethical scrutiny) is driven by the pursuit of knowledge \u2014 it is inherently inquisitive. Before we seek to determine and enforce the appropriate limits of scientific inquiry, we ought first to understand why<\/i> men inquire scientifically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet bioethics tends not to explore the question of what motivates scientific inquiry. Many of the most serious commenters on bioethical questions, including those who write in the pages of this journal, seem content to take modern science at its word, accepting that its inquiries are aimed at \u201cthe relief of man\u2019s estate.\u201d Accordingly, while conservative bioethicists often argue that some advances in modern science and technology could undermine human dignity and end up doing more harm than good, these arguments generally do not consider the possibility that there may exist deeper motivations for scientific inquiry that might conflict with or even supersede the fear of death, the desire for good health, and the longing for material comfort. Curiosity, deadly not only for cats, would appear to be one example; a certain species of erotic love (eros) may be another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In what follows, we shall examine curiosity and eros in detail, drawing upon their prominent (though distinct) roles in the major philosophical, Biblical, and mythological accounts of human inquiry, in the hope that this might shed some light on what (if anything) lies beneath the self-professed goal of science to \u201crelieve man\u2019s estate\u201d \u2014 and in the belief that if this does provide a bit of illumination, it might in some modest way contribute to a richer and more effective ethics of science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we will find points to perhaps surprising dilemmas inherent in science and philosophy, though more particularly in bioethics. Could it be that the task of bioethics is somehow akin to that of the mother in the joke, admonishing her child to speak Yiddish? And might this task prove as difficult as persuading someone to fall out of love?<\/p>\n\n\n

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\r\n\t\tA Curious Creature\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

From the first sentence of Aristotle\u2019s Metaphysics<\/i><\/a> \u2014 \u201cAll human beings by nature stretch themselves out toward knowing\u201d \u2014 we have it on high philosophical authority that curiosity is of primary importance for human beings. Other perhaps even higher authorities also suggest that curiosity may be the primary human problem. Three of the most famous cases are found in Hesiod\u2019s accounts of Prometheus and Pandora, the Biblical account of Adam and Eve, and Aristophanes\u2019 account of the birth of erotic love in Plato\u2019s Symposium<\/i>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before closely examining these accounts, we should take note of three broad similarities between them. First, each account seeks to explain the origins of the human condition \u2014 including much of its unpleasantness \u2014 by appealing to primordial man\u2019s initial grasp at some kind of dangerous or forbidden knowledge. Second, each portrays man as unable by himself to overcome whatever powerful forces are at work driving him toward the forbidden knowledge; some kind of divine intervention is required in each case to stop or correct him. Finally, each account portrays a psychic or corporeal division within human beings, the emergence of sexual counterparts, and the imposition of disease and physical hardship as punishments for, consequences of, or natural concomitants to the acquisition of forbidden knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the account appearing in Hesiod\u2019s Theogony<\/i> and Works and Days<\/i><\/a>, Prometheus is a Titan, one of the immortal gods; his name means \u201cforesight\u201d or \u201cforethought.\u201d He is a clever challenger to the power of Zeus. In a sacrificial meal meant to settle a dispute between mortals and immortals, Prometheus decides to try to trick Zeus, setting before him and offering him a choice between two meals: one a portion of beef from a cow, concealed within the unappetizing container of an ox\u2019s stomach; the other the cow\u2019s bones, concealed within an appetizing cover of fat. Zeus, angered at this deception, \u201cFrom then on … always remembered this trick,\u201d and would not give the gift of fire to mortal men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is clear from the outset that Prometheus, distinguished for his craft and intelligence, is a troublemaker. Indeed, there seems to be something about intelligence that is inherently troublesome. The trouble is not primarily that cleverness deceives \u2014 as Prometheus deceives by offering Zeus a falsely decorated sacrifice \u2014 but rather that in its capacity to deceive, cleverness supposes that it is itself immune to deception. While he disguises the heap of bones under a thin layer of flesh, Prometheus seems confident that his<\/i> fire would illuminate all the truths hidden beneath mere appearances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether as an act of philanthropy or simply another affront to the gods, Prometheus steals the secret fire from Olympus so that man too might be similarly enlightened. But the benefits of fire, at least for man, turn out to be questionable. Nowhere is this clearer than in the arrival of Pandora, the first woman, who is sent by Zeus supposedly as a gift but in fact as the price for man\u2019s acquisition of the stolen fire. In an obvious nod to the original deception by Prometheus, the gods disguise Pandora\u2019s danger beneath an intoxicating layer of beauty and feminine charm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the warnings of Prometheus, his brother Epimetheus takes the bait and accepts the gift of Pandora, apparently on behalf of man. Epimetheus \u2014 whose name fittingly means \u201chindsight\u201d or \u201cafterthought\u201d \u2014 only realizes after the fact that Pandora is a bringer of woe. For in addition to her many very attractive attributes, Pandora is also given a jar with mysterious contents within. Perhaps because she believes that the cleverness the gods instilled in her made her immune to being fooled, she opens the jar. And in this quintessential act of curiosity, in this morbid compulsion to uncover<\/i> and see for herself<\/i>, she unwittingly releases illness, toil, sorrow, and countless other evils into the world, closing the jar in time to prevent only hope from escaping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The punishment here certainly fits the crime. By deceiving man into accepting this \u201clovely evil,\u201d Zeus exposes as folly the notion that man\u2019s newly acquired fire is capable of uncovering all truths. And by providing clever Pandora her jar, Zeus exposes the still more dangerous conceit that just being capable of uncovering a truth makes one capable of handling it without getting burned. The putative infallibility of fire, at least in mortal hands, turns out to be a double deception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We will soon meet another woman, Eve, who is similarly compelled to see for herself, and in turn similarly deceived. Both Eve and Pandora get vastly more than they bargained for. And while these archetypal human beings may have been the first to experience the dangers of curiosity, the relationship between Prometheus and Epimetheus suggests that they will not be the last. Just as Epimetheus (acting on behalf of man) is unable to heed Prometheus\u2019 warning about Pandora, who in turn is unable to keep herself from opening her jar, so are we mortals unable to appreciate the dangers of the Promethean fire until it is too late. Ever blinded and emboldened by the gift of fire, we are unable to learn from our mistakes, and so are doomed to repeat them. The very fact that the story of Pandora continues to resonate with us today indicates that each successive generation continues to open its own respective jars, perhaps confident that the contents might be different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This in turn may help to explain a striking ambiguity in the story \u2014 namely, whether the containment of hope in the jar is meant to signify that man retains<\/i> it or lacks<\/i> it. Perhaps it is precisely because man is hopelessly curious that he remains curiously hopeful.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\r\n\t\tFruit of Forbidding\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

The Biblical account begins with humanity in a state of ease and tranquility. The first human being appears to be contented, spontaneous, and psychologically uncomplicated, experiencing \u201clittle gap between desire and its fulfillment,\u201d as Leon R. Kass puts it in The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis<\/a><\/i> (2003). (The following discussion of human linguistic and psychological development as depicted in Genesis borrows liberally from Kass\u2019s masterful study, although it departs from Kass in its conclusions.) Man is a creature of simple needs, living off of nature almost by instinct; the divine prohibition of the forbidden fruit seems initially not even to register in his innocent mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps recognizing a danger in leaving man alone with nothing to occupy his latent rational faculties, God creates animals and brings them to man \u201cto see what he would call them\u201d (Gen. 2:19). The activity of naming turns out not to be a wholly innocuous distraction, however, as it requires that the person who names determine not only whether one thing is sufficiently distinct from another to deserve a separate name, but which qualities of the thing to be named are sufficiently important (or useful or good for man) to be reflected in the name chosen. Naming therefore marks man\u2019s first step toward an independent concern for what is good \u2014 and thus, however remotely, his first step toward becoming a creature of moral choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naming the animals also awakens in man an awareness of loneliness. God then fashions the first woman out of the man\u2019s rib. Though the first man does not fully appreciate the implications of sexual complementarity until he eats the fruit of knowledge, the introduction of another human being immediately broadens the possibilities of language and self-reflection. Treating us to a perfect example of the acquisitive (rather than merely inquisitive) qualities of human speech, the man proudly proclaims, \u201cthis one shall be called woman [\u2019ishah<\/i>], because from man [\u2019ish<\/i>] this one was taken\u201d (Gen. 2:23). In so doing, the man has not only named both the animals and his fellow human being, but he has given himself a new name \u2014 not just \u2019adam<\/i>, a generic human being, but \u2019ish<\/i>, an individual male \u2014 thereby declaring his independence from the name the Lord gave him, and perhaps even from the path the Lord set out for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it is the first woman who first declares independence from God, though not without a little help from her conversation with the serpent. That the woman is able to have a conversation at all signifies an important threshold capacity for reason and self-reflection, and therefore a heightened propensity toward independent thinking and disobedience. The serpent capitalizes on this expertly, assuring the woman that in eating the fruit she \u201cshall not surely die,\u201d as God had warned, but rather that \u201cyour eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and bad\u201d (Gen. 3:4-5). Such talk is more than rhetorical \u2014 it is coercive, in the limited but important sense that to comprehend it is unavoidably to reflect on the possibility that it might be true. This is because to comprehend the serpent\u2019s speech is to doubt God\u2019s speech (consider the famous saying, \u201cdon\u2019t think of a pink elephant\u201d \u2014 which cannot be both understood and obeyed). The woman\u2019s doubt, however briefly entertained, fundamentally and irreparably alters her (and so humanity\u2019s) relation both to God and to herself. For even if, in light of her doubt, she were to continue to abstain from the fruit, she would no longer be doing so unreflectively, but by choice \u2014 that is, not simply because it is forbidden, but because she had determined on her own that God\u2019s was the better course. It is no longer possible for the woman simply<\/i> to follow God; but by choosing<\/i> to follow His way, it is now possible for her to obey Him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon eating the forbidden fruit, the eyes of the woman and man are opened and they recognize their nakedness. This first discovery leads directly to the first technology and craft, as they sew themselves clothing from fig leaves. For their transgressions, God punishes woman and man \u2014 she to the painful labor of childbirth and to be ruled over by man, he to the painful labors of the field and ultimately to death. Then, in what Leon Kass calls \u201cone of the most beautiful and moving sentences\u201d in the Bible, the man gives his wife the name Eve \u201cbecause she was the mother of all living.\u201d And so we see how speech, reason, and taxonomy are bound up with discovery, knowledge, and self-knowledge; how technological creation is tied to human procreation; how man\u2019s moral and rational freedom emerge from a largely passive, if not totally involuntary, process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this account points to some difficult conclusions for those (like Kass) who argue that the forbidden fruit represents the independent concern for, rather than the actual knowledge of, good and bad. As we have seen, whether Eve likes it or not, she must<\/i> make some<\/i> choice after listening to and understanding the serpent\u2019s speech. Furthermore, she does not choose to be spoken to in the first place \u2014 meaning that she does not choose for herself the conditions under which a moral choice becomes necessary. This point applies even more strongly under the metaphorical view that the serpent is really, as Kass suggests, \u201can externalized embodiment of certain essentially human, rational capacities.\u201d For one could deliberately avoid a literal serpent, but not one that is a figurative part of oneself; covering one\u2019s ears does not protect against a siren song from within. In short, Eve does not choose to choose at all; her \u201ctransgression\u201d is not then the result of a free choice, but free choice is the result \u2014 rather, the instantiation<\/i> \u2014 of the transgression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If one understands the story of Adam and Eve as a \u201cliterary vehicle for conveying some permanent truths about the problem of human freedom,\u201d as Kass proposes, one could hardly do better than to suggest that freedom is itself the forbidden fruit. Let us assume for a moment that this interpretation is correct. The problem is that it makes God\u2019s prohibition against eating the fruit paradoxical and impossible. It is paradoxical because one cannot truly obey the commandment without disobeying it. It is impossible because freedom and free will are not things we do or could freely choose to acquire but things that develop in us without our say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are we to make of a God who speaks in riddles and commands the impossible? More importantly, what are we to make of ourselves in light of this interpretation \u2014 that is, in light of the suggestion not only that we have no choice but to transgress, but that our transgression is in the very fact of our being human?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Man is a creature of both dust and divine breath. But he is also a moral agent, that is, an agent of free choice, and so a creature of both God \u2014 who initiates man\u2019s linguistic development by creating the animals \u2014 and the serpent \u2014 who, by tapping into man\u2019s developed linguistic capacity, forces self-reflection and doubt, and thus the necessity for moral choice. (In this sense, the serpent\u2019s role is much like that of his similarly clever counterpart Prometheus, who provides man with fire.) These dual origins underscore the moral ambiguity of moral man.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Moral ambiguity, however, while certainly problematic, is not the<\/i> problem. Indeed, free choice is problematic precisely because of the problem of immoral, or bad choices. In order for the transgression to make sense as a transgression<\/i>, it must be not only a choice, but a disobedient one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us now consider what it would mean for the forbidden fruit to represent actual knowledge of good and bad, rather than only a concern for such knowledge. After conversing with the serpent, the first woman is faced with two options: either listen to the serpent and eat the fruit, or obey God and abstain. Choosing to abstain would amount to an act of willful ignorance, as she would never know for sure whether eating the fruit would in fact have killed her or would instead have opened her eyes. Only by tasting the fruit can she be certain about its effects, and in turn about whether God has been truthful. (It follows that only by transgressing can she really trust God.) Accordingly, instead of faithfully heeding the divine voice, she decides to see for herself. What she sees after eating, however unpleasant and unexpected, does indeed remove all doubt as to her standing before God. Her new knowledge of good and bad \u2014 what God had known all along \u2014 is her shameful discovery of her (and humanity\u2019s) own psychic and moral dependency. The problem illustrated here is not choice simply, but choosing to see (and know) for herself: it is not freedom, but curiosity that ultimately leads to man\u2019s expulsion from the Garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eve falls victim to the same double deception of \u201cfire\u201d illustrated in Hesiod\u2019s account of Pandora. In looking at the forbidden tree and seeing that it \u201cwas good for food\u201d and \u201cwas a delight to the eyes\u201d (Gen. 3:6), Eve trusts that her newly emergent rationality is capable of seeing through mere appearance to the truth of things, despite God\u2019s warnings. More dangerously, in deciding to actually taste the fruit and see for herself the knowledge it contains, Eve supposes that, just because by her rationality she is able to uncover the truth, she is also thereby able comfortably and confidently to endure it. As it turns out, Eve is wrong on both counts. The forbidden fruit is Eve\u2019s Pandora\u2019s Box \u2014 with interest.<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Genesis story of Adam and Eve, like its counterpart in Hesiod, illustrates the tremendous power of curiosity. Eve\u2019s desire for knowledge supersedes even the fear of death. Though her decision to disobey is technically a choice, perhaps the larger lesson is that our developed rational capacities arrive with an overwhelming impulse to pursue inquiry indiscriminately, even unreasonably, and almost always against our better instincts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all their parallels, there are also differences between the Biblical and Hesiodic accounts that are worthy of mention. What, for instance, is the significance of the fact that the forbidden knowledge is technological in one case (fire) and moral in the other (knowledge of good and bad)? For present purposes, we should simply note that, however important a role curiosity plays in motivating Eve to eat the fruit, it remains only half of the story. After man\u2019s transgression, he is overwhelmed not by curiosity, but by the meaning of his own nakedness. Curious desires give way to erotic ones. For a deeper understanding of this transformation, we turn to Aristophanes\u2019 account of the birth of eros in Plato\u2019s Symposium<\/i>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\r\n\t\tEros by Any Other Name\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

It is a common misconception to think of the Symposium<\/i><\/a> as the Platonic dialogue about love. Properly speaking, all<\/i> of Plato\u2019s dialogues, insofar as they deal with philosophy, are about love; what distinguishes the Symposium<\/i> from the rest is that it alone alerts us to this fact. The Symposium<\/i> uniquely justifies philosophy as philosophy \u2014 that is, wisdom-seeking as an erotic enterprise. (Eros here, as in the rest of this essay, refers to the philosophical meaning of the word, encompassing not just sexual desire and love but an other-directedness, a longing for wholeness or completion.) Those of us interested in exploring the motivations for human inquiry would therefore do well to examine this important dialogue in detail, considering in particular what the speeches of Aristophanes and Socrates say about the power of love, the nature of love, and the nature of its power. For only then can we truly appreciate what an ethics of inquiry is up against.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to understand the power of eros, one must know its origins in the ancient afflictions of man. According to Plato\u2019s Aristophanes, these primeval human beings were \u201cas a whole round, with back and sides in a circle. And each had four arms, and legs equal in number to his arms, and two faces\u201d that \u201cwere set in opposite directions.\u201d And since each also had a double allotment of genitals on opposite sides of the body, there were three sexes: male (that is, male-male), female (that is, female-female), and androgynous (male-female). These primeval humans were mighty and prideful: \u201cThey were awesome in their strength and robustness, and they had great and proud thoughts,\u201d so they \u201cattempted to make an ascent into the sky with a view to assaulting the gods.\u201d The gods scratched their heads trying to figure out how to stop the humans from behaving so \u201clicentiously.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much like in the Biblical and Hesiodic accounts, Plato\u2019s Aristophanes seeks to explain our present human condition as resulting from an original transgression against the gods. It is unclear from the text what the humans\u2019 motivation is and what exactly they do to the gods. A passing allusion to a Homeric story suggests that the aggression was born not out of curiosity but out of an abundance of strength and spiritedness, and the language of \u201cassault\u201d and \u201clicentiousness\u201d suggests that the offense is physical in nature. In any case, the offense certainly carries with it a sense of prideful, blasphemous independence similar to that found in the curious motivations of the other accounts we have considered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zeus responds to the human beings\u2019 insolence by weakening them. He slices the primeval beings into two pieces, reversing their faces and otherwise reshaping them into our present form, but leaving the genitals on the backsides. Following bisection, the resulting halves were distraught, desiring so strongly to be reunified that they would neglect food, water, and shelter, never wanting to do anything apart from their other half. As they began to die out from starvation and self-neglect, Zeus took pity and turned their genitals frontward so that, by way of intercourse with one another, they might not only sexually reproduce but also find satisfaction and rest. Eros, then, is \u201cthe bringer-together of their ancient nature, who tries to make one out of two and to heal their human nature.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever the reasons that lead to man\u2019s initial assault on the gods, it is clear that his soul is not only humbled but utterly and irrevocably transformed by the punishment. The more ambitious designs he may have entertained in his original state give way completely to an overwhelming urge to reunite into his original whole. We see that man\u2019s erotic nature encompasses not just the desire for sex and procreation but also a deep and inarticulate longing for restored completeness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this erotic transformation is perhaps most obvious in Aristophanes\u2019 account, it is by no means unique to it. In Hesiod\u2019s story, the gods send the first woman, a sexual counterpart to man the transgressor \u2014 not to humble man, but certainly to direct his newly emergent faculties elsewhere. In the Biblical account, the woman who is man\u2019s companion only becomes his sexual and procreative complement after they eat the forbidden fruit. All these accounts vividly affirm the primacy and power of man\u2019s erotic nature; we can see that erotic motivations both precede and predominate over man\u2019s fear of death.<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n

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\r\n\t\tDehumanizing That Humanizes\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

It is important to reemphasize that the emergence of man as an erotic being, though an unintended consequence of (or punishment for) a choice, is not itself chosen. Just as in everyday experience one does not choose to fall in love, so man himself chooses neither his erotic status nor the object of his erotic affections; these are both predetermined, largely or entirely, by his nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since one does not choose to fall in (or out of) love, then to the extent that man is a philosophical being \u2014 a lover of wisdom \u2014 it follows that in some fundamental sense his philosophical status itself is not susceptible to philosophical argument. Put another way, philosophical man did not simply choose to be philosophical. This point poses considerable limitations for ethicists who employ rational argument to question the danger of certain avenues of rational inquiry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quite apart from possible limitations to ethical argumentation as such, many particular bioethical arguments encounter difficulties on their own terms. This difficulty applies especially to some of the most penetrating insights regarding the dehumanizing effects of various scientific pursuits \u2014 as we can learn from Socrates\u2019 speech in the Symposium<\/i>. Although Plato has Socrates agreeing with Aristophanes\u2019 estimation of the power of erotic love, Socrates seems much more interested in a more basic question. Socrates responds to a speech by Agathon, a florid account of the things that erotic love is<\/i> \u2014 youth, beauty, wisdom, and a source of many other admirable qualities. True to form, Socrates turns Agathon\u2019s argument on its head, focusing instead on what erotic love is no<\/i>t<\/i> \u2014 what it lacks. The desirer desires \u201cwhat it is in need of, and does not desire unless it is in need.\u201d Would a person want to be tall if he already were tall, or want to be strong if he already were strong? Socrates\u2019 insight here is that eros is about want, in both meanings of the word: both a desire and a lack. That double meaning implies that to the extent that the lover acquires the object of his love, he ceases to be a lover. To the extent that the philosopher, the lover of wisdom, acquires wisdom, he ceases to be a philosopher. For the philosopher, then, the price of knowledge is death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This high price of knowledge, notably, is the same as it is for Adam and Eve, who also pay for knowledge with the death of their former nature. But whereas \u201cdeath\u201d for the philosopher means the death of his erotic nature and therefore the end of his humanity, Adam and Eve\u2019s \u201cdeath\u201d marks the end of their prelapsarian, innocent nature, resulting in the birth<\/i> of their erotic nature. Adam and Eve\u2019s \u201cdeath\u201d marks the beginning, not the end, of their humanity \u2014 and so, as Leon Kass argues, the story of the Garden of Eden can be understood to depict the rise, rather than fall, of man. (Whether the rise of man is simultaneously a fall from grace is another question, on which I happily demur.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet there remains another, even more important difference between the Edenic death and the philosopher\u2019s death. Adam and Eve\u2019s realization of their nakedness and inadequacy before God is unexpected and certainly unintended; by contrast, the philosopher\u2019s death, and the lover\u2019s death in general, is not only intended, but is the very goal of his longing, and signification of his success as philosopher or lover. Though love may be suicidal, it is not simply<\/i> tragic; indeed, it is both tragic and comic, precisely because its destruction is also its greatest triumph. Perhaps Socrates was thinking along these lines when, after a long evening of discourse and drink, he argued, to the puzzlement of his drowsy interlocutors, that \u201cthe same man should know how to make comedy and tragedy … he who is by art a tragic poet is also a comic poet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Insofar as we humans are essentially incomplete beings, fundamentally animated by the erotic desire to restore an original state of wholeness, we strive and long for a result whose attainment would nullify our very existence as striving and longing beings \u2014 that is, as human beings in any recognizable sense. We human beings, precisely because<\/i> of our erotic nature, cannot help but participate in the tragicomic character of love. Humanity, it would seem, is driven by impulses that are fundamentally dehumanizing, in that fulfilling our deepest impulses would extinguish them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love, in the sense described here, might be thought of as a state of exile from a cherished but lost condition of wholeness. As the quintessential language of exile, Yiddish might be justly thought of as the most erotic \u2014 and thus the most philosophical \u2014 of languages, and so the most aptly suited to express the paradoxical strivings of our erotic natures. Just as the lover, to the extent that he acquires his beloved, ceases to be a lover \u2014 and the philosopher, so far as he becomes wise, ceases to be a philosopher \u2014 so the exiled, once finally arrived in his longed-for promised land, changes fundamentally as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider the Jewish custom of concluding the Passover Seder with those long-suffering words, \u201cnext year in Jerusalem!\u201d What are Jews to say once they have reached Israel \u2014 once they live in Jerusalem? Can they remain Jews in the same sense? Perhaps the fact that the Jews continue to wait for a messiah helps to preserve their essentially erotic character. Yet the dilemma remains: to the extent that we speak Hebrew, we must forget how to speak Yiddish.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The accounts of the Bible, Hesiod, and Aristophanes all portray man as fundamentally shaped by the loss of some initial state of wholeness. In this, they agree on the primacy, importance, and power of man\u2019s erotic nature. But there is decidedly less agreement on the object or ends toward which this nature is oriented. There is still agreement, however, that man himself does not fully understand what that orientation is \u2014 that he is to some extent oblivious as to what exactly would constitute fulfillment of his erotic longings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aristophanes describes man\u2019s intense erotic yearning as a mysterious and inarticulate force of which the lover has only doubtful presentiments. What the soul wants \u201cit is incapable of saying, but it divines what it wants and speaks in riddles.\u201d It is understandable that the ambiguity of man\u2019s erotic character should invite more than one explanation of it. Such various states of original wholeness might be generally described as psychic, on the Biblical account; corporeal, on the account of Aristophanes; and noetic (or rational), according to Socrates. These ancient accounts point to different states of original wholeness to make competing normative claims for the appropriate longings of man\u2019s divided soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a similar fashion, modern thinkers point to the conditions of various \u201cstates of nature\u201d to make claims about the just ends and limitations of government. And so too do they imagine both idealized states in which these ends are fulfilled and limitations upheld, and fallen states in which we see the grave consequences of failing to secure those limitations and ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These utopias and dystopias resoundingly echo their ancient forebears. The \u201crelief of man\u2019s estate,\u201d in Francis Bacon\u2019s words<\/a> \u2014 the raison d\u2019\u00eatre<\/i> of the modern scientific enterprise \u2014 in fact relies on a predominantly Christian understanding of a former state of wholeness: it is a call to restore our lost Paradise through science and technology. (And indeed, Bacon\u2019s whole phrase refers not just to the relief of man\u2019s estate but also \u201cthe glory of the Creator.\u201d) It is no accident that Bensalem, Bacon\u2019s scientific utopia in his story \u201cNew Atlantis<\/a>,\u201d is a Christian society. Similarly, it is no accident that the denizens of Aldous Huxley\u2019s Brave New World<\/a><\/i>, a society that takes modern science to a dystopian extreme, bear a striking resemblance to na\u00efve, psychically undivided, prelapsarian man. Through science, they too are able to forget the meaning of nakedness, and all the complications that go with it. Theoretically and empirically, modern science has the appearance of being driven by an ancient erotic longing for the psychic wholeness of Edenic man, and perhaps also the corporeal wholeness of Aristophanic man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this be the case, conservative bioethicists err not in taking modern science\u2019s self-proclaimed purpose of \u201crelieving man\u2019s estate\u201d at its word, but rather in not fully appreciating the implications of the erotic nature of this purpose. For if philosophical and scientific inquiry are in fact expressions of deeper erotic impulses, then we engage in these pursuits not despite but because of<\/i> their dehumanizing effects. And so the ethicist who would seek to limit inquiry on the grounds that it is dehumanizing is in the same difficult \u2014 perhaps futile \u2014 position as the mother in the joke, who constantly and unsuccessfully admonishes her son to speak Yiddish. It is somewhat like the position of a hopeless romantic who, refusing to settle on and strive for a particular object of love, instead prefers to wander interminably in erotic exile, content to be in love with love itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the philosopher might become a wise man, the wise man as wise man \u2014 that is, as contemplator \u2014 can never be<\/i> one with that which he beholds. The act of contemplation requires a certain distance between the contemplator and the thing contemplated. Is it then the case that in a certain crucial sense the contemplator must remain erotically unfulfilled? That is, must he remain a perpetual lover, and therefore perpetually human? Might he then be a perfect match for that other hopeless romantic, the bioethicist?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There remains the third possibility that, rather than achieve completion or permanent prolongation, the erotic basis of inquiry would simply implode and do away with itself. Nietzsche, for instance, argues that science is merely the last stage of development of the quest for truth initiated by Socrates. Once science, broadly understood, turns its captious gaze upon truth itself, truth unravels as a kind of illusion, and the Socratic quest presumably dies with it. Science then begins to function as a mere instrument of power, whose motivations perhaps better resemble the prideful assaults of the original, circular Aristophanic humans than the halved, erotic beings they become as a result of their assaults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With such considerations, we are left, as always \u2014 perhaps even more pressingly than ever \u2014 with the question of whether the erotic fulfillment of modern science is desirable, what it would consist of, and whether it is even possible. Pursuing these questions will help to clarify just what we mean by \u201chuman\u201d when we speak of our concern about \u201cdehumanization.\u201d If the erotic longing of man cannot itself be suppressed or ignored, perhaps there can still be justification for channeling it away from certain means and toward certain avenues of research. We must find a way to articulate our concern about specific kinds of potentially dehumanizing effects of the scientific project, even while acknowledging that a certain sort of dehumanization is inevitable. For example, we might articulate an objection to at least some forms of troubling research as inhibiting or interfering with even the erotic impulse itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But bioethical questions will remain sharpest, and most difficult, when it is not the means but the very ends of science that are dehumanizing: What if modern biotechnology, and modern science more generally, is taking us on a path away from our human nature \u2014 and it is in our nature to want that? By scientifically striving for the psychic tranquility of the Bible\u2019s first man, are we destined to become instead like Nietzsche\u2019s last man? And what, come to think of it, is the difference?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What really drives our thirst for knowledge, including scientific knowledge? Is it our humanity, or our desire to transcend it? Darren J. Beattie looks to mythological accounts of the roots and ends of human curiosity, from Prometheus to Pandora to Adam and Eve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"template":"","article_type":[13],"noteworthy_people":[],"topics":[5029,2266,5031,5012,2279],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/10420"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/10420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=10420"},{"taxonomy":"noteworthy_people","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noteworthy_people?post=10420"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=10420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}