Leon Kass
Encyclopedia
Leon Richard Kass is an American
physician
, scientist
, educator, and public intellectual, best known as proponent of liberal education
via the "Great Books
," as an opponent of human cloning
and euthanasia
, as a critic of certain areas of technological progress and embryo
research, and for his controversial tenure as chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005. Although Kass is often referred to as a bioethicist, he eschews the term and refers to himself as "an old-fashioned humanist
. A humanist is concerned broadly with all aspects of human life, not just the ethical."
Kass is currently the Addie Clark Harding Professor in the College
and the Committee on Social Thought
at the University of Chicago
and the Hertog
Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
. His books include Toward A More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs; The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of our Nature; Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics; and The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis.
Kass enrolled in the University of Chicago at age 15, graduating from the College with a degree in biology in 1958. The College was well-known for its extensive core curriculum
, and Kass studied the "great books" then prescribed by Chicago's core. "I became a devotee of liberal education . . . with a special fondness for the Greeks." He graduated from the University of Chicago's medical school in 1962 and, following an internship in medicine at the Beth Israel Hospital
in Boston
, completed a Ph.D.
in biochemistry at Harvard University
in 1967, working in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Konrad Bloch.
In 1961, Kass married the former Amy Apfel
, a fellow graduate of the College of the University of Chicago. As instructors in the College in later years, they would frequently teach seminars together. Their scholarly collaborations include several articles on marriage and courtship and a reader on the subject. (The Kasses have two married daughters and four granddaughters; they reside in Chicago and Washington.)
Leon and Amy Kass went to Holmes County, Mississippi
, in 1965 to do civil rights
work. The character of the rural, poor, and uneducated African Americans with whom they lived and worked contrasted with his colleagues at Harvard and other elite universities. It was this experience, he later said, that
, authoring several scientific papers while serving in the U.S. Public Health Service. His early interest in bioethics was stimulated by Aldous Huxley
's Brave New World
and C. S. Lewis
's The Abolition of Man
, both of which he read at the suggestion of Harvey Flaumenhaft
. In these books, Kass saw examples of "how the scientific project to master nature could, if we are not careful, lead to our dehumanization, via eugenics
, drug-induced contentment, and other transformations of human nature, possibilities already foreseeable in the new biology. . . . Will man remain a creature made in the image of God, aspiring to align himself with the divine, or will he become an artifact created by man in the image of God-knows-what, fulfilling the aspirations only of human will? . . . I soon shifted my career from doing science to thinking about its human meaning."
In 1967, Kass read an article by Joshua Lederberg
suggesting that humans could one day be cloned
, permitting the perpetuation of the genotype
s of genius
es. In a letter to the editor, Kass made a moral case against cloning and suggested that "the programmed reproduction of man will, in fact, dehumanize him." Thus began a second career of writing on bioethics, including essays on organ transplantation, genetic screening, in vitro fertilization, cloning, the conquest of aging, assisted suicide
, medical ethics
, and biotechnology
. Kass was also involved in founding the Hastings Center
. In 1970, he left the laboratory at NIH to become the executive director of the Committee on Life Sciences and Social Policy at the National Research Council
of the National Academy of Science, which produced the first public document that tried to assess the ethical and social consequences of the coming advances in biotechnology.
from 1972 to 1976, Georgetown University
from 1974 to 1976, and at Chicago from 1976 onward. At St. John's, Kass taught in the Great Books
program as well as in-depth studies of Aristotle
's De Anima and Nicomachean Ethics
and Darwin
's On the Origin of Species. At the University of Chicago, Kass taught courses across the humanities and sciences, including both undergraduate and graduate seminars in the Nicomachean Ethics, Plato
's Symposium
and Meno
, Lucretius
, human passions, science and society, Rousseau
's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
, Genesis, Darwinism
, Descartes
's Discourse on the Method, classical geometry
, Tolstoy
's War and Peace
, marriage and courtship, Exodus, and biotechnology.
Along with his wife and other colleagues, Kass cofounded in 1977 the "Human Being and Citizen" common core course at Chicago, today the most popular humanities core course at Chicago, devoted to the question of what is an excellent human being and what an excellent citizen. In 1983, he, Allan Bloom
, and James M. Redfield
founded the "Fundamentals: Issues and Texts" program. Kass taught in and chaired this program for eighteen years. He won the University of Chicago's Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1983 and the Amoco
Foundation Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Teaching in 1993.
brewed in the late 1990s and into 2001, President George W. Bush
had to decide whether to allow federal funding for research on stem cells derived from embryo
s. Many scientists were advocating the removal of limits on embryonic stem cell
research, but critics expressed concern about they characterized as the wanton destruction of human life. In an August 2001 speech, Bush announced that he would support funding research on stem cell lines already created--"where the life and death decision has already been made"--but not on lines created by the further destruction of embryos. And because "[e]mbryonic stem cell research is at the leading edge of a series of moral hazards," Bush said, he would create the President's Council on Bioethics, to be led by Kass and with a mandate to "monitor stem cell research, to recommend appropriate guidelines and regulations, and to consider all of the medical and ethical ramifications of biomedical innovation." As the council was appointed and prepared to begin meeting in early 2002, Kass received a great deal of media attention, especially due to his reputation for pessimism and concern about the moral implications of scientific progress with respect to health and life issues. Calling him "the president's philosopher," U.S. News and World Report noted that "he tends to dwell on the dark side of modern medicine. . . . Kass has tried to raise the public's consciousness of emerging technology's risks to values that humanity holds dear." The Council from its inception was charged by Bush to consider these larger questions, well beyond the domain of stem cell research. The first specific task of the Council, according to the executive order creating it, was "to undertake fundamental inquiry into the human and moral significance of developments in biomedical and behavioral science and technology."
The composition of the Council was also subject to controversy. Kass was accused of "stacking the deck" with philosophers, scientists, and public intellectuals likely to oppose "unfettered medical research in the area of stem cells, therapeutic cloning, and reproductive cloning. Given that fact, researchers had better worry a lot about what the Council is likely to recommend to the president." Critics also charged that Kass eliminated those who disagreed with him, such as Elizabeth Blackburn
and William May
, and replacing them with opponents of cloning. Kass replied to these criticisms by saying that the Council was more intellectually diverse than prior bioethics commissions precisely because it included opponents of abortion. (Previous commissions had "excluded representatives of the right to life movement
.") Since Bush had deliberately created the Council to debate and clarify the issues without necessarily reaching consensus, Kass said that he welcomed disagreement within the Council: "This council is easily the most intellectually and ethically diverse of the bioethics commissions to date. We have worked with mutual respect while not papering over our differences. No one who has attended any of our meetings or read the transcripts can believe that we do anything but serious and careful work, without regard to ideology, partisan politics or religious beliefs."
The Council has been renewed by executive order every two years since 2001, and the subjects it considered ranged beyond the stem cell battles during which it was established. Kass sought throughout to develop a "richer" bioethics, attentive to larger human and philosophical questions at the root of bioethical dilemmas, and he lamented that the Council was pigeonholed: "The Council came into existence identified as the 'stem cell council,' and people on all sides of the embryo research debate seem to care more about the Council's views on this subject than about anything else. Not by our choice--and certainly not by mine--the Council was born smack in the middle of 'embryoville,' and it has never been able to leave this highly political field." Despite the public's narrow conception of its work, during Kass's chairmanship, the Council produced five book-length reports, a white paper, and a humanistic reader on ten topics generally neglected in the bioethics literature.
Kass described the Council's work as "public bioethics," rejecting previous approaches that favored government by self-appointed "experts"--scientific or bioethical—and presenting the issues in terms accessible to the broader public and its political representatives. He sought a "richer" inquiry that debates "ends as well as means," and the Council's reports addressed larger human questions, "not merely administrative or regulatory ones." He said that it presented all sides of ethical issues in order to create a more substantive moral discourse. "A proper bioethics must lead public reflection on the ways in which new biotechnologies may affect those things that matter most regarding how human lives are lived," Kass wrote. "This means beginning by reflecting upon the highest human goods and understanding the latest technological advances in this light." Eschewing much of the language and theoretical framework of academic bioethics, Kass drew on literary, philosophical, and theological sources to inform the Council's discussion. At the Council's first meeting, he led a discussion of "The Birth-Mark
," a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne
.
Kass stepped down as chairman of the Council in October 2005 and remained a member of the Council until 2007. He returned to positions at the American Enterprise Institute and the University of Chicago.
In 2007, in two separate studies, research teams led by James Thomson
and Shinya Yamanaka
created induced pluripotent stem cell
s from adult cells, meaning that the destruction of embryos for stem cells might no longer be necessary. In 2009, the reprogramming technique was further improved, as skin cells were returned to pluripotency by the transfer of a few exogeneous genes and without the use of foreign virus
es as vectors. Robert P. George
praised Kass as the driving intellectual force against embryo-killing and in favor of finding alternative methods of obtaining pluripotent stem cells: "All along, it was Dr. Kass who said that reprogramming methods would, if pursued vigorously, enable us to realize the full benefits of stem cell science while respecting human dignity."
entitled "The Wisdom of Repugnance
," Kass suggests that we should respect the revulsion most people feel about cloning human beings, just as we respect their supposed revulsion at incest
and cannibalism
. "In crucial cases," he writes, "repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's power fully to articulate it." Kass writes that modern ethical discourse, which emphasizes autonomy, equity, and utility, fails to provide the moral guidance that the modern world demands:
A society that tolerates cloning, Kass writes, "has forgotten how to shudder [and] always rationalizes away the abominable.
A society that allows cloning has, whether it knows it or not, tacitly said yes to converting procreation into manufacture and to treating our children as pure projects of our will."
Yet, contrary to the claims of his critics, Kass’s moral views do not rely solely on feelings, and he advances multiple arguments against cloning babies, all centering on his concern for children, family ties, and the dignity of human procreation. He argues that cloning constitutes an "unethical experiment upon the resulting child-to-be"; creates confusions of identity and individuality; "turns begetting into making"; and, by giving parents control over a child's genetic make-up, exacerbates the "dangerous" idea of parental control over children's lives and prospects. "One must never forget that these are human beings upon whom our eugenic or merely playful fantasies are to be enacted," he writes.
in pursuit of bodily immortality
. Kass was an early critic of the widespread use of reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization, partly because he was concerned that their use obscures truths about the essence of human life and society that are embedded in the natural reproductive process. (He later endorsed the marital use of in vitro after Louise Brown
was born in 1978.)
Kass sees human cloning as a natural progression from the decoupling of sex and procreation, begun with in vitro fertilization: "Cloning turns out to be the perfect embodiment of the ruling opinions of our new age. Thanks to the sexual revolution
, we are able to deny in practice, and increasingly in thought, the inherent procreative teleology of sexuality itself. But, if sex has no intrinsic connection to generating babies, babies need have no necessary connection to sex. . . . For that new dispensation, the clone is the ideal emblem: the ultimate 'single-parent child.'" As in his other writings, Kass emphasizes the connection of reproduction to marriage and family life: "No child conceived with the aid of assisted reproductive technologies should be denied the lineage and biological ties to two parents that all children born 'naturally' have. No child should have to say, 'An embryo was my father.'"
," and he does not derive any moral rules from nature. Rather, he sees human nature as offering, at most, intimations and "pointings" toward human flourishing and human fulfillment, but pointings in need of both cultural encouragement and cultural restraint if humans are to become the upright animal advertised in his special posture.
, especially the book of Genesis. In his 2009 Jefferson Lecture, Kass said that he found in the Bible "an account of human life that can more than hold its own with the anthropological and ethical teachings offered by the great poets and philosophers," with "teachings of righteousness, humaneness, and human dignity . . . that were undreamt of in my prior philosophizing." Kass reads the text philosophically, not theologically, in the belief that this text, thoughtfully read, has much to teach everyone—believers and non-believers alike—about the human condition and how it may be improved. His full lengthy commentary on Genesis, based on his teaching of the text over twenty years, is addressed primarily to the "children of skeptics" (such as himself). He concludes:
r by the National Endowment for the Humanities
. The Jefferson Lecture is "the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual and public achievement in the humanities." Kass's lecture, delivered at the Warner Theatre
in Washington, D.C.
on May 21, 2009. was entitled "Looking for an Honest Man: Reflections of an Unlicensed Humanist". In his lecture, he expressed the view that science has become separated from its humanistic origins and the humanities have lost their connection to metaphysical and theological concerns.
In addition to his teaching awards from the University of Chicago, Kass also received the Harvard Centennial Medal
and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
's Gerhard Niemeyer Award in 2003 and the inaugural Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
in 2004. He has been given honorary degrees by the University of Dallas
(1997), the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies
(2001), Carthage College
(2002), and Yeshiva University
(2003). Kass is a fellow of the Hastings Center
.
, criticised the President's Council on Bioethics 2008 document 'Human Dignity and Bioethics', and ridiculed Kass for the position that people should not eat ice cream cones because it undermined their 'dignity'.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, scientist
Scientist
A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
, educator, and public intellectual, best known as proponent of liberal education
Liberal education
A Liberal education is a system or course of education suitable for the cultivation of a free human being. It is based on the medieval concept of the liberal arts or, more commonly now, the liberalism of the Age of Enlightenment...
via the "Great Books
Great Books
Great Books refers primarily to a group of books that tradition, and various institutions and authorities, have regarded as constituting or best expressing the foundations of Western culture ; derivatively the term also refers to a curriculum or method of education based around a list of such books...
," as an opponent of human cloning
Human cloning
Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of a human. It does not usually refer to monozygotic multiple births nor the reproduction of human cells or tissue. The ethics of cloning is an extremely controversial issue...
and euthanasia
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
, as a critic of certain areas of technological progress and embryo
Embryo
An embryo is a multicellular diploid eukaryote in its earliest stage of development, from the time of first cell division until birth, hatching, or germination...
research, and for his controversial tenure as chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005. Although Kass is often referred to as a bioethicist, he eschews the term and refers to himself as "an old-fashioned humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
. A humanist is concerned broadly with all aspects of human life, not just the ethical."
Kass is currently the Addie Clark Harding Professor in the College
College of the University of Chicago
The College is the sole undergraduate institution and one of the oldest components of the University of Chicago, emerging contemporaneously with the university at large in 1892...
and the Committee on Social Thought
Committee on Social Thought
The Committee on Social Thought is one of several PhD-granting committees at the University of Chicago. It was started in 1941 by historian John Ulric Nef along with economist Frank Knight, anthropologist Robert Redfield, and University President Robert Maynard Hutchins.The committee is...
at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
and the Hertog
Roger Hertog
Roger Hertog is an American businessman, financier and conservative philanthropist. Born and raised in the Bronx borough of New York City, New York, Hertog pursued a career in business....
Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
. His books include Toward A More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs; The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of our Nature; Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics; and The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis.
Early life and education
Kass was born in Chicago to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He described his family as "Yiddish speaking, secular, socialist." Although his upbringing was not religious, it was moralist: "Morality, not Judaism, was the religion of our home, morality colored progressively pink with socialism, less on grounds of Marxist theory, more out of zeal for social justice and human dignity." He would not begin to explore his religious heritage until later in his careerKass enrolled in the University of Chicago at age 15, graduating from the College with a degree in biology in 1958. The College was well-known for its extensive core curriculum
Core Curriculum
The Core Curriculum was originally developed as the main curriculum used by Columbia University's Columbia College. It began in 1919 with "Contemporary Civilization," about the origins of western civilization. It became the framework for many similar educational models throughout the United States...
, and Kass studied the "great books" then prescribed by Chicago's core. "I became a devotee of liberal education . . . with a special fondness for the Greeks." He graduated from the University of Chicago's medical school in 1962 and, following an internship in medicine at the Beth Israel Hospital
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts is a major flagship teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. It was formed out of the 1996 merger of Beth Israel Hospital and New England Deaconess Hospital...
in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, completed a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in biochemistry at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1967, working in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Konrad Bloch.
In 1961, Kass married the former Amy Apfel
Amy A. Kass
Amy Apfel Kass is an American academic and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Kass spent most of her career as a professor of classic texts in the College of the University of Chicago. Her scholarly interests include courtship and marriage, civic engagement, citizenship and citizen...
, a fellow graduate of the College of the University of Chicago. As instructors in the College in later years, they would frequently teach seminars together. Their scholarly collaborations include several articles on marriage and courtship and a reader on the subject. (The Kasses have two married daughters and four granddaughters; they reside in Chicago and Washington.)
Leon and Amy Kass went to Holmes County, Mississippi
Holmes County, Mississippi
-National protected areas:*Hillside National Wildlife Refuge *Mathews Brake National Wildlife Refuge *Morgan Brake National Wildlife Refuge*Theodore Roosevelt National Wildlife Refuge -Demographics:...
, in 1965 to do civil rights
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
work. The character of the rural, poor, and uneducated African Americans with whom they lived and worked contrasted with his colleagues at Harvard and other elite universities. It was this experience, he later said, that
caused me to shed my enlightenment faith and ultimately begin a journey in which Jewish thought would ultimately come to play a more prominent part. Why, I wondered then, was there more honor, decency, and dignity among the impoverished and ignorant but church-going black farmers with whom we had lived than among my privileged and educated fellow graduate students at Harvard, whose progressive opinions I shared but whose self-absorption and self-indulgence put me off. If poverty and superstition were the cause of bad character, how to explain this?
First forays into bioethics
After completing his doctorate, Kass conducted molecular biology research for the National Institutes of HealthNational Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
, authoring several scientific papers while serving in the U.S. Public Health Service. His early interest in bioethics was stimulated by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
's Brave New World
Brave New World
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
and C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
's The Abolition of Man
The Abolition of Man
The Abolition of Man is a 1943 book by C. S. Lewis. It is subtitled "Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools," and uses that as a starting point for a defense of objective value and natural law, and a warning of the consequences of...
, both of which he read at the suggestion of Harvey Flaumenhaft
Harvey Flaumenhaft
Harvey M. Flaumenhaft is a scholar, sporadic media commentator, a Professor of political science at and a former Dean of St. John's College....
. In these books, Kass saw examples of "how the scientific project to master nature could, if we are not careful, lead to our dehumanization, via eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
, drug-induced contentment, and other transformations of human nature, possibilities already foreseeable in the new biology. . . . Will man remain a creature made in the image of God, aspiring to align himself with the divine, or will he become an artifact created by man in the image of God-knows-what, fulfilling the aspirations only of human will? . . . I soon shifted my career from doing science to thinking about its human meaning."
In 1967, Kass read an article by Joshua Lederberg
Joshua Lederberg
Joshua Lederberg ForMemRS was an American molecular biologist known for his work in microbial genetics, artificial intelligence, and the United States space program. He was just 33 years old when he won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering that bacteria can mate and...
suggesting that humans could one day be cloned
Human cloning
Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of a human. It does not usually refer to monozygotic multiple births nor the reproduction of human cells or tissue. The ethics of cloning is an extremely controversial issue...
, permitting the perpetuation of the genotype
Genotype
The genotype is the genetic makeup of a cell, an organism, or an individual usually with reference to a specific character under consideration...
s of genius
Genius
Genius is something or someone embodying exceptional intellectual ability, creativity, or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of unprecedented insight....
es. In a letter to the editor, Kass made a moral case against cloning and suggested that "the programmed reproduction of man will, in fact, dehumanize him." Thus began a second career of writing on bioethics, including essays on organ transplantation, genetic screening, in vitro fertilization, cloning, the conquest of aging, assisted suicide
Assisted suicide
Assisted suicide is the common term for actions by which an individual helps another person voluntarily bring about his or her own death. "Assistance" may mean providing one with the means to end one's own life, but may extend to other actions. It differs to euthanasia where another person ends...
, medical ethics
Medical ethics
Medical ethics is a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine. As a scholarly discipline, medical ethics encompasses its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its history, philosophy, theology, and sociology.-History:Historically,...
, and biotechnology
Biotechnology
Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...
. Kass was also involved in founding the Hastings Center
Hastings Center
The Hastings Center, founded in 1969, is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit bioethics research institute based in the United States. It is dedicated to the examination of essential questions in health care, biotechnology, and the environment...
. In 1970, he left the laboratory at NIH to become the executive director of the Committee on Life Sciences and Social Policy at the National Research Council
United States National Research Council
The National Research Council of the USA is the working arm of the United States National Academies, carrying out most of the studies done in their names.The National Academies include:* National Academy of Sciences...
of the National Academy of Science, which produced the first public document that tried to assess the ethical and social consequences of the coming advances in biotechnology.
Teaching experience
As he moved from biology to bioethics, Kass also moved from full-time research into teaching, first at St. John's CollegeSt. John's College, U.S.
St. John's College is a liberal arts college with two U.S. campuses: one in Annapolis, Maryland and one in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Founded in 1696 as a preparatory school, King William's School, the school received a collegiate charter in 1784, making it one of the oldest institutions of higher...
from 1972 to 1976, Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
from 1974 to 1976, and at Chicago from 1976 onward. At St. John's, Kass taught in the Great Books
Great Books
Great Books refers primarily to a group of books that tradition, and various institutions and authorities, have regarded as constituting or best expressing the foundations of Western culture ; derivatively the term also refers to a curriculum or method of education based around a list of such books...
program as well as in-depth studies of Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
's De Anima and Nicomachean Ethics
Nicomachean Ethics
The Nicomachean Ethics is the name normally given to Aristotle's best known work on ethics. The English version of the title derives from Greek Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια, transliterated Ethika Nikomacheia, which is sometimes also given in the genitive form as Ἠθικῶν Νικομαχείων, Ethikōn Nikomacheiōn...
and Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's On the Origin of Species. At the University of Chicago, Kass taught courses across the humanities and sciences, including both undergraduate and graduate seminars in the Nicomachean Ethics, Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
's Symposium
Symposium
In ancient Greece, the symposium was a drinking party. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara...
and Meno
Meno
Meno is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato. It attempts to determine the definition of virtue, or arete, meaning virtue in general, rather than particular virtues, such as justice or temperance. The first part of the work is written in the Socratic dialectical style and Meno is reduced to...
, Lucretius
Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is an epic philosophical poem laying out the beliefs of Epicureanism, De rerum natura, translated into English as On the Nature of Things or "On the Nature of the Universe".Virtually no details have come down concerning...
, human passions, science and society, Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
Discourse on Inequality
Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men , also commonly known as the "Second Discourse", is a work by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau...
, Genesis, Darwinism
Darwinism
Darwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....
, Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
's Discourse on the Method, classical geometry
Geometry
Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....
, Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
's War and Peace
War and Peace
War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one of the most important works of world literature...
, marriage and courtship, Exodus, and biotechnology.
Along with his wife and other colleagues, Kass cofounded in 1977 the "Human Being and Citizen" common core course at Chicago, today the most popular humanities core course at Chicago, devoted to the question of what is an excellent human being and what an excellent citizen. In 1983, he, Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
Allan David Bloom was an American philosopher, classicist, and academic. He studied under David Grene, Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon and Alexandre Kojève. He subsequently taught at Cornell University, the University of Toronto, Yale University, École Normale Supérieure of Paris, and the University...
, and James M. Redfield
James M. Redfield
James M. Redfield is the Edward Olson Distinguished Service Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago. He has made numerous contributions to current scholarship on Homer and Herodotus, probably the most notable of which is his book, Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector ,...
founded the "Fundamentals: Issues and Texts" program. Kass taught in and chaired this program for eighteen years. He won the University of Chicago's Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1983 and the Amoco
Amoco
Amoco Corporation, originally Standard Oil Company , was a global chemical and oil company, founded in 1889 around a refinery located in Whiting, Indiana, United States....
Foundation Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Teaching in 1993.
"The president's philosopher"
As the stem cell controversyStem cell controversy
The stem cell controversy is the ethical debate primarily concerning the creation, treatment, and destruction of human embryos incident to research involving embryonic stem cells. Not all stem cell research involves the creation, use, or destruction of human embryos...
brewed in the late 1990s and into 2001, President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
had to decide whether to allow federal funding for research on stem cells derived from embryo
Embryo
An embryo is a multicellular diploid eukaryote in its earliest stage of development, from the time of first cell division until birth, hatching, or germination...
s. Many scientists were advocating the removal of limits on embryonic stem cell
Embryonic stem cell
Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent stem cells derived from the inner cell mass of the blastocyst, an early-stage embryo. Human embryos reach the blastocyst stage 4–5 days post fertilization, at which time they consist of 50–150 cells...
research, but critics expressed concern about they characterized as the wanton destruction of human life. In an August 2001 speech, Bush announced that he would support funding research on stem cell lines already created--"where the life and death decision has already been made"--but not on lines created by the further destruction of embryos. And because "[e]mbryonic stem cell research is at the leading edge of a series of moral hazards," Bush said, he would create the President's Council on Bioethics, to be led by Kass and with a mandate to "monitor stem cell research, to recommend appropriate guidelines and regulations, and to consider all of the medical and ethical ramifications of biomedical innovation." As the council was appointed and prepared to begin meeting in early 2002, Kass received a great deal of media attention, especially due to his reputation for pessimism and concern about the moral implications of scientific progress with respect to health and life issues. Calling him "the president's philosopher," U.S. News and World Report noted that "he tends to dwell on the dark side of modern medicine. . . . Kass has tried to raise the public's consciousness of emerging technology's risks to values that humanity holds dear." The Council from its inception was charged by Bush to consider these larger questions, well beyond the domain of stem cell research. The first specific task of the Council, according to the executive order creating it, was "to undertake fundamental inquiry into the human and moral significance of developments in biomedical and behavioral science and technology."
The composition of the Council was also subject to controversy. Kass was accused of "stacking the deck" with philosophers, scientists, and public intellectuals likely to oppose "unfettered medical research in the area of stem cells, therapeutic cloning, and reproductive cloning. Given that fact, researchers had better worry a lot about what the Council is likely to recommend to the president." Critics also charged that Kass eliminated those who disagreed with him, such as Elizabeth Blackburn
Elizabeth Blackburn
Elizabeth Helen Blackburn, AC, FRS is an Australian-born American biological researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies the telomere, a structure at the end of chromosomes that protects the chromosome. Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the...
and William May
William May
William May , also known as William Meye, was an English clergyman and divine, who was nominated Archbishop of York in 1560 but died before election....
, and replacing them with opponents of cloning. Kass replied to these criticisms by saying that the Council was more intellectually diverse than prior bioethics commissions precisely because it included opponents of abortion. (Previous commissions had "excluded representatives of the right to life movement
Pro-life
Opposition to the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-life, or anti-abortion, movement, a social and political movement opposing elective abortion on moral grounds and supporting its legal prohibition or restriction...
.") Since Bush had deliberately created the Council to debate and clarify the issues without necessarily reaching consensus, Kass said that he welcomed disagreement within the Council: "This council is easily the most intellectually and ethically diverse of the bioethics commissions to date. We have worked with mutual respect while not papering over our differences. No one who has attended any of our meetings or read the transcripts can believe that we do anything but serious and careful work, without regard to ideology, partisan politics or religious beliefs."
The Council has been renewed by executive order every two years since 2001, and the subjects it considered ranged beyond the stem cell battles during which it was established. Kass sought throughout to develop a "richer" bioethics, attentive to larger human and philosophical questions at the root of bioethical dilemmas, and he lamented that the Council was pigeonholed: "The Council came into existence identified as the 'stem cell council,' and people on all sides of the embryo research debate seem to care more about the Council's views on this subject than about anything else. Not by our choice--and certainly not by mine--the Council was born smack in the middle of 'embryoville,' and it has never been able to leave this highly political field." Despite the public's narrow conception of its work, during Kass's chairmanship, the Council produced five book-length reports, a white paper, and a humanistic reader on ten topics generally neglected in the bioethics literature.
Kass described the Council's work as "public bioethics," rejecting previous approaches that favored government by self-appointed "experts"--scientific or bioethical—and presenting the issues in terms accessible to the broader public and its political representatives. He sought a "richer" inquiry that debates "ends as well as means," and the Council's reports addressed larger human questions, "not merely administrative or regulatory ones." He said that it presented all sides of ethical issues in order to create a more substantive moral discourse. "A proper bioethics must lead public reflection on the ways in which new biotechnologies may affect those things that matter most regarding how human lives are lived," Kass wrote. "This means beginning by reflecting upon the highest human goods and understanding the latest technological advances in this light." Eschewing much of the language and theoretical framework of academic bioethics, Kass drew on literary, philosophical, and theological sources to inform the Council's discussion. At the Council's first meeting, he led a discussion of "The Birth-Mark
The Birth-Mark
"The Birth-Mark" is a romantic short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne that examines obsession with human perfection. It was first published in the March, 1843 edition of The Pioneer...
," a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
.
Kass stepped down as chairman of the Council in October 2005 and remained a member of the Council until 2007. He returned to positions at the American Enterprise Institute and the University of Chicago.
Biotechnology and medical enhancement
While welcoming biotechnology for its therapeutic promise—to cure disease, relieve suffering, and to restore health and wholeness—Kass worries about its uses for enhancement (boosting capability beyond what is given naturally and even and altering human nature). While biotechnology offers great promise for health care, it has applications for "many other ends, good ones and bad." Biotechnology can be employed to produce "better children, superior performance, ageless bodies, and happy souls." Kass argues that biotechnology may eventually be used as a substitute for virtue, hard work, study, or love in order to "fulfill our deepest human desires," but in the end lowering the reach of those desires only to those objects that can be realized technologically . His worries about biotechnology stem from what he calls "the technological disposition," which transforms the meaning and character of human life by believing that "all aspects of life can be rationally mastered through technique."Stem cell research
Kass has been a consistent critic of embryo research, including embryonic stem cell research, because of its "exploitation" and "destruction" of nascent human life. Although he claims to be agnostic about the moral standing of an early human embryo, he worries about treating human life, at whatever stage, merely as a natural resource. "There is something deeply repugnant and fundamentally transgressive about such a utilitarian treatment of prospective human life," he writes. But because he recognized the potential of such cells for medical research, he led the President's Council on Bioethics to examine alternative avenues of obtaining pluripotent stem cells: "Pluripotent cells might be obtainable from already dead (not just unwanted or doomed but actually dead) embryos, some of whose individual cells might nonetheless still be viable; from living embryos by nondestructive biopsy; from bioengineered, embryo-like artifacts; and from reprogrammed body cells, taken from children or adults, that are induced to return to the undifferentiated state of pluripotency. . . . We should be hopeful that a technological solution to our moral dilemma might soon be found and that this divisive piece of our recent political history will soon come to an end."In 2007, in two separate studies, research teams led by James Thomson
James Thomson (cell biologist)
James Alexander Thomson is an American developmental biologist best known for deriving the first human embryonic stem cell line in 1998 and for deriving human induced pluripotent stem cells in 2007.-Thomson's research:...
and Shinya Yamanaka
Shinya Yamanaka
is a Japanese physician and adult stem cell researcher. He serves as the director of Center for iPS Cell Research and Application and a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyoto University, as a senior investigator at the UCSF-affiliated J...
created induced pluripotent stem cell
Induced pluripotent stem cell
Induced pluripotent stem cells, commonly abbreviated as iPS cells or iPSCs are a type of pluripotent stem cell artificially derived from a non-pluripotent cell, typically an adult somatic cell, by inducing a "forced" expression of specific genes....
s from adult cells, meaning that the destruction of embryos for stem cells might no longer be necessary. In 2009, the reprogramming technique was further improved, as skin cells were returned to pluripotency by the transfer of a few exogeneous genes and without the use of foreign virus
Virus
A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Viruses infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea...
es as vectors. Robert P. George
Robert P. George
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, where he lectures on constitutional interpretation, civil liberties and philosophy of law. He also serves as the director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions...
praised Kass as the driving intellectual force against embryo-killing and in favor of finding alternative methods of obtaining pluripotent stem cells: "All along, it was Dr. Kass who said that reprogramming methods would, if pursued vigorously, enable us to realize the full benefits of stem cell science while respecting human dignity."
Human cloning
Kass supports a universal ban on the cloning of humans on the grounds that cloning is an affront to morality and human dignity. In a 1997 article in The New RepublicThe New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
entitled "The Wisdom of Repugnance
Wisdom of repugnance
The wisdom of repugnance, or the yuck factor,is the belief that an intuitive negative response to some thing, idea or practice should be interpreted as evidence for the intrinsically harmful or evil character of that thing...
," Kass suggests that we should respect the revulsion most people feel about cloning human beings, just as we respect their supposed revulsion at incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
and cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
. "In crucial cases," he writes, "repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's power fully to articulate it." Kass writes that modern ethical discourse, which emphasizes autonomy, equity, and utility, fails to provide the moral guidance that the modern world demands:
Repugnance, here as elsewhere, revolts against the excesses of human willfulness, warning us not to transgress what is unspeakably profound. Indeed, in this age in which everything is held to be permissible so long as it is freely done, in which our given human nature no longer commands respect, in which our bodies are regarded as mere instruments of our autonomous rational wills, repugnance may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.
A society that tolerates cloning, Kass writes, "has forgotten how to shudder [and] always rationalizes away the abominable.
A society that allows cloning has, whether it knows it or not, tacitly said yes to converting procreation into manufacture and to treating our children as pure projects of our will."
Yet, contrary to the claims of his critics, Kass’s moral views do not rely solely on feelings, and he advances multiple arguments against cloning babies, all centering on his concern for children, family ties, and the dignity of human procreation. He argues that cloning constitutes an "unethical experiment upon the resulting child-to-be"; creates confusions of identity and individuality; "turns begetting into making"; and, by giving parents control over a child's genetic make-up, exacerbates the "dangerous" idea of parental control over children's lives and prospects. "One must never forget that these are human beings upon whom our eugenic or merely playful fantasies are to be enacted," he writes.
A concern for "the natural"
Although he appreciates that human beings are always modifying what is naturally given, Kass worries about the lack of standards for human life in a world in which human nature is treated as utterly malleable and in which the boundaries of human life are all eroded. Kass places "special value on the natural human cycle of birth, procreation and death" and views death as a "necessary and desirable end" and the human and human aspirations that are derived from it. He views human mortality as a blessing in disguise, and he has opposed deliberate efforts to increase maximum human life expectancyLife expectancy
Life expectancy is the expected number of years of life remaining at a given age. It is denoted by ex, which means the average number of subsequent years of life for someone now aged x, according to a particular mortality experience...
in pursuit of bodily immortality
Immortality
Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...
. Kass was an early critic of the widespread use of reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization, partly because he was concerned that their use obscures truths about the essence of human life and society that are embedded in the natural reproductive process. (He later endorsed the marital use of in vitro after Louise Brown
Louise Brown
Louise Joy Brown is the first person to be conceived by in vitro fertilization, or IVF.-Birth:...
was born in 1978.)
Kass sees human cloning as a natural progression from the decoupling of sex and procreation, begun with in vitro fertilization: "Cloning turns out to be the perfect embodiment of the ruling opinions of our new age. Thanks to the sexual revolution
Sexual revolution
The sexual revolution was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the 1960s into the 1980s...
, we are able to deny in practice, and increasingly in thought, the inherent procreative teleology of sexuality itself. But, if sex has no intrinsic connection to generating babies, babies need have no necessary connection to sex. . . . For that new dispensation, the clone is the ideal emblem: the ultimate 'single-parent child.'" As in his other writings, Kass emphasizes the connection of reproduction to marriage and family life: "No child conceived with the aid of assisted reproductive technologies should be denied the lineage and biological ties to two parents that all children born 'naturally' have. No child should have to say, 'An embryo was my father.'"
Philosophical studies
For much of his career, Kass's scholarship moved away from the practical issues of bioethics to issues of human nature and human good, and nearly all of his teaching at Chicago has been about these topics. Yet despite his stated interest in "the natural," Kass does not hold to any traditional teaching of "natural lawNatural law
Natural law, or the law of nature , is any system of law which is purportedly determined by nature, and thus universal. Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior. Natural law is contrasted with the positive law Natural...
," and he does not derive any moral rules from nature. Rather, he sees human nature as offering, at most, intimations and "pointings" toward human flourishing and human fulfillment, but pointings in need of both cultural encouragement and cultural restraint if humans are to become the upright animal advertised in his special posture.
Biblical studies
In addition to his studies in natural philosophy and philosophical anthropology, Kass has in recent years been teaching and writing about the Hebrew BibleHebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
, especially the book of Genesis. In his 2009 Jefferson Lecture, Kass said that he found in the Bible "an account of human life that can more than hold its own with the anthropological and ethical teachings offered by the great poets and philosophers," with "teachings of righteousness, humaneness, and human dignity . . . that were undreamt of in my prior philosophizing." Kass reads the text philosophically, not theologically, in the belief that this text, thoughtfully read, has much to teach everyone—believers and non-believers alike—about the human condition and how it may be improved. His full lengthy commentary on Genesis, based on his teaching of the text over twenty years, is addressed primarily to the "children of skeptics" (such as himself). He concludes:
Long dwelling with the book of Genesis, and ever marveling at its beauty, its profundity, and, above all, its power to illuminate and lift the soul, this exhilarated reader of Genesis stands before it on his intellectual knees, filled with awe and gratitude for a text that makes such insights possible. I dare to hope that, with my book as a companion, other wisdom-seeking readers may enjoy a similar experience.
Philosophical influences
- Aldous HuxleyAldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
- Hans JonasHans JonasHans Jonas was a German-born philosopher who was, from 1955 to 1976, Alvin Johnson Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York City.Jonas's writings were very influential in different spheres...
- Jacob KleinJacob Klein (philosopher)Jacob Klein was a German-American philosopher and interpreter of Plato.-Biography:Klein was born in Liepāja, Latvia. He studied at Berlin and Marburg, where he received his Ph.D. in 1922. A student of Nicolai Hartmann, Martin Heidegger, and Edmund Husserl, he later taught at St. John's College in...
- C. S. LewisC. S. LewisClive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
- Adolf PortmannAdolf PortmannAdolf Portmann was a zoologist.Born in Basel, Switzerland, he studied zoology at the University of Basel and worked later in Geneva, Munich, Paris and Berlin, but mainly in marine biology laboratories in France and Helgoland.In 1931 he became professor of zoology in Basel...
- Paul Ramsey
- Kurt RiezlerKurt RiezlerKurt Riezler was a German philosopher and diplomat. A top-level cabinet adviser in the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, he negotiated Germany's underwriting of Russia's October Revolution and authored the 1914 September Program which outlined German war aims during World War I...
- Erwin StrausErwin StrausErwin Straus , a phenomenologist and neurologist of European origin, helped to pioneer anthropological medicine and psychiatry, a holistic approach to medicine that is critical of mechanistic and reductionistic approaches to understanding and treating human beings...
- Leo StraussLeo StraussLeo Strauss was a political philosopher and classicist who specialized in classical political philosophy. He was born in Germany to Jewish parents and later emigrated to the United States...
Honors and awards
Kass was named the 2009 Jefferson LectureJefferson Lecture
The Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities is an honorary lecture series established in 1972 by the National Endowment for the Humanities . According to the NEH, the Lecture is "the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities."-History of...
r by the National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
. The Jefferson Lecture is "the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual and public achievement in the humanities." Kass's lecture, delivered at the Warner Theatre
Warner Theatre (Washington, D.C.)
The Warner Theatre is a theater located at 513 13th Street, N.W. in Downtown Washington, D.C.. The basement level is at 1299 Pennsylvania Avenue.-History:...
in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
on May 21, 2009. was entitled "Looking for an Honest Man: Reflections of an Unlicensed Humanist". In his lecture, he expressed the view that science has become separated from its humanistic origins and the humanities have lost their connection to metaphysical and theological concerns.
In addition to his teaching awards from the University of Chicago, Kass also received the Harvard Centennial Medal
Harvard Centennial Medal
The Harvard Centennial Medal is an honor given by the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to recipients of graduate degrees from the School for their "contributions to society."...
and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or ', is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists...
's Gerhard Niemeyer Award in 2003 and the inaugural Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Bradley Foundation
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a conservative foundation with about half a billion US dollars in assets. According to the Bradley Foundation 1998 Annual Report, it gives away more than $30 million per year...
in 2004. He has been given honorary degrees by the University of Dallas
University of Dallas
The University of Dallas is a private, independent Catholic regional university located in Irving, Texas, established in 1956, which is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. According to U.S...
(1997), the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies
Spertus Institute
Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies is a leading center for Jewish learning and culture in Chicago, Illinois. Not affiliated with any single branch of Judaism, Spertus offers opportunities for people of all backgrounds to learn about and explore the Jewish experience. Its main campus is located at...
(2001), Carthage College
Carthage College
Carthage College is a private liberal arts college affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Situated in Kenosha, Wisconsin midway between Chicago, Illinois and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the campus is on the shore of Lake Michigan and is home to 2,500 full-time and 900 part-time...
(2002), and Yeshiva University
Yeshiva University
Yeshiva University is a private university in New York City, with six campuses in New York and one in Israel. Founded in 1886, it is a research university ranked as 45th in the US among national universities by U.S. News & World Report in 2012...
(2003). Kass is a fellow of the Hastings Center
Hastings Center
The Hastings Center, founded in 1969, is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit bioethics research institute based in the United States. It is dedicated to the examination of essential questions in health care, biotechnology, and the environment...
.
Books
- Leon R. Kass. The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis. New York: Free Press, 2003. (ISBN 0-7432-4299-8)
- ———. Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002. (ISBN 1-893554-55-4)
- Amy A. Kass and Leon R. Kass, eds. Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying. South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000. (ISBN 0-268-01960-6)
- Leon R. Kass and James Q. WilsonJames Q. WilsonJames Q. Wilson is an American academic political scientist and an authority on public administration. He is a professor and senior fellow at the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College....
. The Ethics of Human Cloning. Washington: AEI Press, 1998. (ISBN 0-8447-4050-0) - Leon R. Kass. The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994. (ISBN 0-226-42568-1)
- ———. Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs. New York: Free Press, 1985. (ISBN 0-02-918340-5)
Articles and lectures
- Leon R. Kass. "Science, Religion, and the Human Future." CommentaryCommentary (magazine)Commentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...
(2007): 36-48. - Leon R. Kass and Eric Cohen. "'Cast Me Not Off in Old Age.'" Commentary (2006).
- Leon R. Kass. "Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Perfection." The New Atlantis 1 (2003): 9-28
- ———. Foreword. In Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry, report of the President's Council on Bioethics. New York: PublicAffairs, 2002. (ISBN 1-58648-176-2)
- ———. "The Wisdom of Repugnance: Why We Should Ban the Cloning of Human Beings." The New RepublicThe New RepublicThe magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
(June 2, 1997). - ———. "The End of Courtship." The Public InterestThe Public InterestThe Public Interest was a quarterly public policy journal founded by established New York intellectuals Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol in 1965. It was a leading neoconservative journal on political economy and culture, aimed at a readership of journalists, scholars, and policy makers...
126 (1997): 39-63. - ———. "Living Dangerously: Am I My (Foolish) Brother's Keeper?" Bradley Lecture, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, March 14, 1994.
- ———. "The Ethical Dimensions of In Vitro Fertilization." American Enterprise Institute, 1979.
Pinker: On Eating Ice Cream in Public
Steven Pinker, in "The Stupidity of Dignity" published in The New RepublicThe New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, criticised the President's Council on Bioethics 2008 document 'Human Dignity and Bioethics', and ridiculed Kass for the position that people should not eat ice cream cones because it undermined their 'dignity'.
Kass has a problem [...] with the modern conception of freedom. There is a "mortal danger," he [ie Kass] writes, in the notion "that a person has a right over his body, a right that allows him to do whatever he wants to do with it." He is troubled by cosmetic surgery, by gender reassignment, and by women who postpone motherhood or choose to remain single in their twenties. Sometimes his fixation on dignity takes him right off the deep end:
"Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone--a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive. ... Eating on the street--even when undertaken, say, because one is between appointments and has no other time to eat--displays [a] lack of self-control: It beckons enslavement to the belly. ... Lacking utensils for cutting and lifting to mouth, he will often be seen using his teeth for tearing off chewable portions, just like any animal. ... This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if we feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior."
The problem is that "dignity" is a squishy, subjective notion, hardly up to the heavyweight moral demands assigned to it. The bioethicist Ruth MacklinRuth MacklinRuth Macklin Philosopher and Professor of Bioethics.Ruth Macklin studied Philosophy at Cornell University then received Ph.D. in Philosophy from Case Western Reserve University. She is Professor of Bioethics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York...
[...] argued that bioethics has done just fine with the principle of personal autonomy--the idea that, because all humans have the same minimum capacity to suffer, prosper, reason, and choose, no human has the right to impinge on the life, body, or freedom of another. This is why informed consent serves as the bedrock of ethical research and practice, and it clearly rules out the kinds of abuses that led to the birth of bioethics in the first place [...] Once you recognize the principle of autonomy, Macklin argued, "dignity" adds nothing.
See also
- President's Council on Bioethics
- Brave New World argument
- Wisdom of repugnanceWisdom of repugnanceThe wisdom of repugnance, or the yuck factor,is the belief that an intuitive negative response to some thing, idea or practice should be interpreted as evidence for the intrinsically harmful or evil character of that thing...