Comments on: Bloody Pragmatist

By: Stephen Gordon

Stephen Gordon — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 13:00:34 +0000

The argument may be “tiresome,” but Kass better stay in it. Otherwise he has cut out from under himself the only logical rationale for his position.

If the ethical question of “is it a baby or isn’t it” is discarded by Kass and company, all the anti-life extension guys have left is an old geezer mumbling, “why in my day we dropped dead at 45 and we were dang proud to do it!”

By: Phil Bowermaster

Phil Bowermaster — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 12:28:45 +0000

Points taken, Daniel. Presumably there’s nothing for you to be outraged about, seeing as you occupy the same “slippery slope” that I do, where one can dare to suggest that a zygote might not be exactly the same thing as a newborn.

Wow — you, me, and Leon Kass. It’s cozy on this here slope.

Mr. Kass has always been perhaps the biggest pro-Human lifer.

Um, right. He’s all for human life as long as it doesn’t change too much or last too long. What’s interesting to me is that he bases his arguments on his own personal notions of what constitutes the “dignity of humanity.” So the arguments don’t come from religion, nor would they appear to come from science, which shows the human organism changing substantially over time, and human life getting longer.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 11:37:27 +0000

Umm, Phil, I’m not so sure what it is that I’m supposed to be outraged on Kass about. That he’s separating from the ultra-conservative religious right? But I Kass’s objections have always been based on dignity of humanity and human life – not, necessarily, on a conception of god or religion. I share this sort of thought with him. I do think that cloning embryos is different from cloning babies (though, perhaps, somewhat related). And, though Virginia Posstrel may not think so, Mr. Kass has always been perhaps the biggest pro-Human lifer.