Ethically Thin, Science Unltd.: The Shape of Progressive Bioethics

By Evan Rosa, CBC Communications Director

Reviewed: Progress in Bioethics: Science, Policy and Politics, Jonathan D. Moreno and Sam Berger, eds., The MIT Press, 2010

“The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.” (G.K. Chesterton, Fancies Versus Fads)

Political science, for Aristotle and other ancients, was considered the surest path toward human flourishing for communities of individuals. Progress in Bioethics exemplifies a few ways that we’ve wandered from the ideal of seeking a robust and thick moral account of how to share public life. Interacting with each of the contributors would be worthwhile, and as with any edited volume, the whole does not necessarily represent the parts. Here, I comment more generally, and I offer three worries that reveal what is, at bottom, a lack of philosophical precision and political virtue.

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