Re-Enchanting Biomedicine
James Mumford, DPhil, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia
At the beginning of his bestselling book, Far From The Tree, Andrew Solomon writes, “When two people decide to have a baby, they engage in an act of production.” In the obstetrics and gynecology chapter of a standard medical textbook the typical nomenclature used for the fetus is the “product of conception.” College courses are titled “reproductive ethics” and fertility clinics “centers for reproductive medicine.” You and I speak of “making babies.”
This displacement of the language of “pro-creation” (derived from the Latin “bring-forth”) attests to a paradigm-shift in the way late moderns have come to conceive of conception. In this paper I draw upon Max Weber’s analysis of disenchantment to make sense of (i) this paradigm-shift and (ii) the concomitant plausibility structure it now provides for human action. Finally (iii) I propose phenomenology as a method of inquiry capable of re-enchanting the world.
(i) I argue that the encroachment of instrumental reason into the familiar and medical spheres alienates the subject, whether she be a doctor or biological engineer from that phenomenon to which she stands in a relation of unique intimacy and power. The pre-modern, traditional enchanted picture of a teleological, purposive natural order is supplanted by one that mechanizes the event – the way new members of our race come forth in the world – into a “process.” Lost is the sacred sense of human offspring as the fruit of lovers’ union; as a free gift which yet fulfills the yearning of man and woman for immortality; as the third which arises when the first and second become one flesh. Any resonance these conceptions have can be dismissed, albeit ruefully, as the lingering of the mythic.
(ii) A disenchanted world is one in which the subject is emancipated, since any constraints on action derived from “the way of things” have dissolved. In the second part of my paper I explore the projects individuals and institutions are liberated to undertake once nature is seen as raw material. For example, the fetus diagnosed with a chromosomal abnormality is a defective product, and inherent in the logic of commodification is that of disposability and dispensability. While on the other side, when it comes to perfecting the design of the human, if the only rationality we possess is an instrumental one there is no scientific "advance" which could in principle be refused.
(iii) It could be argued, however, that it is the mechanization picture delivered by disenchantment which falsifies. For the ancient “begetting” does more justice to the phenomenon in view than reproduction. We do not in fact make our children from foreign materials. They are not the product of our will but share in our substance. I conclude the paper by arguing that phenomenology may be one route to restoring the wonder of the world but under the conditions of modernity.
At the beginning of his bestselling book, Far From The Tree, Andrew Solomon writes, “When two people decide to have a baby, they engage in an act of production.” In the obstetrics and gynecology chapter of a standard medical textbook the typical nomenclature used for the fetus is the “product of conception.” College courses are titled “reproductive ethics” and fertility clinics “centers for reproductive medicine.” You and I speak of “making babies.”
This displacement of the language of “pro-creation” (derived from the Latin “bring-forth”) attests to a paradigm-shift in the way late moderns have come to conceive of conception. In this paper I draw upon Max Weber’s analysis of disenchantment to make sense of (i) this paradigm-shift and (ii) the concomitant plausibility structure it now provides for human action. Finally (iii) I propose phenomenology as a method of inquiry capable of re-enchanting the world.
(i) I argue that the encroachment of instrumental reason into the familiar and medical spheres alienates the subject, whether she be a doctor or biological engineer from that phenomenon to which she stands in a relation of unique intimacy and power. The pre-modern, traditional enchanted picture of a teleological, purposive natural order is supplanted by one that mechanizes the event – the way new members of our race come forth in the world – into a “process.” Lost is the sacred sense of human offspring as the fruit of lovers’ union; as a free gift which yet fulfills the yearning of man and woman for immortality; as the third which arises when the first and second become one flesh. Any resonance these conceptions have can be dismissed, albeit ruefully, as the lingering of the mythic.
(ii) A disenchanted world is one in which the subject is emancipated, since any constraints on action derived from “the way of things” have dissolved. In the second part of my paper I explore the projects individuals and institutions are liberated to undertake once nature is seen as raw material. For example, the fetus diagnosed with a chromosomal abnormality is a defective product, and inherent in the logic of commodification is that of disposability and dispensability. While on the other side, when it comes to perfecting the design of the human, if the only rationality we possess is an instrumental one there is no scientific "advance" which could in principle be refused.
(iii) It could be argued, however, that it is the mechanization picture delivered by disenchantment which falsifies. For the ancient “begetting” does more justice to the phenomenon in view than reproduction. We do not in fact make our children from foreign materials. They are not the product of our will but share in our substance. I conclude the paper by arguing that phenomenology may be one route to restoring the wonder of the world but under the conditions of modernity.