|
Showing 1 - 18 of
18 matches in All Departments
Writers on human dignity roughly divide between those who stress
the social origins of this concept and its role in marking rank and
hierarchy, and those who follow Kant in grounding dignity in an
abstract and idealized philosophical conception of human beings. In
these lectures, Jeremy Waldron contrives to combine attractive
features of both strands. In the first lecture, Waldron presents a
conception of dignity that preserves its ancient association with
rank and station, thus allowing him to tap rich historical
resources while avoiding what many perceive as the excessive
abstraction and dubious metaphysics of the Kantian strand. At the
same time he argues for a conception of human dignity that amounts
to a generalization of high status across all human beings, and so
attains the appealing universality of the Kantian position. The
second lecture focuses particularly on the importance of dignity -
understood in this way - as a status defining persons' relation to
law: their presentation as persons capable of self-applying the
law, capable of presenting and arguing a point of view, and capable
of responding to law's demands without brute coercion. Together the
two lectures illuminate the relation between dignity conceived as
the ground of rights and dignity conceived as the content of
rights; they also illuminate important ideas about dignity as noble
bearing and dignity as the subject of a right against degrading
treatment; and they help us understand the sense in which dignity
is better conceived as a status than as a kind of value.
Normative Subjects alludes to the fields of morality and law, as
well as to the entities, self and collectivity, addressed by these
clusters of norms. The book explores connections between the two.
The conception of self that informs this book is the joint product
of two multifaceted philosophical strands, the constructivist and
the hermeneutical. Various schools of thought view human beings as
self creating: by pursuing our goals and promoting our projects,
and so while abiding by the various norms that guide us in these
endeavors, we also determine human identity. The result is an
emphasis on a reciprocal relationship between law and morality on
the one side and the composition and boundaries of the self on the
other. In what medium does this self creation take place, and who
exactly is the "we" engaged in it? The answer suggested by the
hermeneutical tradition provides the book with its second main
theme. Like plays and novels, human beings are constituted by
meaning, and these meanings vary in their level of abstraction.
Self creation is a matter of fixing and elaborating these meanings
at different levels of abstraction: the individual, the collective,
and the universal. A key implication of this picture, explored in
the book, is a conception of human dignity as accruing to us qua
authors of the values and norms by which we define our selves
individually and collectively.
A Simpler Life approaches the developing field of synthetic biology
by focusing on the experimental and institutional lives of
practitioners in two labs at Princeton University. It highlights
the distance between hyped technoscience and the more plodding and
entrenched aspects of academic research. Talia Dan-Cohen follows
practitioners as they wrestle with experiments, attempt to publish
research findings, and navigate the ins and outs of academic
careers. Dan-Cohen foregrounds the practices and rationalities of
these pursuits that give both researchers' lives and synthetic life
their distinctive contemporary forms. Rather than draw attention to
avowed methodology, A Simpler Life investigates some of the more
subtle and tectonic practices that bring knowledge, doubt, and
technological intervention into new configurations. In so doing,
the book sheds light on the more general conditions of contemporary
academic technoscience.
|
Dark Blue (Paperback)
Dan Cohen
|
R387
R322
Discovery Miles 3 220
Save R65 (17%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
A Simpler Life approaches the developing field of synthetic biology
by focusing on the experimental and institutional lives of
practitioners in two labs at Princeton University. It highlights
the distance between hyped technoscience and the more plodding and
entrenched aspects of academic research. Talia Dan-Cohen follows
practitioners as they wrestle with experiments, attempt to publish
research findings, and navigate the ins and outs of academic
careers. Dan-Cohen foregrounds the practices and rationalities of
these pursuits that give both researchers' lives and synthetic life
their distinctive contemporary forms. Rather than draw attention to
avowed methodology, A Simpler Life investigates some of the more
subtle and tectonic practices that bring knowledge, doubt, and
technological intervention into new configurations. In so doing,
the book sheds light on the more general conditions of contemporary
academic technoscience.
Normative Subjects alludes to the fields of morality and law, as
well as to the entities, self and collectivity, addressed by these
clusters of norms. The book explores connections between the two.
The conception of self that informs this book is the joint product
of two multifaceted philosophical strands, the constructivist and
the hermeneutical. Various schools of thought view human beings as
self creating: by pursuing our goals and promoting our projects,
and so while abiding by the various norms that guide us in these
endeavors, we also determine human identity. The result is an
emphasis on a reciprocal relationship between law and morality on
the one side and the composition and boundaries of the self on the
other. In what medium does this self creation take place, and who
exactly is the "we " engaged in it? The answer suggested by the
hermeneutical tradition provides the book with its second main
theme. Like plays and novels, human beings are constituted by
meaning, and these meanings vary in their level of abstraction.
Self creation is a matter of fixing and elaborating these meanings
at different levels of abstraction: the individual, the collective,
and the universal. A key implication of this picture, explored in
the book, is a conception of human dignity as accruing to us qua
authors of the values and norms by which we define our selves
individually and collectively.
"The stresses caused by the rapid growth of biological knowledge
and capability will sorely test democratic societies in the coming
decades. A first step in coping with these strains must involve
expanding the discussion of the issues and the pace of change
beyond the tiny circle of biologists and businesspeople now
involved. Enter Rabinow and Dan-Cohen, whose investigations of
Celera Diagnostics, a company at the forefront of research in human
genetic differences, open the concepts, practices, and institutions
of this revolutionary world to broader public scrutiny. Imagine if
Tracy Kidder had written "The Soul of a New Machine" about a
genomic diagnostics company, and informed it with deep, scholarly
insight into science, business, and leadership, and you begin to
get the scope of this book."--Dr. Roger Brent, Director and
President of The Molecular Sciences Institute
"This fascinating book opens up a huge number of questions about
how social scientists, anthropologists, or science studies
practitioners write about science, scientists, technology, and
innovation. It offers some of the most sophisticated and detailed
accounts to date of the complexity, serendipity, and
unpredictability of the very kinds of scientific innovation that
are often described as being deliberately planned to serve specific
interests or normative values. It is packed with very original
data, its analytical style and argument are very provocative, and
it makes a very timely contribution to the field. I have never read
anything like it."--Sarah Franklin, author of "Embodied Progress: A
Cultural Account of Assisted Conception"
"This impressive book provides an accessible, frank,
behind-the-scenes look atwhat is really likely from the much-hyped
hope-inspiring mapping of the genome. Led by the brilliant
questioning and set pieces Rabinow and Dan-Cohen have devised, the
reader gains, on the one hand, a heartening view of collective
scientific talent, ingenuity, and cunning at work. On the other
hand, through their interviews the authors show what is really
different about this work of scientists--the talented work under
the shadow of the profit motive, risk, opportunity, markets, and
the brutality, sometimes, of the verdicts of their capitalist
patrons. All of this is ingeniously explored in this chronicle, in
an involving and engaging way. I gained much from reading it both
as an anthropologist and as a middle-aged general reader, like many
others, interested in the imminent promise of genetics for medical
care."--George Marcus, Rice University, author of "Ethnography
through Thick and Thin"
""A Machine to Make a Future" is an insightful and creative
contribution to the literature--both scholarly and journalistic--on
contemporary genomics. By 'experimenting' with narrative genre, the
authors hope to generate different insights into the world of
genomics and biotechnology than ones generally presented in
existing accounts. They succeed at that goal, providing an account
that is ethnographically rich and analytically open to a world
whose structure, implications, and outcomes are very much in the
making."--Nadia Abu El-Haj, Barnard College, author of "Facts on
the Ground"
In these writings by one of our most creative legal
philosophers, Meir Dan-Cohen explores the nature of the self and
its response to legal commands and mounts a challenge to some
prevailing tenets of legal theory and the neighboring moral,
political, and economic thought. The result is an insider's
critique of liberalism that extends contemporary liberalism's
Kantian strand, combining it with postmodernist ideas about the
contingent and socially constructed self to build a thoroughly
original perspective on some of the most vital concerns of legal
and moral theory.
Dan-Cohen looks first at the ubiquity of legal coercion and
considers its decisive impact on the nature of legal discourse and
communication, on law's normative aspirations and claim to
obedience, and on the ideal of the rule of law. He moves on to
discuss basic values, stressing the preeminence of individual
identity and human dignity over the more traditional liberal
preoccupations with preference-based choice and experiential harm.
Dan-Cohen then focuses more directly on the normative ramifications
of the socially constructed self. Fundamental concepts such as
responsibility and ownership are reinterpreted to take account of
the constitutive role that social practices--particularly law and
morality--play in the formation of the self.
Throughout, Dan-Cohen draws on a uniquely productive mix of
philosophical traditions and subjects, blending the methods of
analytic philosophy with the concerns of Continental philosophers
to reconceive the self and its relation to ethics and the law.
Writers on human dignity roughly divide between those who stress
the social origins of this concept and its role in marking rank and
hierarchy, and those who follow Kant in grounding dignity in an
abstract and idealized philosophical conception of human beings. In
these lectures, Jeremy Waldron contrives to combine attractive
features of both strands. In the first lecture, Waldron presents a
conception of dignity that preserves its ancient association with
rank and station, thus allowing him to tap rich historical
resources while avoiding what many perceive as the excessive
abstraction and dubious metaphysics of the Kantian strand. At the
same time he argues for a conception of human dignity that amounts
to a generalization of high status across all human beings, and so
attains the appealing universality of the Kantian position. The
second lecture focuses particularly on the importance of dignity -
understood in this way - as a status defining persons' relation to
law: their presentation as persons capable of self-applying the
law, capable of presenting and arguing a point of view, and capable
of responding to law's demands without brute coercion. Together the
two lectures illuminate the relation between dignity conceived as
the ground of rights and dignity conceived as the content of
rights; they also illuminate important ideas about dignity as noble
bearing and dignity as the subject of a right against degrading
treatment; and they help us understand the sense in which dignity
is better conceived as a status than as a kind of value.
|
|