Democraţia şi designul moral al cetăţenilor. Cerinţele dreptăţii sociale şi limitele bioameliorării morale
Democracy and the Moral Design of Citizens. The Requirements of Social Justice and the Limits of Moral Bioenhancement

Summary/Abstract: Within the contemporary philosophical debate regarding human biomedical enhancement, one of the main objections against enhancement is based upon the hypothesis that there is a high probability that it could lead to social and political injustice. Within this paper, I address the compatibility of the biomedical enhancement with the axiological system assumed by Western societies. The assessment of the above mentioned compatibility starts from the premise that values such as individual freedom,social justice, equality of chances, and plurality, which represent the milestones of any democratic society, could be endangered by procedures and/or technologies of biomedical (moral) enhancement of the persons. By thoroughly describing the way in which these values are to be affected by the humans’ accessibility to biomedical enhancement means, I try to emphasize the social risks of creating what bioethical scholarship today calls “post-persons”, i.e., persons with a much higher moral status than that of normal moral personhood. Therefore, a first aim of this paper is to examine the arguments for and against biomedical moral enhancement of persons, from an individual as well as from a social perspective. The second aim of this work is to critically analyze the possible emergence of a higher moral status than that acknowledged, throughout the history of the Western moral philosophy, as moral personhood. The third aim of this paper consists in assessing the arguments which are raised against creating post-persons. These counter-arguments defend the thesis that even though mankind could either employ the existing technologies that enhance human capacities such as cognitive or moral capacities or it would just develop new technologies for the purpose of enhancing certain human traits, the cautious decision would be to call off any use of such technologies that could lead, either directly or indirectly, to the creation of “post-persons”.Within the contemporary philosophical debate regarding human biomedical enhancement, one of the main objections against enhancement is based upon the hypothesis that there is a high probability that it could lead to social and political injustice. Within this paper, I address the compatibility of the biomedical enhancement with the axiological system assumed by Western societies. The assessment of the above mentioned compatibility starts from the premise that values such as individual freedom, social justice, equality of chances, and plurality, which represent the milestones of any democratic society, could be endangered by procedures and/or technologies of biomedical (moral) enhancement of the persons. By thoroughly describing the way in which these values are to be affected by the humans’ accessibility to biomedical enhancement means, I try to emphasize the social risks of creating what bioethical scholarship today calls “post-persons”, i.e., persons with a much higher moral status than that of normal moral personhood. Therefore, a first aim of this paper is to examine the arguments for and against biomedical moral enhancement of persons, from an individual as well as from a social perspective. The second aim of this work is to critically analyze the possible emergence of a higher moral status than that acknowledged, throughout the history of the Western moral philosophy, as moral personhood. The third aim of this paper consists in assessing the arguments which are raised against creating post-persons. These counter-arguments defend the thesis that even though mankind could either employ the existing technologies that enhance human capacities such as cognitive or moral capacities or it would just develop new technologies for the purpose of enhancing certain human traits, the cautious decision would be to call off any use of such technologies that could lead, either directly or indirectly, to the creation of “post-persons”.

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