Procreative Ethics: Philosophical and Christian Approaches to Questions at the Beginning of Life

by Fritz Oehlschlaeger

Overview

Procreative Ethics addresses questions at the beginning of life from a point of view that is alternatively philosophical and Christian. The author seeks to defend philosophically some positions taken partly on Christian grounds while also trying to make the implications of Christian convictions intelligible to those who do not necessarily share those convictions. The author positions himself neither as a "moral friend" nor "moral stranger," preferring instead the role of "moral acquaintance" to his audience. From that position, the goal is to find areas of fruitful agreement while clarifying differences that may lead to truer reconciliations further on in the conversation. The book opens with an attempted natural law defense of artificial contraception; devotes four chapters to criticism of current defenses of abortion; and then takes up, in six remaining chapters, such matters as genetic enhancement of children, the justice or injustice of genetic revision, the harm conundrum or non-identity problem, designing for disability, and reproductive cloning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781630874421
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	01/01/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	380
File size:	897 KB

About the Author

Fritz Oehlschlaeger is Professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is co-author of Articulating the Elephant Man: Joseph Merrick and His Interpreters (1992) and Love and Good Reasons: Postliberal Approaches to Christian Ethics and Literature (2003).

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Can the Use of Artificial Contraception within Marriage Be Consistent with the Natural Law? 19

2 Abortion, the Sacred, and Sacrifice: Or, What's at Stake When Life has Dominion 47

3 In Defense of the "Conception Criterion" 72

4 Abortion as Letting Die, Bad Samaritanism, or Just War: Why We Should Reject the Analogies 104

5 Why David Boonin's Defense of Thomson Fails to Persuade the Abortion Critic 145

6 The Ethics of Genetic Enhancement: A Test of Pragmatism as Democratic Tradition 170

7 Why Designing the Subjects of Justice Is Likely to be Unjust 196

8 Giving Our Children Bread: Why the Harm Conundrum is Not such a Conundrum 232

9 Why Genetic Therapy May Need Something "Very Much Like the Church" 268

10 On Peter Singers Silencing in Germany: Or, What's Wrong with Asking "What's Wrong with Killing?" 299

11 Repugnance, Frankenstein, and Generational Injustice: A Consideration of Reproductive Cloning 319

Bibliography 349

Index 365

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Fritz Oehlschlaeger has written a remarkable book that needs to be read by everyone with a stake in moral questions at life's beginning. Displaying theological and philosophical sophistication as well as a profound wisdom, these arguments must be taken seriously by those who agree with Oeschlaeger as well as those who do not."
—Joel James Shuman
King's College

"Writing with a modesty that betrays the depth of argument that characterizes Procreative Ethics, Fritz Oehlschlaeger has written the most important book in bioethics in recent memory. Bioethics has long suffered from a stale imagination. Oehlschlaeger, an acknowledged outsider to the field, brings to his work a fresh imagination shaped by literary texts and a profound humanity. Hopefully many will want to emulate his work in other areas of bioethics."
—Stanley Hauerwas
Duke University

"In this new book Fritz Oehlschlaeger has made masterful and persuasive arguments about the moral challenges looming at the beginning of human life. And he does this as a highly informed non-specialist—an English professor no less!"
—Robert Benne
Roanoke College

Editorial Reviews

"Fritz Oehlschlaeger has written a remarkable book that needs to be read by everyone with a stake in moral questions at life's beginning. Displaying theological and philosophical sophistication as well as a profound wisdom, these arguments must be taken seriously by those who agree with Oeschlaeger as well as those who do not."
—Joel James Shuman
King's College

"Writing with a modesty that betrays the depth of argument that characterizes Procreative Ethics, Fritz Oehlschlaeger has written the most important book in bioethics in recent memory. Bioethics has long suffered from a stale imagination. Oehlschlaeger, an acknowledged outsider to the field, brings to his work a fresh imagination shaped by literary texts and a profound humanity. Hopefully many will want to emulate his work in other areas of bioethics."
—Stanley Hauerwas
Duke University

"In this new book Fritz Oehlschlaeger has made masterful and persuasive arguments about the moral challenges looming at the beginning of human life. And he does this as a highly informed non-specialist—an English professor no less!"
—Robert Benne
Roanoke College

From the Publisher