Enhancements How and Why to Become Better, How and Why to Become Good

Rakić, Vojin (2017) Enhancements How and Why to Become Better, How and Why to Become Good. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 26 (3). pp. 358-363. ISSN 0963-1801 eISSN 1469-2147

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Abstract

Enhancement is not a novel idea in the history of human thought. Icarus is reported to have wished to become more powerful than God planned humans to be, and Goethe`s Faustus went even so far as to conspire with Satan in order to obtain the wisdom God did not envision for humans. Both Icarus and Faustus paid a high price for their ambition: death in the case of Icarus and disappointment in what Satan was able to offer, madness, and self-annulment in the case of Faustus. Should we fear that human enhancement will condemn us to the same fate as Icarus and Faustus? And if we have reasons to fear, might moral enhancement be a solution?

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