Sequence 3 parts 2010–2011
Procreation
What do we owe the children we might have? I take up procreative rights and cloning, then test my own antinatalist leanings against Arendt’s natality.
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Thinking about Procreative Rights and Duties
We are commonly understood to have a right to procreate. For instance, it is a clear violation of that right to coercively sterilize those judged unfit . However, there is some question whether this right includes the right to assistive reproductive technologies, and whether it is defeasible in any circumstances, i.e. whether we have a…
Cloning isn’t about Genetic Identity: More on Procreation
Ever since I wrote negatively about the justice of procreation , I’ve been hoping that someone would come along and take the positive position. It’s the kind of argument about which one doesn’t quite want to be right. Sadly, there’ve been no takers. However, there’s recently been a spate of discussions on a more narrow…
Arendtian Natality, Caplan, and Antinatalism
Because of my work on Hannah Arendt, I often struggle with the apparent incongruity between her account of natality and my own tendency towards antinatalism . Natality is at the heart of Arendt’s project, a rejection of the Heideggerian obsession with mortality and being-towards-death: “It is in the nature of beginning that something new is…