Rethinking "Liberal Eugenics": Reflections and Questions on Habermas on Bioethics (Jurgen Habermas‪)‬

Eugenics, euthanasia, and selection: these are terms that, in Germany, are bound together with awful memories," the German President Johannes Rau observed in a speech in 2001. "They thus provoke--and rightly so--emotional resistance." (1) The story of how "emotional resistance" to the notion of euthanasia for severely disabled newborn infants led to the "silencing" of Peter Singer while he was in Germany in 1989 is well known. (2) More recently, human embryonic stem cell research, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), and the prospect of prenatal genetic "engineering" or enhancement have provoked similarly strong reactions. (3) In the words of two German commentators, for many Germans both old and young, "the fact that almost the entire population passively tolerated the Nazis' mass crimes is taken as sufficient warning against any relativization whatsoever of the sanctity of human life." (4) Yet there has lately arisen what one commentator called "a revolt in the intellectual world against the 'political correctness' that prevails in Germany's treatment of the Nazi past." (5) According to the dissenters, "A deeply rooted fear of a loss of societal values--a very German argument--leads to hasty and premature legal prohibitions," among which is adduced the 1990 Law for the Protection of Human Embryos. (6) President Rau speaks for those wary of biotechnological advances: "The experience that we had with National Socialism, in particular with research and science in the Third Reich, must play an important role for ethical judgment--and not only among us [Germans]." (7) The dissenters hold, by contrast, that "[t]he declining Weimar Republic and the National Socialist regime differed in many relevant regards from Germany's current democracy." (8) From this point of view, Germans have much to learn from liberal-minded Anglo-American bioethical discourse, rather than Anglo-Americans and others much to learn from Germany's history.