Leon Kass

Leon Kass (born February 12 1939) is an American bioethicist, best known as a leader in the effort to stop human embryonic stem cell and cloning research as former chair of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2002–2005. [ [http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jun/06061310.html AEI Interview With Bush's Bioethics Council Head Leon Kass ] ]

Critics charge that Kass stacked the Council with anti-abortionists and opponents of stem cell research, and eliminated those who disagreed with him, such as Elizabeth Blackburn. [ [http://www.slate.com/id/2096848/ Leon Kass, You Silly Ass!Please stop denying you tilted the bioethics panel.] By Timothy Noah, Slate, March 8, 2004]

Kass obtained S.B. and M.D. degrees (1958; 1962) at the University of Chicago and obtained a Ph.D. in biochemistry (1967) at Harvard University [ [http://www.bioethics.gov/about/kass.html The President's Council on Bioethics: Leon R. Kass, M.D. Chair ] ] . He then taught at St. John's College from 1972 to 1976 [ [http://www.redorbit.com/news/education/934748/graduates_take_pride_in_their_difference_st_johns_celebrates_215th/index.html Graduates Take Pride in Their Difference: St. John's Celebrates 215th Commencement - Education - RedOrbit ] ] .He currently retains a position as a member of the President's Council and is the Addie Clark Harding Professor in the College and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, and is the author of several books, including "Toward A More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs"; "The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of our Nature"; "Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics"; and "The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis."

Early life

Leon Kass was the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Kass described his family as a "Yiddish speaking, secular, socialist family". According to Kass, he participated in protests against the Vietnam War when he was a student at Harvard. [ [http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_kass.html NOW with Bill Moyers. Transcript. Bill Moyers Talks with Leon Kass. 7.25.03 | PBS ] ]

Bioethics views

Kass places "special value on the natural human cycle of birth, procreation and death", and views death as a "necessary and desirable end". As such, he has opposed most kinds of interference in the reproductive process—including birth control—as well as all deliberate efforts to increase human longevity. [cite journal|author=Wade, Nicholas|title=SCIENTIST AT WORK/Leon R. Kass; Moralist of Science Ponders Its Power|journal=The New York Times|date=March 19, 2002]

Kass criticizes the widespread use of reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization, on the basis that the use of such technology obscures truths about the essence of human life and society that are embedded in the natural reproductive process. He claims that a clouded societal understanding of these principles leads to the acceptance of ethically questionable practices such as reproductive cloning. Kass suggests that it might be necessary to forgo possible medical therapies and disease treatments if the technology they require would also be used in reproductive cloning. [ [http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/10.27/01-kass.html Harvard Gazette: Ethics of stem cell research front and center ] ]

Kass also vigorously opposes the expanding fields of therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cell research. [ [http://www.reason.com/rb/rb012302.shtml Reason Magazine - Tallying the New Bioethics Council ] ]

As stated, Kass finds wisdom in the Book of Genesis. For example, he has more than once given a lecture on the Tower of Babel story, in which he argues that the "sky-scraping tower" has to fall because it implies a secular form of society. Kass makes the claim that reason or science cannot provide "moral and political standards sufficient for governing civic life and of guiding the proper use of power and technique." See the related Argument from morality. Kass interprets the story as a metaphor, however. All of this informs his views on bioethics, according to the quoted version of the lecture. Elsewhere Kass expresses a strong faith that the potential of biological science is limited and will never provide answers to certain questions.

Views on women and sexual morality

Kass begins his essay "The End of Courtship" by asserting that the left and right in America have started to produce a consensus on some issues of sexual morality, coming to view "the break-up of marriage as a leading cause of the neglect, indeed, of the psychic and moral maiming, of America's children." The rest of the essay concerns what he sees as obstacles to lasting marriage, including feminism. Kass treats modesty in women as a very important element of sexual morality. "The supreme virtue of the virtuous woman was modesty, a form of sexual self-control, manifested not only in chastity but in decorous dress and manner, speech and deed, and in reticence in the display of her well-banked affections." Kass argues that when women behave with modesty, they are better able to achieve their own "genuine longings and best interests," and that female modesty also helps men to control lustful desires in favor of love and "real intimacy."

In the same essay Kass attacks the use of birth control technology, and states that any woman's destiny is motherhood. The author expresses strong doubt that "courtship" can ever return, since this "would appear to require a revolution". He says that the social changes stem from the nature of modernity, and from the biological nature of men. But he bemoans the changes because he sees marriage and procreation as central to the good life for the vast majority -- perhaps for all of humanity. The essay contains one explicit reference to homosexuality, as one of the "sexual abominations of Leviticus—incest, homosexuality, and bestiality". A footnote also mentions aging bachelors and their "self-indulgent" ways.

Philosophical influences

* Leo Strauss [cite journal | title=Leon Kass, philosopher-politician | author=Lexington | journal=The Economist | date=August 16, 2001 | url=http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=739590]

* Hans Jonas [cite journal | author=Mooney, Chris | authorlink=Chris Mooney | url=http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/17/mooney-c.html | title=Irrationalist in Chief | journal=The American Prospect | date=September 24, 2001 | format=dead link|date=June 2008 – ^{[http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=intitle%3AIrrationalist+in+Chief&as_publication=The+American+Prospect&as_ylo=September 24, 2001&as_yhi=September 24, 2001&btnG=Search Scholar search]} ]

Quotations

Quotation|Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone --a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive.I fear I may by this remark lose the sympathy of many reader, people who will condescendingly regard as quaint or even priggish the view that eating in the street is for dogs. Modern America's rising tide of informality has already washed out many long-standing traditions -- their reasons long before forgotten -- that served well to regulate the boundary between public and private; and in many quarters complete shamelessness is treated as proof of genuine liberation from the allegedly arbitrary constraints of manners. To cite one small example: yawning with uncovered mouth. Not just the uneducated rustic but children of the cultural elite are now regularly seen yawning openly in public (not so much brazenly or forgetfully as indifferently and "naturally"), unaware that it is an embarrassment to human self-command to be caught in the grip of involuntary bodily movements (like sneezing, belching, and hiccuping and even the involuntary bodily display of embarrassment itself, blushing). But eating on the street -- even when undertaken, say, because one is between appointments and has no other time to eat -- displays in fact precisely such lack of self-control: It beckons enslavement to the belly. Hunger must be sated now; it cannot wait. Though the walking street eater still moves in the direction of his vision, he shows himself as a being led by his appetites. Lacking utensils for cutting and lifting to mouth, he will often be seen using his teeth for tearing off chewable portions, just like any animal. Eating on the run does not even allow the human way of enjoying one's food, for it is more like simple fueling; it is hard to savor or even to know what one is eating when the main point is to hurriedly fill the belly, now running on empty. This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if WE feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior.|Leon Kass|The Hungry Soul, pp. 148-149. University of Chicago Press, 1994, 1999, [http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2003_07.html#000019]

ee also

*"Brave New World" argument
*Biopolitics
*Wisdom of repugnance

References

http://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory/History/Speeches/Princeton-University-Podcasts/22325