Redesigning Life

Nathan Van Camp is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He focuses on continental philosophy, political theory, biopolitics, and critical theory

The emerging development of genetic enhancement technologies has recently become the focus of a public and philosophical debate between proponents and opponents of a liberal eugenics - that is, the use of these technologies without any overall direction or governmental control. Inspired by Foucault's, Agamben's and Esposito's writings about biopower and biopolitics, the author sees both positions as equally problematic, as both presuppose the existence of a stable, autonomous subject capable of making decisions concerning the future of human nature, while in the age of genetic technology the nature of this subjectivity shall be less an origin than an effect of such decisions. Bringing together a biopolitical critique of the way this controversial issue has been dealt with in liberal moral and political philosophy with a philosophical analysis of the nature of and the relation between life, politics, and technology, the author sets out to outline the contours of a more responsible engagement with genetic technologies based on the idea that technology is an intrinsic condition of humanity.

This book brings together a philosophical analysis of life, politics, and technology with a biopolitical critique of the way genetic enhancement technologies have been dealt with in liberal moral and political philosophy. Inspired by the work of Heidegger, Arendt, and Stiegler, the author outlines a responsible biopolitics of genetic technologies.

Contents: Meta-analysis of the liberal eugenics debate - Giorgio Agamben's and Roberto Esposito's appropriation of Michel Foucault's theory of biopolitics - The constitutive role of biotechnology in Martin Heidegger's philosophy of technology - New interpretation of Hannah Arendt's concept of natality as referring to the radical co-implication of biological birth and politico-linguistic birth - Bernard Stiegler's theory of the co-constitutive relationship between the human and technology and its implications for the liberal eugenics debate.