Someone said “Leon Kass” and the Bush Administration flashed before my eyes. Looks like he’s back…
…once he got back to Harvard, however, Kass began to think that his progressive, well-educated friends were vain and self-absorbed compared to the farmers he and his wife had lived with in Mississippi. This raised a troubling question: What if scientific and cultural progress had no relation to moral virtue? (…)
Beneath all of his writings lies a deep skepticism toward modern science. He frequently refers to technological advances as “mixed blessings”—but often it is clear he does not view them as blessings at all. He is not against science as such; he praises it for putting “men on the moon, lights on the ceiling, and pacemakers in our hearts.” But more often his focus is on what scientific rationalism leaves out, notably the kinds of spiritual, moral and political judgments that might cause us to reconsider the power we grant science over human affairs. When science is our only authority, Kass says, “we triumph over nature’s unpredictability only to subject ourselves, tragically, to the still greater unpredictability of our capricious will and our fickle opinions.”
