Extending a Life with Meaning

This essay questions Callahan’s criticism of people’s aspiration to extend their life. It argues that ideas about life are subject to historical variations and the question at issue is whether society can give meaning to aging. It also questions the claim that the radical extension of human life will jeopardize the welfare of future generations. It suggests that the application of the precautionary principle to the question of aging avoid facing up to question how society should value the old.

Can We Have a Public Bioethic?

This essay examines the viability of a publically held, articulated, and enacted bioethic in America's democratic regime. The essay takes the writings of several thinkers associated with the President's Council on Bioethics as its point of departure. The essay draws attention to some of the enduring moral, political, religious, and intellectual currents inherent in American civil society that will continue to provide both resources for and obstacles to any publicly held bioethic in America.

Wie lässt sich Demokratie am besten messen? Zum Forumsbeitrag von Thomas Müller und Susanne Pickel

Ohne Zusammenfassung * Die vier Autor(inn)en arbeiten in einem gemeinsamen Forschungsprojekt des NCCR Democracy (vom Schweizerischen Nationalfonds finanziertes National Centre of Competence in Research: Challenges to Democracy in the 21^st Century) und des WZB an einem „Demokratiebarometer“ für die 30 OECD-Staaten, das die Ignoranz der 0-Varianz bei Polity und Freedom House aufkl?ren will.

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Antwort auf die Replik von Marc Bühlmann,Wolfgang Merkel,Lisa Müller und Bernhard Weßels zum Forumsbeitrag von Thomas Müller und Susanne Pickel

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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A Plague on Both Your Houses

In response to Eugene Goodheart’s essay “Neo-Darwinism and Religion”, this essay criticizes both sides of the debate for their posing of false dichotomies. Atheist neodarwinists are illogical in arguing that the necessary chance emergence of physical constants that could produce a universe with intelligent life disproves the existence of God, since the same chance emergence would also necessarily produce a universe corresponding to traditional definitions of God. Religious anti-evolutionists are wrong in rejecting evolutionary accounts of the emergence of human religious instincts, since that emergence is a strong argument for the reality of what those instincts seem designed to register. Finally, Goodheart, as a humanities scholar, is somewhat blind to the distinguished history of writers, artists and scholars who found the highest spiritual inspiration in natural science.

Immigration Benefits America

David Stoll suggests that because contemporary immigrants are non-European, uneducated, poor, and uninterested in joining the moral community of American society, their presence threatens national unity, obscures citizens’ obligations to one another and will shortly change the US into a minority–majority society. Drawing from historical accounts and statistical evidence, this article asserts that immigrants provide American society with social, economic and demographic benefits. Moreover, while pundits have long predicted that immigrants with national origins distinct from those of natives will transform American life to its detriment, the record reveals the US has been able to incorporate diverse nationalities to the benefit of immigrants and the native-born alike.

Socialist Heroes in East German Schoolbooks

Based on examples of socialist heroes from East German schoolbooks and teaching guides designed for elementary school, this essay examines the role of state ideology in primary education. It assesses the German curriculum of the now-defunct German Democratic Republic (GDR) and illuminates distinctions between civic education and political propaganda. It also shows how the curricular emphasis on socialist virtue helped to form “the socialist personality.”

The Weakness of Our Political Parties

Whatever else the 2008 presidential election may result in, we can be sure that it will only contribute further to the steadily declining role of political parties in American politics, and the myriad negative consequences arising from that decline.

Tourism in Society

This essay starts with a discussion of the scope of tourism as a major force in our contemporary global consumer culture. It also contains information on the development of tourism education in universities and problems students studying tourism often face in the workplace. The main function of the essay is to introduce the articles I have solicited from a number of tourism scholars, which reflect various disciplinary approaches to tourism. They deal with the following topics: sociological studies of tourism and modernism, questions about postmodernism and the role of authenticity in tourism, a historical perspective on the growth of the cruise industry, a case study investigating the role of advertising in tourism and an analysis of the functions of stereotypes in tourism. It is hoped that these essays will induce scholars not working in the area to consider investigating tourism in future research.

Lost in Translation

Conservative, and particularly religious opponents of enhancement technologies and of prolonging life indefinitely face formidable challenges from policymakers who are largely liberated from any forms of Christian moral consensus. This is the predicament of Daniel Callahan and others who are unable to translate their inescapably religious objections in secular terms.

The 2008 Election

The 2008 presidential election will be significant both for domestic and for foreign policy. Issues of security in domestic policy will continue to trump issues of freedom. The difficulties of resolving our military presence in Iraq will be the first among many important issues the new administration must confront. In both domestic and foreign affairs the new administration will have to deal with the unanticipated consequences of inherited policies even as it creates its own agenda and its own set of unintended consequences.

Stuck with Virtue in Our Pro-Life Future

Callahan is wrong to be pro-death, but he’s right to say that to live well—or for society to have a real future—we have to care about more than mere life. Futile attempts to stop the pursuit of extreme personal prolongevity are contrary to our rights-based way of life. It’s also contrary to human love and dignity to regard the old as a threat.

The Need for Death

‘Social precognition’ is the forerunner of new developments in science and technology such as extended life or immortality. While life-extension may have been neglected by philosophers or social scientists, it has been explored in depth by creative writers. They underline the threat of new kinds of inequality and of the conservatism of a society that protects the interests of the long-lived. They also question the quality of a longer life as likely to be lonely and empty rather than wise, peaceful and fulfilled.

Close But Not Close Enough

The authors comment on an earlier aritice in Society by Eugene Goodheart and offer a novel hypothesis about the origins of religion.

Drastic Plastic and the Global Electronic Economy

This article considers the rise of cosmetic surgical culture against the backdrop of recent explanations that foreground celebrity culture and the consumer industries. By contrast to these mainstream accounts, the article contends that surgical culture has become increasingly interwoven with major institutional changes of the global electronic economy. Personal vulnerabilities in the workplace and wider new economy are explored in the context of people seeking to reinvent themselves and improve their life prospects through cosmetic surgery.

Cohabitation,Marriage, and Child Wellbeing: A Cross-National Perspective

Non-marital cohabitation has become widespread in modern, Western nations. It has led to dramatic declines in marriage rates and contributed to high levels of unwed births and lone-parent families, thus negatively affecting child wellbeing.

Returning to a Sane Foreign Policy

The next president of the USA will surely correct some of the Bush administration’s most egregious policy errors, particularly its gross insensitivity to the rest of the world’s opinions and its extreme bellicosity. To restore trust in American, and to strengthen national security, better diplomacy will be necessary. Strengthening a demoralized and nearly dysfunctional State Department by acknowledging the vital role foreign area experts must play will have to be a major part of the new administration’s policy.

The “L-Word,” or Turning Fifty

This meditative essay by a writer and professor reflects on the milestone of reaching 50 years of age. The author relates his own experiences and those of his elder literary friends and colleagues who have felt comparable anxieties and coped with similar challenges toward aging and death. He records their own milestones on life’s journey as well as their insightful and often quite hopeful, if not always cheery, responses. Several of them, like the author, admit that turning 50 has entailed for them a coming to terms with the impossibility of realizing some immortality projects.

The Prison Boom and the Decline of American Citizenship

The US imprisonment rate increased fivefold in the three decades from 1975 to 2005. Growth in the scale of criminal punishment was linked partly to a more punitive politics that repudiated the goal of rehabilitation, and partly to the collapse of economic opportunity for young unskilled men in inner cities. The growth of the penal system produced extraordinary rates of incarceration among recent cohorts of young black men with little schooling. We can understand the growth of incarceration to produce and erosion of citizenship among young black men, weakening the web of mutual obligation that defines full membership in American society.

Faith and Development

A consensus now exists that secularization theory can no longer explain the worldwide persistence and spread of modern religious movements, with the exception of western and central Europe as well as intellectuals in general. This essay examines how these new religious forces have taken root in economic development and how that development has been shaped by those same forces. An assessment is made of Max Weber’s famous thesis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The article concludes with five major observations about religion and development in the modern world.