Breeding experiments
More ethical dilemmas.
Because the school wanted a topic for English Corner during the culture week, I was reminded of the ethical dilemmas book which I was working through until I got a little bored with it. I was thinking that some dilemma might be a good topic of conversation, but I then thought better of it. But I’m now minded to resume my examination of these problems. Today, the matter of eugenics.
Socrates quizzed his friend Glaucon about how he bred his hunting dogs and birds; who used only the best ones at the right age. Glaucon agreed that if he let them breed as they pleased, the quality of the animals would deteriorate. Socrates then wonders about the same principles being applied to humans with the best being allowed to breed as often as they like, and the inferior being prevented from doing so.
I can imagine Socrates, who lived in a very xenophobic society, rather liking the whole idea of eugenics. When I did Greek at university, we read an adapted version of a prosecution called Against Neaira (by Apollodorus, although it’s also been attributed to Demosthenes). Because Neaira wasn’t an Athenian by birth, it meant that the legitimacy of her children was in question. Not only that, but Athenians couldn’t marry non-Athenians. This might not go as far as controlled breeding, but it does have inherent notions of racial purity.
While breeding animals for particular attributes may be all well and good, treating humans in the same way is grossly distasteful, especially after the crude application of Darwin’s theory of evolution (with more than a little Nietzsche thrown in for bad measure) by the Nazis and, more recently, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.
Socrates quizzed his friend Glaucon about how he bred his hunting dogs and birds; who used only the best ones at the right age. Glaucon agreed that if he let them breed as they pleased, the quality of the animals would deteriorate. Socrates then wonders about the same principles being applied to humans with the best being allowed to breed as often as they like, and the inferior being prevented from doing so.
I can imagine Socrates, who lived in a very xenophobic society, rather liking the whole idea of eugenics. When I did Greek at university, we read an adapted version of a prosecution called Against Neaira (by Apollodorus, although it’s also been attributed to Demosthenes). Because Neaira wasn’t an Athenian by birth, it meant that the legitimacy of her children was in question. Not only that, but Athenians couldn’t marry non-Athenians. This might not go as far as controlled breeding, but it does have inherent notions of racial purity.
While breeding animals for particular attributes may be all well and good, treating humans in the same way is grossly distasteful, especially after the crude application of Darwin’s theory of evolution (with more than a little Nietzsche thrown in for bad measure) by the Nazis and, more recently, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.
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