Biophilosophien

Since the 1960s, life sciences and biotechnologies have consistently become subjects of philosophical reflection. This means that, philosophical discourse relates to the development of molecular biology and genetics as well as to the technological and biomedical developments in the second half of the 20th century starting with the first organ transplantations in the 1960s, continuing with the invention of recombinant DNA technologies and reproduction technologies in the 1970s and, at the beginning of the 21st century the promises of stem cell research and of the neurosciences. However, not only ethics, in the form of bioethics, has dealt with these scientific and technological developments. In addition, philosophical strategies to address life sciences and biotechnologies have emerged in poststructuralist positions, in the analytical philosophy of mind and, in recent years, in the context of the renaissance of philosophical anthropology in the German-language academic world. The books four chapters analyse these philosophical strategies. The central question is to what extent different theoretical positions do allow gender relations to be addressed or what are the epistemic obstacles to addressing issues of gender and gender relations. From the social philosophy perspective, this proves to be the key issue in an analysis of the debates on the life sciences and biotechnologies. Because conceptualisations of science and philosophy are of central importance when it comes to the question if and in what form social relations and political-ethical articulations of science and technology can be thematised at all, the perspective of social philosophy is closely linked to an epistemological one. The four philosophical formations of bioethics, of poststructuralism, of analytical philosophy of mind, and of philosophical anthropology are thus also analysed with respect to their conceptualisations of philosophical competence. This epistemological perspective is of central importance when considering recent reconfigurations of the relationship between the sciences and the humanities. The first chapter deals with bioethical discourse that emerged in the 1960s, became institutionalised in the subsequent decades, and still proves to be the most influential philosophical strategy with regard to life sciences and biotechnologies. This chapters central interests include the thematic complexes of science and technology, of economy and rights discourse, of subjectivation, and finally of ethics and politics. The chapter focuses primarily on bioethical debates on issues that arise in the context of the biotechnological reorganisation of reproduction. The second chapter analyses poststructuralist philosophies articulations of concepts borrowed from molecular biology and genetics. The main question Page 2 of 2 is how these scientific metaphors shape semantic relations between the life sciences, philosophy and social transformations, including the transformation of gender relations in the 1960s and 1970s. The chapter examines texts from Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, as well as of Jean- François Lyotard. When the third chapter deals with the articulations of the neurosciences in philosophy of mind, the problems discussed have a different shape. The chapter is subdivided into different parts: first, a critique of naturalism as a program within philosophy of science; second, a look at the change of computational metaphors and constructions of subjectivity between the 1960s and the 1990s; and, third, an analysis of strategies of normalisation on debates on free will and determinism. Finally, the fourth chapter inquires into the renaissance of philosophical anthropology by analysing texts of four different authors. It shows that Jürgen Habermas, Ludwig Siep, Peter Sloterdijk, and Elisabeth List develop their positions within a shared horizon insofar as they refer to philosophical anthropology, despite their different philosophical backgrounds and the varied political-ethical and gender implications of their positions. The final chapter evaluates the different political-ethical and the epistemological problems explored in the previous chapters. It discusses what philosophical competence could mean in a changing order of knowledge. It concludes that a critical philosophical praxis allowing for an adequate consideration of gender relations requires a transdisciplinary reconfiguration of philosophy that not only reshapes the relations between philosophy and science but also those between philosophy, the humanities, and the social sciences