grounded in the idea that neither God's will nor human flourishing alone can provide ..... by C.A.J. Cody whose article on 'Playing God' suggests that those who ...
Book Reviews
Nils HOPPE. Bioequity – Property and the Human Body. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. 177 pp. Suppose that while you are cutting your fingernails, someone passes, takes a nail fragment you have just clipped and runs away with it. You go to the police and say that you have been the victim of theft. What would the reaction of the police be when you tell them that a part of one of your nails has been stolen? They would probably check the alcohol level in your blood or call the nearest psychiatric hospital to ask if they are missing one of their patients. While a scenario like this is hardly likely to happen in real life, similar scenarios have become a part of our contemporary reality. Certain parts of the human body – notably organs, but also tissue – have become objects that can sometimes yield considerable financial profit, and even if we leave out the purely economic aspect, everybody knows that there is a demand for human tissue or human cells in research. Now what if the blood that is taken from you in a routine blood test is used by a laboratory after it has made the tests it had to make? Suppose that the laboratory discovers that your blood has a certain healing property and suppose that the gene responsible for this property can be isolated and used for the production of a medicine? Does the laboratory have a right to use your blood in such a way? Should you be included in the financial profits generated by the sale of the new medicine? All these questions point to a more fundamental question: In what sense can you be said to be the owner of your own body parts, your tissues, your cells, your body fluids or your genetic make-up? Nils Hoppe (University of Hannover, Germany) deals with this question in his latest book. One of his basic starting points is that the law has not kept pace with recent developments in biomedicine, with the consequence that the “human body has become a priceless resource of material” (132). This leads to rather paradoxical situations. The principle of non-commercialisation of body-parts makes it legally impossible for me to sell biological material stemming from my body, but this principle does not prevent someone from using this biological material – obtained in the context of a routine examination procedure – in whatever way he or she likes and especially to use it to make huge profits. And the existing legislation does not permit me to claim at least a part of these profits as legally due to me insofar as the material used stems from my body. In other words, the law does not permit me to exploit myself, as some would say, by ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES 17, no. 2(2010): 343-359. © 2010 by European Centre for Ethics, K.U.Leuven. All rights reserved.
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selling my biological material, but it allows other people to exploit me in a certain sense. Hoppe’s primary aim is to argue for a change in the law, so that situations like that of the famous Moore case, in which scientists used tissue belonging to a certain Mr Moore and made huge financial profits, can be rendered impossible. Hoppe’s book is subdivided into three parts and thirteen chapters. The first part presents us with the background of the debate and introduces an analytical matrix that will serve the author in the remainder of the book. For Hoppe, it is important to make distinctions: taking tissue from a non-consenting adult for dishonest purposes and by invasive means is not the same as taking tissue from a child for honest purposes and by non-invasive means. The matrix allows us to categorize different categories of tissue prehension and retention. Yet as the author also notes, we should not expect it to provide an algorithmic answer to the question of whether a specific act is morally permissible or not. The second part of the book presents different legal approaches to the question of a human being’s ownership of his or her biological material. The gist of Hoppe’s presentation is that the existing models may sometimes lead to unfair results – see Moore case or Alder Hey case (a hospital used the tissues of dead children without asking the parents). Given this incapacity of existing models to generate consistently fair results, the author thinks there is an urgent need to develop a “new property model in relation to human biological material” (155). What is new, however, is not the model as such, but its application to biological material. The model is in fact equity. Since Antiquity, equity has been an object of discussion amongst philosophers and jurists. Put in a nutshell, we can say that equity is usually considered as a corrective of justice. Whereas justice is generally conceived as blind to the specificities of the case, equity takes account of those specificities that are normatively relevant and which, if not accounted for, may lead to an unfair result – summum ius summa iniuria. Take the Moore case, for example. Remaining within the common law model, we cannot devise any juridical answer that would entitle Mr Moore to claim a part of the profit realized through the use of his biological material. If he had been told in advance that such use would be made, that huge profits could be expected, and if he had consented to the use, declining any share in the profits, we could not say that he had been treated in an unfair way. The problem is that he was told nothing and that his biological material was used – though not excised – without his consent. Yet as long as we refuse to consider biological material as property, no claim of theft or abuse of property can be brought before a law-court. Introducing the idea of equity allows us to reflect on the basis of the results, and if we realize that not considering biological material as a property can lead to very unfair consequences, we have a good reason to consider it as property. As Hoppe writes at the very end of his book: “Giving full criminal and civil property protection to the individual whose tissue is in question is an increase in rights and protection of that individual and is as such highly desirable” (163). Bioequity is a thorough and detailed legal analysis of an important question in contemporary medicine and research. Hoppe not only presents us with abstract theory, but he
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also discusses concrete cases. The analytical matrix introduced in chapter 2 is a helpful device for anyone wishing to find his or her way in a very complex matter. Although the concrete application of the equity model to the question of property in biological material at the end of the book remains somewhat sketchy, the book nevertheless clearly shows the necessity of a new model and gives us basic clues as to where we might look for it. In that sense, Hoppe’s book is worth reading for anyone interested in the legal question of a human being owning his or her own body and its different parts, tissues, etc. Norbert Campagna University of Luxembourg
David E. KLEMM and William SCHWEIKER. Religion and the Human Future. An Essay on Theological Humanism. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. 202 pp. The tsunami of clerical sexual abuse now flooding the contemporary Roman Catholic Church highlights the irony of religion. While religion can bring insight, care and redemption, it can also debase, abuse and reinforce the sinister aspirations of the human spirit. All in God’s name. Cultures and religions can creatively interact but they often collide. This book is not about sexual abuse, but it is about religion and its place in contemporary culture and what the others see as the contemporary religious dilemma: a polarization between fideistic theism and a reductive secularism. Klemm and Schweiker begin their analysis of contemporary life by observing that in our global times there is a growing awareness of deep flaws in religious heritages and also at the core of modern Western civilization. Modernity and its beliefs about freedom, human equality, science and democracy are being challenged. Thoughtful people wonder if the inherited cultural values and practices can support a global future. The authors then outline a vision of human life that they call theological humanism, which is grounded in the idea that neither God’s will nor human flourishing alone can provide an adequate measure and orientation for human life. In their search for a theological humanism, Klemm and Schweiker argue that the human future needs the contribution of all religions, but only if they are self-reforming religions that are dedicated to the integrity of life as the manifestation of divine life and of the human good. Frankly, I find their analysis of the contemporary human situation more convincing than their arguments for a better future. Religion and the Human Future provides an excellent, well thought-out and well documented analysis of the current dilemma facing religions and religious people: the human dangers and inadequacies of hypertheism, with its exaggerated response to the challenge of modernity and over humanization, with its overly unreflective veneration for modernity. The chapters on “Ideas and Challenges” and on “The Humanist Imagination” make this book worth having, reading and marking up with personal thoughts and reactions.
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This book takes the reader on an exciting journey. At an important crossroads in their thematic development, the authors suggest the next part of the journey: “We need a way to articulate the claim of transcendence on human beings that reduces it neither to undecidability nor to ‘my’ community. Most importantly, we need a way to understand the positive, substantive and normative meaning of transcendence as it makes a claim on human lives within historical existence.” Basically what they are asking is: How do I know that what appears to be divine truly is divine? Unfortunately, I don’t think the authors really get around to answering this question in a satisfactory way. The subject perhaps for their next book. John A. Dick Centre for American Studies in Brussels
Timothy HARVIE. Jürgen Moltmann’s Ethics of Hope. Eschatological Possibilities for Moral Action. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. 223 pp. Jürgen Moltmann was born in Hamburg in 1926. His self-described German upbringing was thoroughly secular, and his grandfather was a grand master in the Freemasons. When sixteen, Moltmann idolized Albert Einstein and wanted to study mathematics at the university level. He took his entrance exam in 1944, but went to war instead as an Air Force auxiliary in the German army. Ordered to the Reichswald on the front lines, he surrendered in 1945 to the first British soldier he met. For the next three years (1945-48) he was a prisoner of war and moved from camp to camp. He was first confined in Belgium, which was where Moltmann claimed to have lost all hope and confidence in German culture because of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Moltmann claimed his remorse was so great that he often felt he would rather have died along with many of his comrades than live to face what their nation had done. Upon his return to Germany in 1948, Moltmann began a course of study at Göttingen University, where he was strongly influenced by Karl Barth’s dialectical theology. Moltmann grew critical of Barth’s neglect of the historical nature of reality, and began to study Bonhoeffer. Moltmann often cites the influence of the English pacifist and anti-capitalist theologian Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy. The real inspiration for his first major work, however, the Theology of Hope, was the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch and his “Principle of Hope”. The whole theme of the Theology of Hope is elaborated in counterpoint to the theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, who had worked alongside Moltmann at Wuppertal. For Moltmann, the hope of the Christian faith is hope in the resurrection of Christ crucified. Hope and faith depend on each other to remain true and substantial; and only with both may one find not only a consolation in suffering, but also the protest of the divine promise against suffering. Hope strengthens faith and aids believers into living a life of love, directing them toward a new creation of all things. It creates in a believer a passion for the possible.
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Timothy Harvie’s book (based on his doctorial dissertation at the University of Aberdeen) is a critical reflection on Moltmann’s thought as applied to moral action. Moltmann praises it highly as offering “nothing less than a theological foundation for an Ethics of Hope.” The first part of the book connects with, and critically reflects on, the Moltmannian theme in chapters on: Hope and Promise, Hope for the kingdom of God, Hope and the Spirit of God, and Hope in the Triune God. (At some point contemporary theologians have to tackle the whole area of Trinitarian theology, but that is beyond the scope and purpose of this book.) The second part of Ethics of Hope will be of particular interest to readers of Ethical Perspectives as it examines: time and space for moral hope; human nature, dignity and rights; and an economics of hope. “Any theological account of Christian moral involvement in global economics,” writes Harvie, “must engage human frailty and propensities for elevating self-interest. […] and the present methods of tariffs on international trade from lower economic nations to higher ones is in contradistinction to a life defined by eschatological hope where all things are God’s and therefore entrusted to everyone.” It is a ponderous book but worth the pondering. I share Moltmann’s exhortation: “Take and read, it is worth it.” John A. Dick Centre for American Studies in Brussels
Julian SAVULESCU and Nick BOSTROM (eds). Human Enhancement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 423 pp. According to the book’s blurb, Human Enhancement presents the latest moves in the crucial debate about the extent to which we should use technology to try to make better humans, containing “original contributions from many of the world’s leading ethicists and moral thinkers, representing a wide range of perspectives, advocates and sceptics, enthusiasts and moderates.” Not very surprisingly, the book does not really live up to what its blurb promises. Not all contributions are original; some have been published before elsewhere, and several others are mere rewrites of earlier publications. And while most of the contributors are well known players in the enhancement debate, just a few of them would normally be counted among the world-leading moral thinkers. Moreover, the enhancement enthusiasts clearly outnumber the sceptics. The only major critic of the very idea that we should use technology to make better people is Michael Sandel, whose much debated 2004 paper “The Case Against Perfection” is reprinted here. Sandel argues that the use of enhancement technologies indulges and thus reinforces a human drive to mastery, which in turn prevents us from appreciating the “gifted character of human powers and achievements” (78), thus destroying the humility that is requisite of all human solidarity. The editors, however, make it quite clear that they don’t think much of Sandel’s argument, as they cannot resist the temptation of making fun of
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him by suggesting that Sandel’s concerns could be met by tagging all enhancement products with a warning (in capital letters): “MAY CAUSE CONSTIPATION, DRY MOUTH, SKIN RASHES, AND LOSS OF OPENNESS TO THE UNBIDDEN. IF SYMPTOMS PERSIST AFTER 48 HRS, CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN AND/OR SPIRITUAL ADVISOR” (6). And just in case that kind of below-the-belt ridicule is not yet sufficient to convince the reader of the worthlessness of Sandel’s argument, Frances Kamm, in a (likewise previously published) paper that immediately follows Sandel’s, attempts a proper refutation of it. Curiously, however, Kamm misses the point of Sandel’s argument almost entirely when she points out that (a) one can be in favour of human enhancement without being motivated by a desire for mastery, and that (b), even if that really were one’s motive, it wouldn’t follow that enhancement was morally impermissible. That is true on both counts, of course, but it doesn’t affect Sandel’s argument, which does not target the actual motivation of the individuals engaged in the development and use of enhancement technologies, but rather the attitude their actions express and contribute to. Nor does Sandel want to demonstrate the moral impermissibility of human enhancement, but rather that it is unwise and ultimately not in our own interest to pursue it. These are crucial differences that Kamm chooses to ignore. Having said this, the editors are probably right to insist that it is ultimately not very helpful to debate the question whether human enhancement is a good or a bad thing, and that the questions we pose must be more specific and case-based in order to derive justifiable ethical verdicts: “Precisely what capacity is being enhanced in what ways? Who has access? Who makes the decisions? Within what cultural and socio-political context? At what cost to competing priorities? With what externalities?” (3) Again, however, hardly any of the papers collected here address these more specific questions, as most shy away altogether from discussing concrete enhancements, let alone in a socio-political context. Torbjörn Tännsjö wonders why enhancement seems to be, to a certain extent at least, accepted in medicine (i.e. vaccination), but frowned upon in sports medicine, and argues that the ethos of elite sport will eventually change to accommodate and indeed welcome attempts to push the limits of what is possible for human to achieve even further. But it does not get much more concrete than this. The only real exception is Christine Overall, who points out in her article that the pursuit of artificial life-enhancement technologies is also a political issue, and that we need to think about “the ways in which oppression might be deepened or diminished by various forms of life enhancement and the policies that govern them” (328). Thus the opportunity to live longer might mean for some a new chance to accomplish their life possibilities, which for various reasons has so far been denied to them, while for others it might be far less important: “For those who have been disadvantaged and not able to live a full life, technologies of life extension could have a far greater effect than for those who have been privileged and whose life was full” (336). The rest of the papers (eighteen in total) address fairly general philosophical and ethical questions. Norman Daniels starts the discussion off by asking in what way we would have to change so that we could justly speak of a modification of our human
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nature. He argues that most envisaged modifications, including many genetic ones, fall short of changing human nature, which should only be considered as changed when something that we regard as central to human nature is modified. If, for instance, we all lost our capacity for emotional response, then human nature would have changed because we would be very different from what we used to be and the difference would deeply affect our relationships and social interactions (35). The same would occur if we acquired the ability to read minds (37). It is not clear from Daniels’ account, however, which capacities should count as central, and why. Nor is it quite clear why this is relevant at all. Should we refrain from changing human nature? If yes, why? Daniels doesn’t seem to provide a reason, except one that applies to all modifications, central or not, namely that, given the complexity of the human organism and the multiple purposes it serves, it would be rather risky to meddle with it (38). That not all genetic enhancements would already bring about a change of human nature might still be worth remembering when considering a claim such as the one made by George Annas that by losing our human nature we would also inevitably lose our human rights, since the latter depend on the former. While Annas himself has no contribution in the book, he is challenged by Eric T. Juengst who argues that the possession of rights has nothing to do with membership in the human species, which is, after all, characterised not by a genetic homogeneity, but on the contrary by a considerable genetic diversity. Moreover, our genetic constitution is not fixed, but constantly evolving, so that if anything threatens human rights, then it is not the promotion of change but rather the attempt to prevent it (50). What matters is not the genome, but instead the “opportunities for creativity” it provides, and that is what we need to maintain (and possibly increase): “The human gene pool, unlike the sea, has no top, bottom, or shores: it cannot be ‘preserved’. The reservoir of human mutual respect, good will and tolerance for difference, however, seems perennially in danger of running dry. That is the truly fragile heritage that we should work to preserve in monitoring genetic research on behalf of the future” (58). Two papers attempt to address the topic of human enhancement from an “Asian perspective”, which might have been interesting if the authors had actually tried to argue from and on behalf of the Asian perspective, which unfortunately they do not. Strangely, neither deals much with the question of enhancement at all. Ryuichi Ida tells us basically that Asians do dot like pre-implantation diagnosis, organ transplantation, human reproductive cloning and the like, and that they are, for apparently no good reason at all, very determined about it, and Susumu Shimazono treats the reader to a summary of the Japanese obstetrician Takamichi Sato’s views on prenatal genetic diagnosis and induced abortion (verdict: “not ethical”), and assures us that “many disabled people lead happy lives” (298) and should therefore not be selected against. With such opponents, those who think that we should use technology to “make better people” clearly have a field day. While Peter Singer is surprisingly cautious and circumspect in his discussion of Robert Nozick’s suggestion of a “genetic supermarket”, where prospective parents are free to choose the characteristics of their offspring, he
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still warns of the dangers of such a system – less diversity, a detrimental competition for positional goods, and the widening of the gap between the gene-rich and the genepoor – Dan W. Brock is less hesitant and argues that selecting children on the basis of their genomes is just fine, i.e. not in itself morally wrong (256). John Harris wholeheartedly agrees and reiterates his well-known argument that we have not only the right, but even a moral obligation to allow, support, and pursue human enhancement because withholding a benefit from someone is, morally speaking, tantamount to harming them (131). Hence not extending people’s average life when that becomes possible is the same as killing them (147). And never mind the precautionary principle, which, Harris claims, should apply equally well to the status quo: “In the absence of reliable predictive knowledge as to how dangerous leaving things alone may prove, we have no rational basis for a precautionary approach which prioritizes the status quo” (133). The same line is taken by C.A.J. Cody whose article on ‘Playing God’ suggests that those who object to technological change and want to hang on to the status quo can equally well be accused of playing god: “The gleam of hubris is as likely to be found in the eye of the ardent traditionalist as in that of the fervent revolutionary” (180). In other respects, too, proponents and opponents of the enhancement project may have more in common than one would expect. In a thoughtful paper designed to build bridges between the two camps, Erik Parens argues that both endorse a “moral ideal of authenticity” (181), even though they interpret it differently, depending on their “psycho-ethical framework”, which is constituted by our “pre-rational experiences and understandings of our selves and of our proper relationships to the world” (188). While the opponents of human enhancement understand authenticity from within a ‘gratitude framework’, its proponents adopt a ‘creativity framework’. Although the latter currently dominates – there “is after all no money to be made in exhibiting gratitude” (191) – Parens insists that both frameworks are “equally worthy” (181) and we would be well advised to employ them flexibly. This good advice, though, is sadly ignored by Arthur L. Caplan whose article attacks the “anti-meliorists” for promoting a “static vision of human nature” and briskly dismisses their concerns as absurdly misplaced and ill-founded. When the President’s Council on Bioethics in their 2003 report Beyond Therapy worries that the kind of happiness that we might acquire through the simple expedient of taking a drug, might actually impoverish our lives, Caplan, just as the editors did with Sandel in their introduction, tries to make the authors look silly: “Still, the Council broods in Beyond Therapy, easy pleasures and cheap thrills will likely make us weak and spineless. There is nothing like misery to make us stronger” (205). Caplan cannot imagine how a pharmacologically induced happiness could be fraudulent or inauthentic, or at any rate why it should be thought relevant, and feels tempted to ask “who is writing this stuff – is the Council somehow psychically channelling our Puritan ancestors?” (206) Julian Savulescu and Daniel Wikler seem to psychically channel someone else instead, namely our post-human successors. Savulescu discusses a paper by the late Bernard Williams, “The Human Prejudice”, in which Williams defends the bias we humans
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usually have towards humans. While Williams believed that we are quite right to accord a higher moral status to humans than to other beings, simply because they are humans, Savulescu declares such a view to be “mistaken” (228) because what matters morally is not membership in the human species, but the possession of a certain set of properties, the most important of which (and perhaps the only essential one) is “the capacity to display practical rationality” (243). He concludes that if post-humans, or indeed any nonhuman life form, proved to be greatly superior to us in that respect, then we should value their lives higher than ours and, if necessary, sacrifice ours for theirs (244). Wikler follows suit by concluding his discussion of ‘Paternalism in the Age of Cognitive Enhancement’ with the claim that the cognitively-enhanced would be “within their rights to deprive the rest of us of our rights” and to appoint themselves our guardians (354). We would be able to trust those superior beings to make the right decisions for us because, as Robin Hanson then tries to convince us, they would clearly have a “stronger truth-orientation” and hence be less prone to the common human vice of self-deception (369). In the last article of the book, and certainly one of the most ambitious, Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg attempt to develop an evolutionary heuristic for human enhancement, which is supposed to incorporate the “grains of truth contained in ‘nature knows best’ attitudes” (375). The authors acknowledge the complexity of the human organism and particularly the human brain, which seems to justify common doubts that such an intricate system can be further improved by human intervention. However, what Bostrom and Sandberg then proceed to demonstrate is that “evolution routinely falls short of ‘optimality’” (380), so that despite this complexity “in many particular cases (…) it is practically feasible to improve human nature” (377). One reason for this is that the environment for which evolution designed the system has changed considerably, so that the system may no longer meet the demands the new environment imposes (“changed tradeoffs”). Another reason is that what evolution ‘values’, namely an organism’s fitness to survive and reproduce, is not necessarily what we value (“value discordance”). And finally, there may have been “evolutionary restrictions”: evolution had to work with what was there, while we can choose and design the tools that best serve our purposes. The authors conclude that whenever a particular enhancement intervention is proposed we should ask ourselves why the system does not possess it already. If we can answer this question in reference to one of the above explanations, then we are justified in thinking that the proposed intervention might actually work. If not, then we should trust the wisdom of nature and leave well alone. Michael Hauskeller University of Exeter
Gillian TETT. Fool’s Gold. London: Little-Brown, 2009. 338 pp. Fool’s Gold is about the first episode in the financial crisis, and it is a real page turner. Of course, we all know now how the episode ended and, of course, the whodunit aspect
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is rather limited as we all now know that the bankers and not the butlers did it. (This is in fact an a priori truth that does not call for any detective work: there simply is no financial crisis without officers of the financial industry being involved.) The suspense of the book lies in the how-did-it-happen aspect: how is it possible that the financing of housing for less-than-well-off American citizens caused a $3 trillion write-down of financial assets worldwide by the end of 2009? The detective aspect is to be discerned more in the author’s gathering of her findings than in the experience of the reader. What makes the book stand out as one of the most exciting in the avalanche of literature on the banks and the crisis in general is its specific intellectual perspective, which is not blurred by undue scandal seeking or moralizing. Besides being an articulate journalist for the Financial Times in daily practice, Gillian Tett is a social anthropologist by education. She applies the combined skills of both trades to an endogenous tribe of bankers that is occupied with financial engineering. As a journalist, Tett obviously had excellent access to some of the biggest houses in the financial industry and she has established trusting relationships with professionals in the field. But what makes her narrative so compelling is not a series of savvy details or impressive name dropping, rather it is the anthropologic perspective of an eager-to-learn observer that grants the book its excellence. The reader is introduced to a tribe, a group of people for whom finance appears to be an abstract mathematical game, a universe apart from all social and even economic particulars. The tribe is set on innovating the financial management of debt. Tett’s tour de force thus consists in developing this introduction into an accessible and intelligible account of how the enthusiasm for financial innovation of a few professionals led to the global financial earthquakes we all witnessed in 2007 and 2008. Of all the books that deal with ‘the’ role of ‘the’ bankers in the crisis, Fool’s Gold has most on offer for philosophers of knowledge and for scholars in business ethics. Throughout the narrative, Tett identifies beliefs, assumptions and delusions that made it all happen. Interestingly, it is hinted at in several places that the heuristics in the innovative engineering and accounting were inspired and driven by the nature of the banking regulation that was meant to prevent the insolvency of banks. All through the narrative, Tett puts her finger on issues of corporate culture, corporate governance and professionalism in the financial industry. Amazingly, lack of financial understanding, so-called financial illiteracy, is as endemic in the financial industry as it is in the population at large. Though brilliantly written and displaying lucid understanding throughout, elements of financial illiteracy have even crept into this book, where it replicates the terminology of the banking tribe. No matter what bankers say about it, and common parlance notwithstanding, the infamous CDO’s (Collateralized Debt Obligations) and the obnoxious CDS (Credit Default Swaps) are, ‘ontologically speaking’, not derivatives at all. Financial derivatives are constructs of which the price is determined by pre-existing financial assets. There are three and only three financial derivatives and they correspond with three familiar speech acts: options (the granting of the right to
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buy/sell a specified financial asset at a certain price), futures (the mutual promise to buy/sell a specified financial asset at a certain price) and swaps (the mutual promise to exchange specified financial assets over a period of time). Hence, the CDO is not a derivative, it merely is a ‘synthetic’ debt: it does not originate in the economy directly but it is construed by putting (slices of) original debts into a new security; or, from the opposite perspective, the (slicing) and dispersal of original debts over several securities is the construction of CDO’s. The mere repackaging of original debt does not yield a separate instrument of which the price is to be determined in function of a pre-existing financial asset; the CDO is made of the same stuff as its building blocks and thus it is not a derivative at all. Neither is the CDS; the CDS is simply an insurance against a real-world event, e.g. a debtor defaulting. As the book demonstrates, it was the delusive abuse of the former technique (repackaging bad debts into a good debt – which is equal to the medieval turning of base metal into gold) and the illusionary misuse of the latter instrument (buying insurance without having a legitimate interest in the occurrence; selling insurance without being sufficiently solvent to insure in the first place) that fuelled the subprime crisis. Fool’s Gold informs us that even in the financial industry itself, the basic truths of finance were either misunderstood or irresponsibly neglected. Shocking perhaps, but not surprising with hindsight. Hence, one of the most evident actions for regulators worldwide is simply to ask that board members and executives of banks are at least financially literate and that the latter should also occupy themselves with the business. Both the illiteracy and the irresponsible behaviour have to be taken on somehow if we are to regain less turbulent waters. But, besides issuing a tentative ‘going back to basics’, Tett does not venture into the business of proposing remedies. The narrative nevertheless is well worth reading for those whose very business it is to remedy and to prevent, either at the level of the system or at the level of the individual institution. Business ethicists will find a more subtle treatment here than the mere bewailing of greed, and philosophers of knowledge will see innovative engineering in action. For the rest of us, it is a very accessible and most exciting visit to the banking tribe guided by an eloquent and a well-informed anthropologist. Today, we still witness the crisis raging all over financial markets: Dubai trembles, Greece stumbles, the Swiss Franc soars, central banks’ balance sheets bust, liquidity rises. All of these events relate to our daily future: by themselves they cause nothing but nominal changes, but these nominal changes express the anticipation of market participants of what our futures will look like. We live in financial times, indeed. For those who are looking for a lucid perspective on that reality, Tett’s column in the Financial Times continues the narrative. More often than not, it touches upon the philosophical and ethical underpinnings of the financialisation of nearly anything – especially your pension and mine. Jos Leys HIVA, K.U.Leuven
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Marc DE VOS. After the Meltdown. The Future of Capitalism and Globalization in the Age of the Twin Crises. London: Shoehorn, 2010. 145 pp. Marc De Vos provides us with a timely warning against the dangers engendered by faulty perceptions of the financial and economic crises – faulty perceptions lead to mistaken reactions we deplore only when it is too late. Before going into the specifics of his balanced and reasonable discourse, allow me to add a word of caution. De Vos’ warning is timely yet the title seems premature. He seems to assume, as the title indicates, that the financial turbulence of the past months is over. In the reviewer’s opinion, however, it is not, and it is not from the comfort of hindsight that I make such a claim. With hindsight, I would be able to refer to the PIGS mini crisis in February 2010, which postdates the redaction of the book. As I write, Greek civil servants are on strike against the measures necessary to compensate for excessive spending in the past. In Greece, airway officials are also civil servants; hence, Greece cannot be reached by plane today. In this respect, it is temporarily cut off from the rest of the world – a symbolic isolation that might precede further isolations. This massive strike is a social crisis (debtors refusing to arrange for repayment), but it will be presented in the papers as a crisis in financial markets. Markets will be accused by populist politicians and populist academics. But markets do not do anything; markets do not act and so cannot be accused of anything. Market participants act. Greek strikers demonstrate social dissent and even violent refusal to curb spending in order to stop the mountain of debt growing further and would appear to be far from eager to repay already outstanding debts. At the same time, however, creditors in the financial markets have risk premiums soaring all over the financial spectrum: spreads widen, stocks go down, and currencies drift. These creditors and the other participants, it should be noted, are nothing more than our savings accounts, pension funds and all the other financial investment vehicles we own. In view of Greek behaviour, financial orthodoxy cannot but predict further turbulence. The title is also premature in the sense that a possible meltdown has not yet taken its course. We have seen a decline in the prices of financial assets, but we will not have witnessed a meltdown in our financial architecture until bonds have become worthless, the stock market has become illiquid and moneys have ceased to be means of payment due to inflation and barely credible governments. We have not gone that far yet, but we might be getting there. So, whether we will witness a real meltdown of promises and expectations still remains to be seen. Financial crises will end when we know what is going to happen with the enormous mountains of debt piled up by governments, banks, corporations and households. Will the necessary deleveraging be peaceful and smooth or will it provoke dissent and war? Will promises be kept or will creditors be robbed? The book cannot answer that question yet, but the warning it contains is timely. De Vos argues for firm governments doing governmental things in the political arena. He argues for the organisation of genuine markets, for businesses to create shareholder value as a way to further prosperity for all involved, for communities not to allow fear to get the better of them. Fear engendered by faulty conceptions will propel us to
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become protectionist (of what is obsolete), to play a nationalist game (against) rather than a cooperative game (globalist). Globally coordinated governmental action is necessary to regulate and underpin genuine markets, in finance and in the real economy. The organisation of markets is the most appropriate forum for solving problems of allocation and to establish prosperous growth through the spread of innovations. But, as De Vos notes, populist discourse, feeding on financial and economic illiteracy and reinforcing cramped instincts in the population, is going in the other direction. Instead of fine tuning and perfecting the financial and economic architecture that brought prosperity over the last decades, we risk destroying it by nourishing protectionist delusions and nationalist reflexes. Although I tend to disagree with De Vos on several technical issues related to finance and financial transmission (i.e. the links between society, financial markets and the economy), I would highly recommend his book to scholars in the humanities and philosophers in particular. De Vos identifies the macro-ethical question of our times: now that it has become clear that we have massively deceived ourselves or at least miscalculated enormously. Indeed, the financial phenomena represent a meltdown of unwarranted expectations – unwarranted expectations about American house owners but also unwarranted expectations about the American deficit and about the pace of economic growth. It has not yet been determined who will pick up the bill for the destruction of capital and deflation of monetary illusions. Will we deleverage peacefully and smoothly? How will we continue to organise for Our Common Future? Will it be fear or will it be reason that guides us? The argument made by De Vos is for the latter and it is well backed up by facts and academic literature. Nevertheless, De Vos is rather pessimistic, hence the sense of urgency throughout his warning. The cover of the book aptly visualises this by displaying a burning planet and money disappearing into a black hole. But by identifying the factors of social risk, the pessimist diminishes the chances his or her prediction will come true. The main factor of risk is cognitive in the first instance and emotional in the second: a mistaken conception about economy and finance, combined with fear or hostility towards strangers and the markets where we meet and interact with them. If De Vos’ pessimism should turn out to be unwarranted, it will be because we have allowed for the company of strangers and because the peaceful integration of communities through commerce and finance has succeeded. Allowing for the company of strangers means coordinating overall governance through political institutions and coordinating economic efforts through genuine markets and firms. This is not merely some abstract scheme: it entails that Chinese or Brazilian people may own the corporation that employs you or me. It entails that they may legitimately decide to cut some jobs if those jobs have become superfluous, without this being unduly contested or countered by recurring to violence. It also entails that our pensions are, at least partly, invested in far-away economic projects that bring prosperity to people we do not know and will never meet in person. Both phenomena are solely possible on the basis of a sound financial architecture that ensures the monitoring of debt and the genuine pursuit of shareholder value. Well-regulated
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2010
markets are part of that architecture because governments are not fit to identify sources of shareholder value; governments even become dangerous when they acquire the power to run firms. Thus, the peaceful company of strangers also presupposes that financial markets stay open and that financial transactions are unimpeded by political restrictions such as prohibitive taxes and outright state control over monetary flows (our pensions and savings, remember). Citizens globally need socially responsible politicians who are ready to return to fiscal orthodoxy, able to forge coalitions for the underpinning and regulation of markets and willing to manage inevitable conflicts without undue violence or populist promising. The pessimism of De Vos is warranted because many facts and tendencies point in the opposite direction. The means to counter the inherent dangers are first and foremost in correcting populist mistakes and in easing fears and hostilities. De Vos’ book contributes to this, especially to the former. The latter is more the business of politicians, but as De Vos points out repeatedly, the politicians are mostly marching into the opposite direction. Many of them are inclined to head for the darkness of deficit spending and nationalist ownership of the economic apparatus; money is being printed unchecked against realistic expectations about how it can keep its value. Politicians seem unhindered by clear knowledge of financial matters when they attack ‘speculators’ and ‘markets’. Our lives might become shorter and much more brutish once again if we let such a course of action go unchecked. This might be taken quite literally too: the last time we really went out on a Keynesian march, it started with bashing the bankers and ended up in the unprecedented bloodshed known as World War II. The macro-ethical issue about living with strangers is thus not solely one of financial orthodoxy and economic lucidity, it also is a social and political one. After the Meltdown is a timely warning for global citizens. Avoidance of alarmism is a moral duty in these matters too. Jos Leys HIVA, K.U.Leuven
Mark DOOLEY. Roger Scruton. The Philosopher on Dover Beach. Continuum: London, 2009. 191 pp. Mark Dooley portrays Roger Scruton as a ‘true philosophical genius’ and ‘the quintessential public intellectual’, and reading through this well-written book one is indeed left with the impression of a consistent philosophy. Most of the important philosophical themes are elaborated on throughout Scruton’s work: phenomenology, anthropology, aesthetics, political philosophy, and a philosophy of religion and culture. For Dooley, the most important feature of Scruton’s philosophy is the re-establishment of the importance of the Lebenswelt. The common experience of the world around us and the people we live with has to some degree been lost in modern life, where we are so used to thinking of our world in scientific terms or of people’s motives in psycho-analytical terms. It
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is philosophy’s task to restore this experience. Scruton’s philosophical project is similar to Hegel’s, in search of a home that the modern subject has lost. Scruton does not hesitate to express his admiration for certain literature (T.S. Eliot), architecture (Leon Krier), music (Beethoven) or for persons such as Enoch Powell (whose hunting jacket he inherited). Much of this affirmative admiration makes his work vulnerable to an uncharitable reading that might consider Scruton’s philosophy to have an exclusively conservative political motivation. While there can be little doubt that his political conviction is conservative, this conservatism is the outcome of a thorough philosophical reflection. In reality, anyone who seeks to build a home – considered a person’s deepest desire – should cherish conservatism, because it is only through the recognition of the institutions that support our community that a meaningful life is possible. Note: Scruton’s community is inclusive, and is not confined to the happy few. On the contrary, even the unborn and the deceased constitute part of our community, and it is only in recognizing their rights that we can build a truly meaningful life for ourselves. If we consider the deceased as part of our community, this means that we have to respect our world as an inheritance from former generations, and by including the unborn, we have to find a way to pass it on to the next generation, instead of exhausting it for our own contemporary purposes. Mark Dooley has succeeded in introducing Scruton’s thought to the public in a comprehensive volume. Its five chapters, entitled Philosophy: The Seamstress of the Lebenswelt; Personhood, Sex and the Sacred; Gazing Aesthetically; The Meaning of Conservatism; In Defence of the Nation, offer us a clear view of these topics that are mutually dependent in Scruton’s philosophy. Moreover, by using extensive citation, Dooley gives the reader a taste of Scruton’s literary qualities. Dooley is an excellent guide through Scruton’s oeuvre, citing as effortlessly from all his major books as from online-interviews and contributions to public discussions. One senses the awe-like consideration that Dooley has for (t)his master, and perhaps this can be said to be the only flaw of his work. While a degree of ‘love’ for one’s subject is necessary in order to do justice to it – certainly when it comes to interpreting Scruton’s philosophical views, which have often been ignored at British universities on account of his political reputation – but too much ‘love’ can also be detrimental because it inclines the admirer to detest the enemy in advance. Sworn enemies such as Sartre, Derrida and Foucault are often not refuted with serious counterarguments. It is possible, of course, that presenting Scruton’s philosophy while arguing in detail about how and why it differs from that of the aforementioned major French philosophers would have taken the author beyond the intended scope of the book. We mostly get to see these philosophers through the eyes of Scruton, although Dooley, who has written an introduction on Derrida, would have been well placed to discuss this matter in more detail. In fact, one of the few passages in which we hear Dooley’s own voice is the one on deconstruction (79-84). Here we see Scruton’s real problem with postmodern philosophy: only if the Lebenswelt is an objective reality, at least for people within ‘our culture’, can our common sense be a reliable basis for art, culture, politics and patriotism. In a complex society like ours, different views on reality
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are sometimes competing, and this can mitigate one’s cultural self-confidence. Scruton’s answer seems to be a robust denial of this postmodern condition, suggested by ‘oikophobes’ and ‘charlatans’, a denial that gives him the opportunity to sojourn into the domains of beauty without pity, nor gentle regret… In the last analysis many of Scruton’s views are reasonable and worthy of consideration by a broader public. Dooley’s excellent guide will – as is often the case – convince those already convinced, and will annoy those already ill-disposed toward Roger Scruton in particular and conservatism in general. Jelle Zeedijk Centre for Ethics, K.U.Leuven
Axel GOSSERIES and Lukas H. MEYER (eds.). Intergenerational Justice. Oxford: Oxford, 2009. 419 pp. Questions of intergenerational justice are central to two of today’s most important public policy debates – the controversy over the appropriate response to anthropogenic climate change, and disputes over acceptable levels of long-term public debt. Most policy analyses of these issues are dominated by technical concerns – relating, for example, to the measurement of the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on global temperatures, or to whether technological progress will enable future generations to enjoy higher living standards despite being burdened by intergenerational debt. The difficult philosophical questions of intergenerational justice, concerning the basis for and the content of our obligations to future (and perhaps past) generations, tend to attract relatively little attention in the public policy debates. This imbalance between considerations of technical and philosophical issues is unfortunate, because the satisfactory resolution of the great problems of applied intergenerational justice depends as much on the answers to the philosophical questions as on the answers to the technical questions. This collection of fourteen essays on the philosophical foundations of the obligations of intergenerational justice should help correct that imbalance. Most of the essays address fundamental theoretical issues of intergenerational ethics. They do so from a wide range of perspectives, including communitarian (Janna Thompson), libertarian (Hillel Steiner and Peter Vallentyne, in a co-authored essay), contractarian (Stephen M. Gardiner), reciprocity-based (Axel Gosseries), Marxian (Christopher Bertram), Rawlsian (David Heyd and Daniel Attas, in separate essays), and sufficientarian (Lukas H. Meyer and Dominic Roser, in a co-authored essay). Several of the essays, however, consider how theories of intergenerational obligation play out in the context of particular public policy issues. Topics addressed include population ethics (Gustaf Arrhenius), climate policy (Clark Wolf), constitutionalism (Victor M. Muniz-Fratricelli), preference formation across generations (Krister Bykvist), and motivational problems with respect to the well-being of future generations (Dieter Birnbacher).
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Several fundamental concerns reverberate across many of the essays. One of these is the question of the proper response to what Derek Parfit has called the non-identity problem, i.e. the problem of explaining how a person in a later generation can be said to have been injured by the acts of an earlier generation, if the later person has a life worth living (even if only barely worth living) and would not have come into existence but for the acts of the earlier generation. Several essays address this problem; the indepth discussions by Rahul Kumar and by Meyer and Roser, are especially interesting. John Rawls’s just savings principle is also considered in several essays. The differences of opinion with respect to the value of Rawls’s work in the intergenerational context are striking. Heyd considers Rawls “the major pioneer in facing the theoretical and moral need to expand the theory of justice to […] the inter-generational sphere…” (169). Wolf also views Rawls’s work as pathbreaking, describing it as “a touchstone for discussions of… intergenerational [distributive] justice in particular” (349). In sharp contrast, Kumar claims that Rawls’s work is “widely thought to be of little value as a framework for developing a better understanding of the basis and content of our obligations to future generations” (254). Although the essays are intended primarily for a philosophical readership, for the most part they are accessible to non-philosophers interested in climate change, intergenerational public debt, and other questions of applied intergenerational ethics. Public policy analysis of issues with major intergenerational implications will be enriched if this volume reaches that wider audience. Lawrence Zelenak Duke University
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