The wisdom of repugnance

Tiffany Rudolph

"the Wisdom of Repugnance" -- Leon R. Kass

The argument Leon Kass puts forward is aggressively positioned against the prospect of human cloning. He raises numerous moral issues in asserting that cloning of humans would be "profoundly dehumanizing." Kass goes to great lengths to explain the social, psychological, physical and intellectual problems any cloned individual would face, if society at some point chooses to permit human cloning -- or if human cloning could be carried out de facto by shadowy scientists in some evil laboratory. It would be immoral to turn "all of nature into raw material at human disposal," he writes (404). Moreover cloning is "inherently despotic" because it seeks to create children that are actually technological beings "after one's own image (or an image of one's choosing) and their fixture according to one's will" (405). Kass refers to those who would clone themselves as arrogant and narcissistic and rails against "the Frankensteinian hubris" to create human life -- which is in effect, "man playing God" (402).

In the process of condemning the concept of cloning -- with an argument built around the word "repugnance" -- Kass produces narrative that has a philosophical, literary and even Biblical ring to it. It seems clear he uses elaborate language to gain the attention of his reader, because he knows he is taking provocative positions. For example, after insisting that humans should not "transgress what is unspeakably profound" (that is, the mystery and the miracle of life should not be violated), and adding that human nature in this society "no longer commands respect," he uses personification to add emphasis to his favorite noun, repugnance: "…repugnance may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity" (p. 402). And he ends that paragraph with a line that could have been written by an iconic philosopher, or poet: "Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder" (p. 402).

Although he appears to obsess over the word "repugnance" -- and he exaggerates it's meaning, saying "repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom" -- he certainly knows his way around language. He presents some of his arguments with built in shock value; indeed a reader could argue that Kass goes too far in linking the cloning of humans to other hideously inhumane acts. For example, is the prospect of human cloning equal in repugnant value to "eating human flesh," as he suggests? (402). Another word he uses often is "horror." To wit, "Can anyone really give an argument fully adequate to the horror which is father-daughter incest (even with consent), or having sex with animals, or mutilating a corpse… or even just (just!) raping or murdering another human being?" (402). The horror of any of those acts can be linked to the horror of human cloning, according to Kass.

After spending the first few pages of his essay pointing to his contempt for the prospect of human cloning, on page 404 Kass flatly states that the process of setting up human cloning is already well underway. Making human children "artifacts" rather than loveable, playful little girls and boys, to serve human purposes, is a "violation of human equality, freedom and dignity" he insists, albeit genetic and reproductive biotechnology companies are already growth industries" (404). Supply will create enormous demand," he writes; soon "established companies will have invested in the harvesting of eggs from ovaries obtained at autopsy" and donor tissues will be "stockpiled" (404). Alluding to the fact that surrogate-womb service companies are already well established -- and adding that human cloning is destined to follow -- Kass concludes that the "commodification of nascent human life will be unstoppable" (404).