This polemic uses a famous essay, The Question Concerning Technology (1993 - QCT for short) by Martin Heidegger to look at some of the inherent problems with technologies that manipulate the beginnings of life – mainly sperm and egg banks and the use of IVF technologies in assisted reproduction. It is not a formal argument, but does try and make some connections between QCT and assisted technological reproduction.

Following Heidegger I want to suggest that it is not the technology (in assisted reproduction) per se that is the problem, but the attitude that such technologies spawn. In order to make some connections I will briefly outline Heidegger’s argument in QCT so that the terms he uses will be accessible to an intelligent lay readership. I will then apply his terminology to problematise some technologies that we take for granted in assisted reproduction and contrast this with ‘natural’ reproduction. To limit the jargon encountered in Heidegger, I will only ‘translate’ what it is absolutely necessary to understand what Heidegger is saying.

Heidegger’s essay QCT is asking deeper question about the dominant character of technology, by which I mean the conditions that technology reveals and orders the world. Heidegger argues that our modern technological existence is about our will to bring materiality into existence so that they are available for exploitation and manipulation. Technology reveals the world as an exploitable resources (or ‘standing reserve’) available for our will to manipulate and nothing more. The purpose to manipulate for Heidegger is further manipulation, the will to will without end – the sheer self assertion or power to satisfy our will to control everything that exists. It has no purpose, other than to satisfy our will to will what we want. Heidegger’s does not have a problem with character of modern technology per se, as long as it does not lead to a forgetting of other ways of ordering materiality that is not bound up with resource, manipulation and control.

One way to characterise the difference in technologies is to characterise the difference between bringing-forth and challenging-forth: technologies that bring-forth reveal intrinsic orders that pre-exist in our world, while technologies that challenge-forth, exploit and manipulate the material world as a resource that may be shaped to and by our will. For example a carpenter may use technology to bring-forth the natural shape and grain of the wood when carving a table or he may challenge-forth the resource wood, to make a table top and legs that have been cut to pre-designed plan.  

Let us look at another example: childbirth. There is a difference between technologies that are in the service of bringing-forth what is coming into being naturally (natural childbirth) and technologies that challenge-forth life, when it proves difficult to conceive naturally. The latter can be subsumed under the category assisted technological reproduction. It is increasingly possible to exploit and manipulate the beginnings of life, through assisted technologies: that is, it is possible to have children through IVF when natural childbirth becomes well nigh impossible; it is possible to have banks of sperm and egg donors where one can select genetic characteristic that one may want in a child. In sum, the beginnings of life have become an exploitable and manipulable resource to satisfy our desires to have offspring of a particular kind.

Assisted reproduction unchecked could lead us to Huxley’s Brave New World dystopia (1998) where every child was engineered to fulfil a function in a nature that could be tamed and where we could all be satisfied with what we wanted all of the time. Lost in Huxley’s ironic utopia is the idea of natural childbirth – where technologies bring-forth life and children are not possessions, engineered to fulfil a pre-destined social function.

So, what is my difficulty with assisted technological reproduction? Well, I’m not against it, because it is un-natural! I’m also not against it because it would lead to a slippery slope that would necessarily end in Huxley’s Brave New World. No, Huxley is simply advancing a cautionary tale about what could happen.

My concern is how assisted reproductive technologies create a ‘resource’ attitude to childbirth, if it remains loosely regulated and unchecked. In other words, if assisted technological reproduction becomes the accepted norm in having a child, we may begin to forget the benefits of natural childbirth and see children as our possessions that too can be manipulated and exploited to our will.

To quote Kahil Gibran from The Prophet (1970):

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.”

References

Heidegger, M., (1993) Ed. Krell, Basic Writings Routledge, London
Huxley, A., (1998) Brave New World, Perennial
Gibran, K., (1970) The Prophet, Heinemann, London

Floris Tomasini (Dr)
NB Work in progress for an article with Bjorn Hoffman

Downloads

	A question concerning assisted technological reproduction .pdf