| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,500,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 2003: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,300,000)
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| Research Abstract |
I tried in this research project to think through the cultural, social and philosophical implications of the contemporary genetics and the change that may succeed in the rapid development of genetics. We know that the human genome project made good in deciphering the base sequences of human genome. After this preparatory stage of the recognition of what the human being is in molecular level, we will begin to identify the important genes that determine more or less the functions and the morphology of the human being.
By the way, this process of deciphering of human genome is almost necessarily accompanied by the radical change of human self-understanding, especially on the issues of given-ness and constructive character of what the human being is.
We know that the same development of human genetics reveals the fact that what they once called "the central dogma" is too simplistic, and that the determination of the manner and the function of our existence is far more complicated. In this se
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nse, the simplistic reductionism of the human being into the base sequence of DNA is obsolete even in the genetic sense.
With this reserve and restriction, we can still affirm that the genetic self-understanding of human being will become more important in the near future. With this fundamental judgment, I tried to survey many documents that analyse the cultural and social implications of genetic self-understanding of the human being, especially that of 1990's American documents.
More concretely speaking, I reviewed many kinds of thoughts or thought experimentations on human germ-line gene modification and its cultural implications. In this theoretical scene, we can say that we human being become a sort of god-like creator that assert that what is good for health or social value like female beauty become not something to be given, but something that we can construct and design. We human being become a sort of the self-creator that can choose the beauty, the goodness or the health of our own, in that we can theoretically intervene into our genetic patrimony.
With this inspiration, I could write some articles in Japanese or in English, and especially a book written in Japanese, entitled "Philosophy of Genetic Modification".
With no big infatuation, I think that I can say that with this research program, I could realize one of the important versions of gene-politics and gene-philosophy in our Japanese culture. Less
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