「ドリー」と「人間園」

生命をめぐる言説において意味されたもの

抄録

Ian Wilmut’s Dolly the Cloned Sheep (1977) and Peter Sloterdijk’s Regeln für den Menschenpark (1999) have combined to raise new questions about the essence of the life. The cloning technique that made the birth of Dolly possible has not yet, as far as we know, to be attempted on human beings. It does not seem that the Menschenpark (human park), a society in which our lives are controlled totally by gene technology, lies in our near future, either. Still, the progress made to date the imagination of possible future consequences give us important clues for understanding the meaning of life itself. In the same way that Sloterdijk relates the history of the rise of Anthropotechnik to the decline of the humanistic tradition of the West, we may need to look on gene technology not only as a new kit of scientific-technological tools, but also as symbols of the impending arrival of a new conception of what a human being is and to what end humans are to be educated. This essay examines some of the main points of Sloterdijk’s work with an eye to suggest what adjustments to his discourse about the Menschenpark might be required for the way philosophy and theology have traditionally understood what it is to be human.