The Wisdom of Leon Kass

I wish I had been able to attend this lecture at Princeton, presented by Leon Kass. I only have read the brief story about the talk in the Princtonian, which I linked above, but even that brief synopsis reveals the classic Kass wisdom. He warns against “turning medicine into messiah” and the need to ensure that the quest for scientific progress does not devolve from pursuing “full human flourishing” into a hatred of imperfection and outright persecution of those who don’t meet eugenic requirements. And it is true: We see it in the weeding out of embryos and fetuses that are deemed “defective,” in the advocacy for infanticide, for the depersonalization of the cognitively impaired.

I will try and get a copy of the lecture and post some excerpts. It is always best not to summarize Leon Kass, but to quote him.