How to Enhance Morality

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxvi

   PDF

2. Enhancing Performance

   • Vojin Rakić

   Pages 1-10

3. Morality and Moral Bioenhancement

   • Vojin Rakić

   Pages 11-18

4. Support and Opposition

   • Vojin Rakić

   Pages 19-35

5. Categorical Opposition to MBE: Harris Wiseman

   • Vojin Rakić

   Pages 37-47

6. Realistic Means of Enhancing Morality and Why Compulsory MBE is Ineffecive

   • Vojin Rakić

   Pages 49-60

7. Voluntary Moral Bioenhancement and Happiness as Its Grounding Rationale: The Best Option on Offer

   • Vojin Rakić

   Pages 61-74

8. Back Matter

   Pages 75-78

   PDF

This book offers an innovative approach to moral enhancement. We, as humans, have a moral duty to be as good as we can be. Hence, moral bio-enhancement (MBE), if effective and safe, is our moral duty. However, it has to be voluntary because if it is made compulsory, human freedom (of the will) would be curtailed. As freedom (of the will) is an essential component of humanness, compulsory MBE would infringe upon our humanness.
An essential question is; what will motivate humans to subject themselves voluntarily to MBE?The book argues - and supports by using empirical/experimental evidence - that morality and happiness operate in a circularly supportive relationship that applies to most humans most of the time: the better they are, the happier they will be; the happier they are, the better they will be. Hence, the grounding rationale for MBE ought not to be the prevention of “ultimate harm” based on compulsory MBE (as argued by Persson and Savulescu), but human happiness based on voluntary MBE. The primary objective of the book is to provide the readers with an original view on moral enhancement, whilst proposing a novel conception of moral enhancement that is informed by new biotechnological developments.

• Voluntary Moral Bio-enhancement
• Happiness
• Comprehension-Motivation gap
• Involuntary Moral Bio-enhancement
• human freedom
• human happiness
• moral bio-enhancement
• moral enhancement

• Center for the Study of Bioethics, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia

  Vojin Rakić

Vojin Rakić, Full Professor, is Director of the Center for the Study of Bioethics, Head of the European Division of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics (Haifa), and Director of the Center for Philosophy of the Institute for Social Sciences. Vojin Rakić, Full Professor, is Director of the Center for the Study of Bioethics, Head of the European Division of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics (Haifa), and Director of the Center for Philosophy of the Institute for Social Sciences. He is also Chair of the Cambridge Working Group for Bioethics Education in Serbia. Rakić is also Head of the Serbian Unit of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics. He has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University in the USA (1998). He graduated philosophy in Serbia, and has M.A. degrees in European Studies from the Central European University in Prague and from the Department of Political Science of Rutgers University. He worked as Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies at the University of Twente in the Netherlands (1999–2001). Between 2001 and 2003, he was UN Special Adviser to the Government of Serbia. Since 2003, he works as University Professor in Belgrade. Rakić publishes primarily in English. His publications include various books and edited collections, as well as numerous articles from the domain of (bio-)ethics, and political philosophy (recent publications: articles in the Journal of Medical Ethics, American Journal of Bioethics, the Cambridge Quarterly of Health Care Ethics, Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, Bioethics, Developing World Bioethics, Sexuality and Culture, American Journal of Bioethics – Neuroscience, BioMed Research International, Annals of Internal Medicine, etc.). 

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