Toward a More Natural Science

Leon Kass is one of the most distinguished lecturers that I've had the privilege to hear. Many years ago I read his The Hungry Soul,which is an excellent introduction to his humanistic phenomenology. He is now an older man, but Toward A More Natural Scienceconsists of work from the 70s and 80s, when he showed remarkable wisdom for his age. He is a one man faculty-a doctor, aphilosopher in the Straussian tradition with great knowledge of Greek philosophy and poetry, a scholar of the Hebrew Bible,and a sharp political and legal analyst, among other things. He once had a meeting of Bush 43's bioethics commission andled a discussion on a story by Hawthorne, according to Wikipedia.The first section of the book deals with the many contemporary dilemmas of bioethics. Since the book is almost 35 years oldand contains material from 45 years ago, it is dated, but perhaps that makes it even more pertinent for today, to see the earlydevelopment of "test tube babies" and the concerns about genetic manipulation. The developments under discussion aredated but the Kassian analysis is not because it comes from a humanistic and eternal wisdom. The second part is aboutthe meaning and purpose of medicine. The goal of medicine is health and healthy living, but so much of the contemporaryeffort is just about prolonging life. There are discussions of the the Hippocratic Oath and abortion, including abortion as ameans of removing disease or deformity by removing the patient. Also there's the practice of psychiatrists having sex withtheir patients to treat frigidity, which is specifically mentioned in the Oath. Of course, the fact that the oath is from ancientGreece and Western Civilization makes it out of vogue, 30 years ago and certainly today.The last section works toward a more natural science, with the goal of bringing science and ethics back toward an understandingof nature. There is a chapter on Darwin and teleology or purpose, discussing how Darwin insisted the process of evolution wasrandom and unguided, yet kept using language of "higher" and "lower", even working toward intelligence and soul. Kass is almostsynthesizing Darwin with Thomas Aquinas in a creative way. Then there are chapters about the body and death, revisiting thequestion of the cadaver and the funereal practices of the Indians, Greeks and Persians. The final chapter is about "looking good"in an ethical sense, with a discussion of animal features, the phenomenon of blushing as a psychosomatic revelation of the soulin the body, and the experience of shame. Aristotle's ethics is one of the few to look at friendship-the moderns Hobbes and Locke,and the postmoderns Marx, Heidegger and Rawls overlooked it. The human being, unlike animals structured around their eating anddigestion, is made for vision and reflecting upon it. The final sentence-we stand most upright when we gladly bow our heads (82%).A couple of other quotes-That we too, here and now may participate with Homer, with Plato, with the Bible, yes with Descartes and Bacon,in catching at least some glimpse of the enduring truths about nature and human affairs; and that we, too, may hand down andperpetuate this pursuit of wisdom and goodness to succeeding generations for all time to come (76%).Our science, which looks so masterfully into so many things, a science blessed with telescopes and microscopes, looks too little and not well at the world we experience with the naked eye. Our attempt to master nature, to predict and control appearances, needs tobe leavened by a search to discover, to understand, and to appreciate the meaning and the beauty of appearances, and of the beingsthat appear (82%).

Kass has a great treatment of the ends of medicine, the medical art, and gives a good initiation into bioethics. Easy to read.

I got this book in a very timely manner and in remarkable condition. The poor rating is BY NO MEANS on the shipping or condition of the book :) HOWEVER....Kass is pretentious. He cannot pick a side on ANY of his issues and takes twenty times longer than necessary to say it. The whole book just feels like filler that you throw into a 20 page college paper when you've run out of things to say. He brings up some compelling issues...but the delivery is poor.

Kass asks the fundamental question "do we wish to live longer in order to live better, or do we wish to live better in order to live longer?" By going through the roots of medicine and the hippocratic oath, Kass shows what the healing arts are meant to be, and he exposes what the curing industry is rapidly becoming. Kass also takes an indepth look at science itself as it relates to research, ethics and the most basic levels of the human condition.

Good product and service