Enhancing human beings: Possible? Desirable? Ethical?

Name: Enhancing human beings: Possible? Desirable? Ethical?
Start: 2026-04-08T17:00:00+11:00
End: 2026-04-08T17:00:00+11:00
Location: L4 Function Room, St Vincent’s Clinic

About

Recent developments in biotechnology and artificial intelligence raise important questions about human enhancement — the use of biomedical interventions to augment human nature and human capacities. The 2026 Plunkett Lecture, delivered by Professor Jason T. Eberl, will examine the philosophy and ethics behind human enhancement, with a particular focus on transhumanism, which denies any objective account of human nature and flourishing in favor of “morphological freedom” to reshape ourselves in any way one chooses so long as it does not harm others.

Professor Eberl will invoke Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of human nature and flourishing, and will defend moderate forms of physical, cognitive, and moral enhancement, eschewing the transformation of human beings into a new species of “posthumans” or sublimation of human agency and freedom. He will also discuss practical and political concerns raised by human enhancement, such as questions related to socioeconomic inequality and eugenics.

Please note: This event will not be livestreamed, but a recording will be made available soon after the event via our Newsletter and YouTube page. Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://tinyurl.com/a5965kuh

Jason T. Eberl, Ph.D. is the Hubert Mäder Chair in Bioethics, Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Albert Gnaegi Center for Bioethics at Saint Louis University. He is a widely published scholar focused on the philosophy of human nature and ethical issues at the margins of life. He is the author of Thomistic Principles and Bioethics (Routledge, 2006), The Nature of Human Persons: Metaphysics and Bioethics (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020), as well as editor of Emerging Issues in Catholic Bioethics (Springer, 2026).