I argue that Judaism and Jewish culture have paradigmatically and throughout history operated with a fundamental dichotomy between nature and ethics. Pagan ontologism, on the other hand, and the Christian synthesis of biblical transcendentalism and Greek incamationism result in human and historical submission to what are acclaimed as “natural forces.” Although in the history of Jewish culture such a heretical, quasi-pantheistic tendency asserted itself, first in mediaeval kabbalism and then in modem Zionism, from a traditional Jewish standpoint nature remains subject (...) to humanly enacted ends. Evidence for this general thesis can be found in biblical, Talmudic, medieval philosophic, and mystical literature, in modem religious, poetic, and Zionist literature, and in the history of general philosophy. (shrink)

I argue that Judaism and Jewish culture have paradigmatically and throughout history operated with a fundamental dichotomy between nature (“what is”) and ethics (i.e., God and man-“what ought to be”). Pagan ontologism, on the other hand, and the Christian synthesis of biblical transcendentalism and Greek incamationism result in human and historical submission to what are acclaimed as “natural forces.” Although in the history of Jewish culture such a heretical, quasi-pantheistic tendency asserted itself, first in mediaeval kabbalism and then in modem (...) Zionism, from a traditional Jewish standpoint nature remains subject to humanly enacted ends. Evidence for this general thesis can be found in biblical, Talmudic, medieval philosophic, and mystical literature, in modem religious, poetic, and Zionist literature, and in the history of general philosophy. (shrink)

Part I: Science and the human prospect -- The spirit of modern science -- The human difference -- Bioethics in wartime -- Part II: The ethics of progress -- The embryo question -- Our genetic condition -- The commerce of the body -- A Jewish-Catholic bioethics -- Part III: From generation to generation -- Why have children -- In whose image shall we die.