Improving Deficiencies? Historical, Anthropological, and Ethical Aspects of the Human Condition

Reproductive medicine, biotechnology, and neurosciences provide the technological means for the enhancement of bodily and mental capacities. Enhancement is an intervention into the body and the self that concerns and alters a person’s self-understanding and self-actualization, and thereby the conditio humana.1 The human condition consists of particular conditions and features such as age, natality, mortality, gender, worldliness, vulnerability, and the need for nutrition and support; and also, generally speaking, ‘disability is part of the human condition’, if not permanently then at least temporarily.2 We can experience these features, but they are not necessarily directly visible, like being mortal or vulnerable, or having a predisposition for a particular illness. How or when these features can be experienced also depends upon — as I call it — the conditio mundana.