In March 2008, former President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics released a report titled “Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President’s Council on Bioethics.” Arguably, the most prominent of the report’s contributors was Leon Kass, the bioethicist famous for his attempts to ban human stem cell research. Kass’s chapter, titled “Defending Human Dignity,” deals more with Aristotle and Genesis than stem cells and cloning. Kass weaves together two thousand years of philosophical and religious thought in an attempt to pinpoint the qualities of human dignity, but he struggles to discover a consistent definition to bear on contemporary bioethical issues. Kass explores a number of topics, including German Weimar Eugenics and the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to find his answer. He concludes:
The dignity of being human, rooted in the dignity of life itself and flourishing in a manner seemingly issuing only in human pride, completes itself and stands tallest when we bow our heads and lift our hearts in recognition of powers greater than our own. The fullest dignity of the god–like animal is realized in its acknowledgement and celebration of the divine.
Kass’s conclusion creates a hierarchy that subordinates the human to the divine. He questions the human ability to manipulate the building blocks of life, let alone create it. Kass’s attempt to define human dignity is really an attempt to define the limits and application of human knowledge. With advances in genetics and neuroscience making it possible for scientists to mimic complicated human emotions, a world of therapeutic and enhancing procedures is quickly becoming a reality. In the face of such discoveries, Leon Kass’s definition of human dignity is not enough to provide society with the proper direction to channel these newfound powers.
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This is not the first time that humanity has reckoned with the implications of scientific advancement. Indeed, towards the end of the Enlightenment, some intellectuals were beginning to ponder the awesome power that science could introduce. Mary Shelley’s Frankeinstein may have served as the finest example of this exploration into scientific ethics. In the preface to her 1831 edition of Frankenstein, Shelley writes that upon conceiving her image of Victor Frankenstein’s monster, she was filled with such terror that she was forced to cast her eyes about her room to reassure herself that the monster was only a figment of her imagination. The monster, with its thin black lips, lustrous hair, and skin straining to cover its musculature and arteries, is a grotesque and horrifying figure.
Since then, Shelley’s vision of the monster has given way to more modern conceptions. The most popular impression of the monster is Boris Karloff from the 1931 film adaptation of Frankenstein. Unlike in that film, Shelley’s monster does not have large metal bolts sticking out from his neck and was not brought to life with a lightning bolt—but with chemistry. Another problem with Karloff’s interpretation, one that has erroneously filtered into the public consciousness, is that Frankenstein and the monster are synonymous. Frankenstein is in fact the monster’s creator, not the monster himself. Despite this transformation in the public’s mind, Shelley’s physical image of the monster is ultimately the one truest to the novel.
The popular image of Frankenstein cheapens him. This image seizes on the horror of the monster’s decaying and pale countenance and presents him as a shallow, one–dimensional character. Many think of Frankenstein as an imbecile, a creature who shuffles around, stiff armed, groaning and being charmed by violin solos. Yet Shelley’s monster is eloquent, intelligent, and in many ways, sensitive. The monster, well read in Milton, voices the deep psychological turmoil of his social exile. His twisted and grotesque figure prevents him from normal social interaction. To return to Frankenstein as Shelley herself envisioned it is to return to a more fully developed tale, one in which “the monster” has a depth far beyond his dreadful appearance.
In order to understand the monster, Frankenstein must be read as a piece of romantic literature. Romanticism rejects scientific attempts to rationalize the world, and instead glorifies the sublime beauty of the natural world. Dr. Frankenstein’s observation of the natural world drives him to explore its causes and complexity. Frankenstein attempts to usurp the role of nature and create a race of creatures which can only trace their origins to him. Shelley’s romanticism condemns this action. There is something sacred about nature. Humanity, as a part of nature, cannot replicate its innate beauty and intricacy through scientific innovation. Frankenstein’s abject failure in creating life draws a boundary for human creativity that science and knowledge must not cross. Frankenstein’s mistake is attempting to create. Shelley suggests the human creativity is only powerful enough to imitate.
Indeed, Shelley portrays scientific curiosity as something intensely egotistical. The first eight chapters of the work are devoted to Frankenstein’s pursuit of the secrets of life. His desire for knowledge drives him into dark graveyards, where bodies lose their identity for him and instead become mere food for the worms, the sacredness of the human form destroyed in Frankenstein’s quest for parts. Frankenstein’s lifestyle begins to reflect his introversion. He becomes deeply engaged in his work, ignoring his familial duties for over two years. It is his mental and physical isolation that allow him to blindly pursue the secrets of life. During his construction of the monster, Frankenstein does not even take the time to view its twisted and disgusting frame.
The very structure of the monster demonstrates the human inability to create life. Victor Frankenstein, feeling limited by the minuteness of parts that make up the human body, resolves to create a creature of gigantic proportions. Only by altering the proportions and frame of the human body can Frankenstein create life. Shelley does not comment on the physical limitations of Frankenstein’s tools, but the very limits of science and knowledge. Humanity will never be able to replicate the complexity, balance, and naturalness of the human body. It is something science is inherently incapable of performing without altering and destroying. It is only after the creature is brought to life that Frankenstein realizes it would be more at home in the pages of Dante than in his apartment.
 Logo from the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921, depicting it as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. Eugenics serves as just one example of modern science perverted to oppress and destroy human nature. Image Credit : UCSB History Dept |
Shelley suggests that if Frankenstein had not been so inwardly focused, the beauty and awe of nature may have curtailed his obsessive ambition. Seeking to escape the terrible guilt he experiences following the monster’s murder of his younger brother, Frankenstein climbs the high mountain valleys above Chaumonix in Switzerland. Here the reader encounters Shelley’s first truly awesome description of the sublime and natural. Frankenstein and the reader are immersed in the image of the shiny pyramids of the Alps and raging rivers that fill its valleys. It is here that Frankenstein realizes the great power of the natural world. In contrast to this sweeping landscape, Frankenstein sees a figure emerge from the glaciers, advancing towards him with super human speed. The monster has pursued Frankenstein to confront him in the isolated mountain scene. The unnaturalness with which the monster crosses the sublime scenery highlights the contrast between the two forms. Shelley employs these contrasting images to reveal Frankenstein’s delusory mistake in attempting to replicate life with the same harmony and perfection as nature.
Shelley returns to naturalistic imagery throughout the novel to reinforce the divide between the powers of human creativity and the divinity of nature. As Frankenstein gazes at crumbling fortresses that hang from the top of the Rhine river valley, Shelley reminds the reader of the transient nature of human life, much a lesson in the man’s mortality as the material limits of man’s creativity. The castle, once built as an impenetrable bastion, has been razed. Shelly does not seek to portray human existence as insignificant; Frankenstein merely turns towards the wrong pursuits. Shelley identifies the more natural joys of humanity as friendship, love, and awe at the sublime, while Frankenstein’s monster destroys all of these. The murder of Frankenstein’s brother, wife, and best friend, along with the defiling of sublime scenes by the appearance of the monster serve as a blatant warning. Shelly emphasizes that human ambition and excessive pride have the ability to undermine and destroy the natural pleasures in life.
Frankenstein’s attempt to master the elements of life leave him stripped of the very elements which constituted his own life. It takes these losses for Frankenstein to realize his arrogance and miscalculation. Determined to correct his mistake, Frankenstein makes it his mission to destroy the monster. This journey leaves Frankenstein fatigued, trapped, and physically defeated in the extremes of the artic north. Captain Walton, an intrepid and enthusiastic explorer, runs across a stranded Frankenstein amidst a scene of towering icebergs. Here Frankenstein tells his tale to Captain Walton, exhorting him to abandon his pursuits of knowledge. Frankenstein then dies, exhausted from his harrowing journey. The monster, who has been observing Frankenstein’s progress all the while, sees that his only link to the natural world, his creator, is now gone. The monster flees with Frankenstein’s body, intent on burning both himself and his creator on a funeral pyre. Frankenstein’s pursuit of knowledge leaves him dead, alone, and cremated in a hostile environment devoid of family and friends.
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Echoes of Frankenstein abound in Leon Kass’s essay on human dignity. Kass defines human dignity as recognition of the astounding powers of human creativity and excellence, but he also asserts the subordination of human creativity to the divine. There is an inherent arrogance, both Kass and Shelley remind us, in assuming human reason and knowledge can ever replicate something as perfect and complex as nature and the body. Yet Shelley offers us something that Kass cannot: an understanding that human power must be limited regardless of whether a divinity exists. Her case is not simply for human dignity as a value unto itself, like Kass—it is a desperate plea for society to maintain the very fundamentals of human nature through preserving human dignity. These fundamentals, as Shelley portrays in the character of Frankenstein, can easily become perverted in the name of science, rationality, and progress. Scientific rationalization and curiosity run the risk of not only creating something unnatural, but of depriving humanity of that which is natural. Frankenstein’s tragedy ultimately suggests that we will not heed this unnaturalness until it is too late.
Humanity must heed Shelley’s message as science discovers and replicates the most fundamental aspects of human creation. The pursuit of human perfection has already begun to extend to the womb. Embryonic screenings increasingly allow parents to detect genetic diseases in their unborn children. As scientists continue to isolate more and more genes responsible for phenotypic traits, such as memory, intelligence, and strength, it will become possible to determine the natural attributes of a child with greater accuracy. The question becomes not whether science is good or not, but where the line is drawn on the application of this knowledge. In a society where science is becoming the new divinity, we cannot allow ourselves to become Dr. Frankensteins, individuals blinded to the moral and social ramifications of unbridled scientific pursuit.
Above: The frontispiece to the 1831 Frankenstein by Theodor von Holst, one of the first two illustrations for the novel. Arts.CCPblogs
AARON SCHEFFLER is a sophomore at Columbia College. He can be reached at aws2125@columbia.edu.