Let me start by making clear my position:
I believe that, in general, the norm, (allowing for exceptions here and there- extremes on either side) is that neither slaves nor masters are born, but are made either or by circumstances.
One defender of eugenics most celebrated around philosophic circles, is the late Fred Nietzsche, who wrote in AntiChrist:
2.
"…The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.
What is more harmful than any vice?–Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak–Christianity…
3.
[b]…what type of man must be bred, must be willed, as being the most valuable, the most worthy of life, the most secure guarantee of the future.
This more valuable type has appeared often enough in the past: but always as a happy accident, as an exception, never as deliberately willed. Very often it has been precisely the most feared; hitherto it has been almost the terror of terrors ;–and out of that terror the contrary type has been willed, cultivated and attained: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick brute-man–the Christian. . .[/b]
Yet, when one looks at the man behind these texts we find one that is challenged by nature, who in some clear ways is flawed, is ripe for destruction by clear standards of health.
Clear?
Obviously not. Some of the greatest genious were the same ones who exhibited the qualities that some would desire stamped out of the human gene pool. They are often deaf, like Beethoven at 32 years of age, or become insane or near blind like Nietzsche himself. Would one want their genes nonetheless?
A child born without eyes or use of his legas can still be a virtuoso at the piano, because, like Nietzsche himself, he uses his disability. When Nietzsche went near blind he praised the event as having allowed him quietness from constant reading and the byproduct that he was more focused and wrote from his own experience than the experiences of others.
The child born with no eyes, or ability to walk still has ears, hands, and a piano that must be played sitting down. The lack of dependency on his eyes gives his ears independence. The weakness of his legs becomes the strenght of his fingertips.
Eugenics has been tainted by Hitler, but it is an idea that goes back to Sparta, Plato and existed in nobler souls, such as Julian Huxley. But in the physical advantages it might confer we see that indeed extreme disability creates the very necessity for human greatness and in fact makes it a case that greatness cannot be found elesewhere, where nature in fact predisposed the creature for excellence. I mean that if you were to discover the perfect genes for a piano-player, or a marathonist, would greatness still be possible? Would the person who breaks the world record at the Olympics be regarded as great if it was simply the effects of drugs, or genetic enhancement? Or would it be instead the person who in spite of his common origin excells and wins over and above his limitations, his nature?
Then there is the question over the criteria used. Suppose for example that you have a perfect human speciment who at the day of the race, to use the Olympic example, lost to a man of short complexion. Who shall you breed? Who will you desire? Suppose the genetic equal of Copernicus is made, but after several generations no equal achievement is reached, would you eradicate Copernicus line? Where is the excellency of the line? Where is the nobility of the race? In what was once achieved through great exertion, or in what is inherited at rest? Or should we judge the worthiness of a line solely by the merits of the latest member, who by his efforts conveys honor and credit to his ancestry and inheritance, even if flawed, or less than perfect. Geniuses after all do often come in the most common and unassuming family and even the most creative and worthy are recognized as such by a judge not yet born. Quite a pickle.
Eugenics suffers from one flaw that above the others strikes me: The desire to live the future by the standards set in the past.
One should remeber that the Spartans in the end created an elite that nearly disappeared and ceased to be of consequence. The negative eugenics they practiced diminished their numbers and this world is ruled by numbers. Nature, so important in these arguments that one might say it is their God, is not concerned with creating a perfect type. It produces specimens left and right without judgement or prejudice. It is life, the biography of a creature that decides it’s claim to virtue and efficacy. It is not what is wriotten in your geneaology, but what life allows to be written in history.
The floor is open.