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Being Human: Readings from the President's Council on Bioethics

Table of Contents

This Table of Contents is for the book, Being Human: Readings from the President's Council on Bioethics, which is not available on the web due to copyright laws. This list, however, allows readers to see what readings are included in the book.

Contents

 

Members of The President's Council on Bioethics

xiii

Council Staff and Consultants                  

xv

Illustrations

xvi

Leon R. Kass, Chairman, Introduction

xvii

Acknowledgments

xxvi

Section I:
Natural Imperfection and Human Longing

1
Chapter 1: The Search for Perfection  3

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Birth-mark

5

Ovid, Metamorphoses

21

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty

29

Lewis Thomas, The Wonderful Mistake

31

Andrew M. Niccol, Gattaca

34

C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

49

Richard Selzer, Imelda

54

Stephen Braun, The Science of Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Mood

67
Chapter 2: Scientific Aspirations  73

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

75

René Descartes, Discourse on Method

80

E. O. Wilson, Naturalist

87

Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman

103

James D. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account
of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

111
Chapter 3: To Heal Sometimes, To Comfort Always 119

The Hippocratic Oath

121

The Book of Sirach

123

Albert Camus, The Plague

126

Richard Selzer, The Surgeon as Priest

131

W. H. Auden, The Art of Healing (In Memoriam
David Protech, M.D.)

140

Walt Whitman, To One Shortly to Die

144

Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks (Death of the Frau Consul)

146

George Eliot, Middlemarch

153

Perri Klass, Invasions

160

Section II:
The Human Being and the Life Cycle

165
Chapter 4: Are We Our Bodies? 167

Galway Kinnell, The Fly

169

Plato, The Symposium

171

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, What the Body Knows

177

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (Cannon Fodder and The
Operating Tent)

190

St. Augustine, Confessions

197

Walt Whitman, I Sing the Body Electric

207

Delmore Schwartz, The Heavy Bear

216

Vladimir Bukovsky,Account of Torture

218

Roger Angell, Late Innings

220

John Ciardi, Washing Your Feet

223

Richard Selzer, Whither Thou Goest

225

Thomas Lynch, Good Grief: An Undertaker's Reflections

242
Chapter 5: Many Stages, One Life 249

The Rhetoric of Aristotle

251

Francis Bacon, Of Youth and Age

256

William Shakespeare, As You Like It

259

J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

261

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (The Young Nicholas)

273

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (The Mature Nicholas)

281

Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks (Thomas Buddenbrooks)

288

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (The Countess Rostóva)

291

Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory

296

Robert Louis Stevenson, Ordered South

300

Willa Cather, The Professor's House

307

Liam O'Flaherty, Life

314
Chapter 6: Among the Generations 321

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (Childbirth)

323

George Eliot, Silas Marner

334

Galway Kinnell, After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

342

Geoffrey Wolff, The Duke of Deception

344

Sigrid Undset, The Mistress of Husaby

354

The Iliad of Homer (Meeting of Glaukos and Diomedes and Meeting of Hektor and Andromache)

360
Chapter 7: Why Not Immortality?  369

The Odyssey of Homer (Odysseus and Kalypso)

371

The Book of Revelation, 21:1-22:5

378

Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Book III

381

Francis Bacon, Of Death

388

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Moral Epistles: On Meeting
Death Cheerfully

390

The Epic of Gilgamesh

392

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

395

Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

403

e. e. cummings, Two Poems

410

Hans Jonas, The Burden and Blessing of Mortality

413

Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

426

Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill and Do Not Go Gentle into
That Good Night

430

Murasaki Shikibu, Sôku, and Dogen, Three Japanese Poems

434

William Shakespeare,Sonnet 12

436

Section III:
Cures, Improvements, and their Costs: irtues for a Richer Bioethics

437
Chapter 8: Vulnerability and Suffering  439

The Book of Job

441

The Iliad of Homer (Meeting of Achilleus and Priam)

452

William Shakespeare, King Lear

455

W. H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts

466

Mary Webb, Precious Bane

468

Francis Bacon, On Deformity

476

Richard Selzer, Witness

478

Lorrie Moore, People Like That Are the Only People
Here: Canonical Babblings in Peed Onk

483

Flannery O'Connor, Introduction to a Memoir of
Mary Ann

512
Chapter 9: Living Immediately  519

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (Levin Mowing)

521

Robert Louis Stevenson, Child's Play

531

Emily Dickinson, Pain Has an Element of Blank

539

Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

540

Walker Percy, The Loss of the Creature

541

The Odyssey of Homer (The Lotus-Eaters)

553

Malcolm Gladwell, Drugstore Athlete

555

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of a Solitary Walker

558
Chapter 10: Human Dignity 567

The Book of Genesis, 9:1-9

569

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan and Immanuel Kant,
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals

571

The Iliad of Homer (Achilleus Abuses the Body of Hektor)

578

The Histories of Herodotus

581

Willa Cather, My Ántonia

584

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Village Blacksmith

596

The Ballad of John Henry and Paul Kaplan, Henry the Accountant

598

John Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive

603

Isaac Bashevis Singer, In My Father's Court

605

O. Henry, Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

611

Vladimir Bukovsky, To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter

616

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

621

 


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