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This chapter examines the staging of divinity in the York Corpus Christi play. Theatre historians traditionally have identified ‘goldface’ as the primary sign for representing divinity on the medieval stage. The York pageant of The Transfiguration of Christ—in which, for the first time, the human Jesus visibly transforms into the divine ‘Christ’ in front of three core apostles—offers the theological explanation for this convention. Often overlooked in otherwise comprehensive studies of the York cycle drama, this pageant highlights the convention of goldface as a material process that is itself the explicit subject of the dramatic action, thereby establishing a signifying idiom of divinity that recurs across those pageants that also take up the mystery of Christ's dual nature. This chapter furthermore offers an original interpretation of Christ's body that differs from readings focused solely on the suffering Christ of the Passion sequence.

This chapter considers canvasses and evaluates claims that synthetic biology—the application of the principles of engineering to biological systems—is intrinsically concerning. It first briefly reviews the disparate lines of research referred to as synthetic biology. The objections considered include concerns that synthetic biology will enforce a reductionist view of life, that it violates the proper human role in the cosmos (that it is “playing God”), that it does not conform to the meaning of life, and that it is not true to the value of nature. The chapter argues, however, that none of these positions is compelling.

The chapter presents an overview of the major lines of debate in the ethics of human enhancement. While permissive and restrictive positions on enhancement can be contrasted, the conservative camp (which is the focus of the book as a whole) is a specific subset of the latter. Although the restrictive but non-conservative position is outlined, most of the chapter is devoted to the themes and arguments of the conservative camp. To give a well-rounded account of the conservative position, the chapter begins with connections to the tradition of social conservatism, before moving to prominent themes in the conservative opposition to human enhancement. These include the charge of ‘playing God’, the appeal to intuition or emotion, human dignity, and the connection to eugenics. The final section of the chapter surveys some of the recent work in moral psychology that the human enhancement debate increasingly draws upon.

When negligence thwarts parental efforts to select for socially salient traits like sex, race, and disability, compensation risks cutting against public safety or morality. Mandated cash payments for the wrongful defeat of attempts to choose a child to be deaf or male or white have the potential to undermine public commitments to newborn health, gender balance, or racial equality. This chapter argues that these concerns will only under exceptional circumstances rule out any remedy for confounded procreation. Even in rare cases for which recovery is not valid but void, courts should still grant nominal damages for generalized reproductive injuries—to deter professional misconduct and vindicate broader interests in offspring selection. In cases involving the failure to screen or diagnose some offspring condition, it’s not just private individuals or couples deciding what’s best for their own lives. Tort awards can impart an existential insult to people whose conditions were singled out for elimination—that verdict reflects the binding conclusion that the judge or jury reaches in view of specific facts and applicable law. But that expressive power shouldn’t immunize professional wrongdoing that thwarts eccentric offspring selection. Concerns about “quality control” are essentially contested—whether framed in terms of parental love or playing God, these visions of reproductive restraint don’t reflect social consensus. The not-so-distant history of racial ordering across family units comes closer to voiding complaints for confounded race. But courts should still provide limited recovery, with explicit caveats—to affirm generic interests in offspring selection, while disclaiming any racial component.

The debate about human enhancement turns partly on the view we take about the ideal human relationship to nature, but those views are hard to articulate and are frequently misunderstood. Often, those who raise concerns about human enhancement on grounds of beliefs about the human relationship to nature are seen as holding that human enhancement is simply “against nature” and therefore flatly wrong. But there are alternative ways of describing the ideal human relationship to nature. The belief that enhancement is against nature requires understanding moral values, nature, and the human relationship to nature in rather rigid ways. Alternative ways of understanding those things can lead to a significantly more moderate view—that the concern about nature is not about violating nature but simply about striking a balance between remaking nature or preserving it.