ABSTRACT
In this paper, a little extract from a work in progress, I want to suggest some more steps towards what I like to call an ‘ethics of desire’ (cf. Lesch 1998) which seems to be particularly appropriate to the intimate field of reproduction and parenthood where purely pragmatic and technological reasoning does not even touch the ethical problems we are going to discuss. This approach is of course no philosophical revolution that totally breaks with the tradition of ethical theory because reflection on ‘ethics and emotions’ has always been an important topic of research (cf Fink-Eitel and Lohmann 1993). It is however noteworthy that the theoretical passion for the dynamics of desire is less known in German and French speaking countries (but cf. Schopf 1987 and Audard 1998) than in the great tradition of Anglo-Saxon moral philosophy (cf. Cullity and Gaut 1997) which is one of the strongest parts of our common European heritage. The comments I want to make are not in the first place addressed to the community of philosophers, but to those who are not familiar with the technical terms of ethics. They will be offered some elements of reflection on the notion of desire which is one of the key problems in the ethical evaluation of artificial reproductive technologies.
