How Brave a New World?

Commencement Address, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, May 13, 2007.

Leon R. Kass 

"The greatest moral challenges headed our way do not in fact come from hate-filled fanatics threatening death and destruction. They come rather from well meaning scientists and technologists offering life, pleasure, and enhancement. They are the by-products of modernity's noble and humanitarian quest to conquer nature for the relief of man's estate. They are, in a word, the challenges of bioethics, challenges to our humanity arising from burgeoning new technological powers to intervene in the bodies and minds of human beings."

President Nelson, Members of the Board of Visitors and Governors, Tutors of the College, families and friends of the graduates, and, most especially, members of the Class of 2007, St. John's College. Today we take time from our several labors to gather together in celebration and thanksgiving. In this rite of passage, both mindful of the past and anticipating the future, we honor and take pride in your present accomplishments as graduates of this remarkable College. We give thanks for the blessings of family and friends without whom these achievements would not have been possible. We rejoice in the attainments of the human mind, heart, and spirit. 

Today is also for me an occasion of joy and gratitude. I am deeply grateful for the honor of addressing you this morning; for I love and greatly esteem this place and the idea and practice of liberal education that it champions. I regard my few years here as a Tutor in the early 1970s to be among the most intellectually and humanly rewarding experiences of my professional life. It was here that I first began to teach. It was here that I first began really to learn. It was here that I made the acquaintance of a few great books that have been my steady companions ever since. In the years ahead, I trust that you, like me, will increasingly appreciate what a wonderful privilege it has been to live and learn in this rare community. And I trust that you, like me, will find the education you have begun here to be an invaluable guide for understanding and grappling with the enormous challenges that lie ahead. 

Surveying the world you graduates are about to enter, I am reminded of the ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." My own time has been interesting to a fault, but yours will almost certainly be more so. For the world has rolled itself into a new millennium amidst signs of great promise but also of great peril, calling for great courage and still greater wisdom. I have in mind not only the need, post-9/11, to stand-up against terror and fanaticism in defense of life, liberty, and the rule of law, a need that is likely to continue for your entire lives. I am thinking also of the need, in Winston Churchill's words, to "Deserve Victory," and especially to keep human life human in the dawning new age of biotechnology. complete address (pdf)...