Over the past three decades, markets and market thinking have been reaching into spheres of life traditionally governed by non-market norms. As a result, we've drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society.

There are some religious traditions that view human beings as participants in creation. This is true of the Jewish tradition, from which I come.

Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'.

One can imagine a kind of hormonal arms race or genetic arms race, whether it's to do with height or IQ, conceivably, in the future. So it's limitless, and that's another of the features that sets it apart from medical intervention.

In most of our lives, we are accustomed to aiming at mastery and control and dominion- - over nature, over our lives, over our jobs, over our careers, over the goods that we buy.

I am trying to get at the moral arguments and the ethical status of various attempts at enhancement, or genetic engineering, or the bid for designer children. But there are implications for society at large.

Parental love is not contingent on the talents and attributes the child happens to have. We choose our friends and spouses at least partly on the basis of qualities we find attractive. But we do not choose our children. Their qualities are unpredictable, and even the most conscientious parents cannot be held wholly responsible for the kind of child they have. That is why parenthood, more than other human relationships, teaches what the theologian William F. May calls an “openness to the unbidden.