"We know next to nothing of what we're going to know in 20 or 50 years"
About this Quote
Humility is doing heavy lifting here, but it is not the cozy, self-help kind. Leon Kass frames ignorance as a civic fact: the future will not merely surprise us, it will embarrass our confidence in today’s “settled” knowledge. The line’s sly power comes from its bait-and-switch. “We know” sounds like authority, then it collapses into “next to nothing,” a phrase that doesn’t absolve us of responsibility so much as it indicts our appetite for certainty.
Kass, best known in public life for bioethics and arguments about human dignity, is speaking into a culture that treats scientific and technological progress like a straight road with predictable mile markers. The subtext is a warning against policy and moral reasoning that assumes continuity: that tomorrow’s tools will simply be better versions of today’s, and that today’s categories (health, enhancement, personhood, even “nature”) will hold. In bioethics, that’s a direct shot at techno-optimism and at the kind of cost-benefit governance that acts as if consequences can be fully modeled.
The quote also functions as a strategic restraint on hubris. It gives Kass a platform to argue for caution without sounding anti-science: if the knowledge landscape is going to shift radically, then irreversible choices deserve extra moral friction. It’s a compact case for prudence as a virtue, not a vibe - and for skepticism toward elites who sell the future as something already mapped, priced, and safe.
Kass, best known in public life for bioethics and arguments about human dignity, is speaking into a culture that treats scientific and technological progress like a straight road with predictable mile markers. The subtext is a warning against policy and moral reasoning that assumes continuity: that tomorrow’s tools will simply be better versions of today’s, and that today’s categories (health, enhancement, personhood, even “nature”) will hold. In bioethics, that’s a direct shot at techno-optimism and at the kind of cost-benefit governance that acts as if consequences can be fully modeled.
The quote also functions as a strategic restraint on hubris. It gives Kass a platform to argue for caution without sounding anti-science: if the knowledge landscape is going to shift radically, then irreversible choices deserve extra moral friction. It’s a compact case for prudence as a virtue, not a vibe - and for skepticism toward elites who sell the future as something already mapped, priced, and safe.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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