Jung Eun Lee

This focus issue considers the normative implications of the recent emergence in genome editing technology known as CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) or CRISPR‐associated protein 9. Originally discovered in the adaptive immune systems of bacteria and archaea, CRISPR enables researchers to make efficient and site‐specific modifications to the genomes of cells and organisms. More accessible, precise, and economic than previous gene editing technologies, CRISPR holds the promise of not only transforming the fields of genetics, agriculture, and human medicine, but also heralding a new era of democratized biotechnology. However, the speed with which developments in the field have progressed threatens to overwhelm our normative sensibilities about the long‐term practical and ethical implications. The contributors to this focus issue attempt to think through some of the more salient moral and practical consequences of CRISPR in the context of religious ethics, particularly as they relate to themes of autonomy, human flourishing, social justice, and the ethics of enhancement.

This is a response to the recent essay by Elizabeth M. Bucar and Aaron Stalnaker on “Comparative Religious Ethics as a Field of Study.” I clarify my earlier positions on method and virtue in comparative religious ethics and try to respond to some of the issues that Bucar and Stalnaker raise in regard to my arguments specifically and the field more generally. I argue that while we need not measure the practical impact of scholarly work in comparative religious ethics purely in terms of political or social action, I nevertheless worry that defining the goals of comparative inquiry in terms of the production of bewilderment, intellectual vertigo, or skeptical questions can lead to impressionistic or therapeutic methodological norms. In a similar vein, I refine my earlier position on externalism that acknowledges the impossibility of a purely externalist approach but also notes the desirability of coming to understand others “in their own terms” prior to engaging in the process of transmutation. I also question Bucar and Stalnaker's pessimism about the potential of producing “rigorously convincing ethical theory from the lived experience of regular folk,” suggesting that perhaps we are working with different conceptions of the sociology of knowledge. Finally, I consider whether we are currently in the midst of an epistemological crisis and conclude with some reflections on the rationality of the craft of comparative religious ethics