Enhancing technologies: transformatio ad quod optimum?

The aim of the present paper is to bring out that the way in which we understand the enhancing and genetic interventions is closely related to the notion of health we adopt and this, in turn, to the worldview which underlies it. I explore the two notions of health which have prevailed since antiquity and which continue to co-exist in our era, and I point out that, if either of these makes sense, this is because each presupposes a different worldview with its own normative framework and moral values. As a consequence, when we argue about the enhancing interventions, we are not so much disagreeing about the application of this or that genetic technology as about the different ways in which we conceive our life and place in the world.