Synthesis philosophica, Vol. 39 No. 2, 2024.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21464/sp39203
Bioethics – an Integrative Concept
Günther Pöltner
; Universität Wien, Institut für Philosophie, Universitätsstraße 7 (NIG), AT–1010 Wien
Abstract
Integrative bioethics is a threefold challenge. (1) As ethics, it addresses the principles, criteria and norms of moral action that are already effective in lived morality. As a form of practical reason with fundamental philosophical intentions, it directs attention to the aspirational character of being and thus undermines antitheses such as those of being/ought, nature/reason or freedom, description/prescription. (2) It is not an “applied ethics”. As an ethics of the bios, it emphasizes the being-like re-referentiality of life and protects it from a system-theoretical reduction. By uncovering the genesis of the opposition of nature and reason, it can once again assign the phenomenon of life the ontological rank it deserves. (3) As integrative bioethics, it represents a communicative unity.
By making the diverse perspectives visible as perspectives, it can reintegrate partial insights into the practical realm of life experience, from whose methodological exclusion these insights live. After all, integration is not merely multidisciplinarity, but inter- or transdisciplinarity. Integration does not mean combining results obtained from different perspectives into a meta-construct, but rather reflecting on their perspectivity and thus thematizing the wholeness inherent in each perspective.
Keywords
ethics; nature; life; methodological reduction; plurality of perspectives; integration
Hrčak ID:
342333
URI
Publication date:
29.12.2024.
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