Original scientific paper
The Issue of Pluralism and Moral Autonomy. Challenges of the Religious and Philosophical Foundations of Ethics in Bioethics.
Tonči Matulić
Abstract
The existence of bioethics depends on dialogue and tolerance. The Dialogue, together with tolerance, has been imposed as an alternative to the exclusiveness and fundamentalism of various ideological inspirations. The basic peculiarity of the modern democratic societies is factual pluralism. If so-called pluralistic society could function, the dialogue and tolerance among partners in dialogue were required. The problems of pluralistic society has not overlooked the bioethics as a new discipline that grew up from matured consciousness about inadmissibility of status quo within relationships between natural, e.g. biological and medical Sciences at one hand and the social Sciences and humanities at the other. Status quo relationships between them has nurtured the idea that natural Sciences are self-sufficient for resolving many ardent moral, value related, and social issues caused by themselves alone. It has also nurtured the idea that humanities, especially philosophy, are neither sufficient nor capable of resolving these problems. The reason for this position is found in the fragmentation of philosophy in various schools, systems, and value orientations. The described general framework of the present situation contains another important issue, namely the religious foundation of ethics, and consequently, of bioethics, and the relation of it to philosophical foundation of ethics, and consequently, of bioethics. On this issue various authors in the present bioethical debate gave different Solutions. Some of these Solutions are inadequate, and not only for theoretical but also for practical reasons. Namely, as said, bioethics depends on dialogue and tolerance, and there raises serious question about real openness to dialogue if religious or theological Solutions for the field of bioethics must be kept out of bioethical debates. The history of moral thought in the Western culture reveals a profound yet subtle shift from the hegemony of the one moral Vision to the pluralism of moral visions. It is this shift toward moral pluralism that has set the stage for the postmodern dilemma in ethics, a dilemma made evident in bioethics. This shift raises important questions about the moral authority of the State and society. This is time when the dominant orientation of bioethics has become secular, nonreligious, or even antireligious, always based on the idea of autonomy. But it also occurs at a fortuitous moment in the history of moral philosophy when secular ethics, itself, is also under critical scrutiny. Until thirty or so years ago, medical ethics still retained some remnant of its centuries-long connections with religion. Post-Enlightenment view on morality claimed that moral arguments based in religious traditions, Scripture, or church teachings were inadmissible in ethical discourse. In a morally pluralistic, democratic, and diverse society, human reason constrained by religious belief, or by moral authority beyond human determination, must be a private affair. If this description of the present State of affairs in the field of ethics and bioethics might have at least a general value, then it raises the question: In which direction should proceed ethical and bioethical debate on moral pluralism, including both sources of pluralism, that is one secular and the other religious, if one is incline to speak about ethics, consequently, about bioethics as a substantive and normative discipline? To answer this question, we need to have some knowledge about the possible and indeed acceptable relationship between religion and autonomy in relation to the supposed theonomy or so called religious heteronomy.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
202606
URI
Publication date:
22.12.2004.
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