Μπορούμε να σκεφτούμε τη βιοηθική ως αντίσταση στους κανόνες;

Abstract

The question as to whether bioethics can be seen as resistance to norms does not imply any disputation of bioethical thought or the necessity of a certain international legislative regulation. The question focuses on the peculiarity of the moral attitude to problems generated by the development of bioscience and biotechnology. Reference to rules, i. e. to transcendental or immanent values, shapes the thought of the physician, of the researcher and citizen either in a voluntarist or in a naturalist way concerning what in each case ought to be done with due respect for the human person. Because of the confusion of the boundaries between the natural and the technical, medical practice shows the perplexity caused by adjustment to definite norms and recommends a prudential attitude. Bioethical thought cannot be based on nature. Ethics is born out of ethics; it indicates man’s affiliation with the idea of normativity, since man is not a simple datum. Ethical thought faces the philosophical difficulty of the justification of rules and the philosopher should grasp the moral problem in relation with the Other during cure and research processes. If law and codes of practice ascertain social transference of the question, ethics should be exerted in the margin of rules. Bioethics must be independent of the ethics of rules so that rules would serve as guides and not as directives. Ethics should resist to its own normativity. Moral principles help in understanding a situation, they serve as a compass and reference instruments but they are not compulsory and do not guarantee the rightness of decisions. The mere observance of rules has nothing to do with morality. All ‘mechanics of norms’, without justification and consideration of the case in question, are to be condemned. What is important is the responsibility of the agents. From clinical medicine it follows that resistance to ethical rules for the sake of flexibility in judgments helps in facing particular situations; yet without rules no flexibility is possible. The idea of the resistance of bioethics to norms can be understood as its non-institutionalization. The silence of the legislator should not always be construed as a legislative gap, but as conscientious intentional abstention when no public consent has been achieved.