La bioetica riguarda tutta la filosofia, non solo la morale
Published: December 30, 2010
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All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Authors
Docente invitato presso la Facoltà di Bioetica dell'UPRA e presso
la Facoltà di Scienze Religiose di Pesaro, Italy.
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The Catholic/secular bioethics dichotomy questions the debate between two very articulate worlds of meaning from which a theoretical invitation to confront the ultimate questions of life is drawn. The Author maintains that bioethics, in so far as it is rational, is essentially a secular discipline, and problems cannot be discussed without involving not only moral philosophy, but other philosophical disciplines, as well as anthropology and ontology. Bioethics is one of many paradigms that are based on visions of different realities which have implications for other ontological positions, even if not explicit. It is possible to find harmony in different meanings they are looked at on the level, but for in-depth dialogue more light needs to thrown on the articulations of the paradigms, referring them again to the final questions, both ontological and metaphysical. To underline the distinction between bioethical paradigms means to call upon the philosophical dimension of bioethics, the general question of meaning, that is the metaphysical, must be taken into consideration. The metaphysical consideration allows us to take human nature, which also includes a biological dimension, as a normative, and not arbitrary or reductive. From this point of view, to have being indicates the way to the realisation of man's specific end, his affirmation. This Thomist position is the one used in the Catholic Magisterium, whose pronouncements on bioethical questions are the official reference points and the subject of much debate. The Magisterium contains a doctrinal heritage that constitutes the official point of view of the Church on bioethical questions. Catholics can take it as Catholic bioethical doctrine unless their religious experience leads them to think doctrinal implications are lessened, and so long as pronouncements of the Magisterium on ethical matters are pastoral and educational exhortations to salvation because the authority of the Magisterium can be exercised solely through the transmission of what has been revealed. The Author invites us to critical and not ingenuous metaphysical experience, which is pushed beyond every given positive, which takes into consideration its own limits of reason, and which becomes a way of thinking beyond oneself. The Catholic paradigm is not a dogmatic paradigm, intransigently metaphysical, but an ontological paradigm on the basis of which human life is at one and the same time self-related and heaven-related because it is structured on relation to God and is, in this sense, sacred. Bioethics is not an exact science in which one can be indifferent the level of meaning of the one who is developing it.
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