Bioethics critically reconsidered: Living after foundations |
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Authors: | H Tristram Engelhardt Jr |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Philosophy, Rice University, MS-14, P.O. Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892, USA |
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Abstract: | Given intractable moral pluralism, what ought one to make of the bioethics that arose in the early 1970s, grounded as it was
in the false assumption that there is a common secular morality that secular bioethics ought to apply? It is as if bioethics
developed without recognition of the crisis at the heart of secular morality itself. Secular moral rationality cannot of itself
provide the foundations to identify a particular morality and its bioethics as canonical. One is not just confronted with
intractable moral and bioethical pluralism, but with the absence of a secular ground that can show why one should act morally
rather than self-interestedly. The result is not merely the deflation of much of traditional Western morality to life-style
and death-style choices, but the threat of deflating to political slogans the now-dominant secular morality, including its
affirmation of human autonomy, equality, social justice, and human dignity. All of this invites one critically to reconsider
the meaning and force of secular bioethics. |
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