Nearly fifteen years after the Council of Europe first called for a pan‐European convention on issues in bioethics to harmonize disparate national regulations, in November 1996 the council's Committee of Ministers approved the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine for formal adoption. The draft convention, released in July 1994, provoked strong public, professional, and governmental debate among European nations, particularly regarding provisions for biomedical research with subjects unable to give informed consent. If ratified, the “bioethics convention” will become the first (...) such document to have binding force internationally. (shrink)

During his internship the medical student often feels a basic need for ethical discussion. The department of medical ethics at the University of Nijmegen offers a monthly discussion in single clinical departments. The ethicist is then assisted by staff responsible for guiding the interns. These discussions, based on daily experience, aim at critical evaluation of ways the profession is being exercised. As such they form an essential counterpart to the more theoretical learning in classrooms and seminars during previous years. The (...) method is rather flexible. Either an inventory of problems is made, followed by a selection and discussion of one problem. Or a discussion is initiated by an introduction by either staff or ethicist. The actual programme and its origin, the objectives and some of the problems of such a programme are presented in this article. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that bioethics is an interdisciplinary science. Why this is so and what it means is not always clear or agreed upon and, in this author's view, its implications are insufficiently researched. On the basis of involvement in projects which were labelled interdisciplinary, the author reflects upon the method of interdisciplinarity, especially its starting point. It is suggested that interdisciplinarity cannot thrive unless it curbs, from the very start, the inevitable reductions of all monodisciplinary approaches. This effort (...) is called methodical epochè, ideally the temporary suspension of all known methods. Its purpose is to achieve an interdisciplinary way of stating the question. Until then no breakdown of the global question by particular methods of single disciplines ought to be attempted. Realistic variations of this ideal are also discussed. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

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The problem of the nation is articulated as the philosophical problem of the relation between the political and the non-political in the context of modernity. When the political relevance of traditional non-political bonds is removed, a new cohesion needs to be found between free and equal individuals. Three solutions are possible. The liberal-universalistic solution claims that there is no other source of unity than the political process itself; it finds the ingredients of political loyalty in the common rational agreement upon (...) principles of democracy. The nationalistic solution is an attempt to find those ingredients in particularistic allegiances of a non-political, ethnic-cultural nature. Both solutions, present in the old French-German debate on the nation, as well as in recent debates between liberalism and communitarianism, are criticized. Their revival in recent times is explained by the fact that they both represent an erosion of the political sphere that is characteristic for a post-ideological society. The first neglects the specific determinateness of the political, reducing it to the internationality of the market or to the moralism of rights. The second neglects the political nature of democratic legitimation by founding it on the claim to embody a particular culture or „Volk”. — In a discussion with Sandel, it is agreed that the political dimension needs a determinate form of collective identity and a non-contractual form of foundation. This form should not be situated however in the imaginary givenness of an ethnic-cultural context, but in the common undertaking of the moral task of institutionalizing ideals of liberty. These ideals are not an abstract set of principles, but are necessarily mediated by a particular common heritage or a political culture. Finally it is shown that such interpretation of nation or national citizenship is parallel to recent philosophical endorsement of ideals of civic republicanism or constitutional patriotism. (shrink)

In celebration of the centennial of the Institute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Leuven, a series of lectures was organized to outline the evolution of various philosophical disciplines in the time span 1889-1989. The lcture on ethics was an attempt to depict the transition from foundational and universalist ethics into a hermeneutical type of ethics that is anti-foundational and particularistic. Such can be interpreted as a transition from modernity into post-modernity,or from ethics into post-ethics : it is the (...) abandonment of the belief that ethics might offer a rational legitimation of ethical principles, or that such principles might be shown to be universal dictates of reason. Several historical and philosophical aspects of this criticism of rationalistic ethics are traced and evaluated, in discussion with authors such as Nussbaum, Rorty, Walzer, and Lévi-Strauss. — 1. The post-modern rehabilitation of moral sensitivity correctly criticizes the poverty of a moral life that is only based on principles. However, it is shown that even loyalty to a particular person or group can only be of an ethical nature ifsome universality is presupposed. — 2. The post-modern rehabilitation of tradition is based on two arguments: moral judging can only occur within a particular way of life, and this particularism is the most efficient anti-dote against totalitarian powers of rationalization and homogenization. Nevertheless, it is evidenced that the universalism of human rights is needed to safeguard such particularism. — 3. Other motives in the criticismof a universalist ethical theory derive from the Wittgensteinian or Heideggerian rejection of humanism as a form of subjectivism or anthropocentrism. The final conclusion is that the particularity of ethos has an important role to playin the development of our moral sense, but that this role is essentially heuristic. Thisparticularity is the experiential matrix for a responsibility that is nevertheless of a universal nature. Ethics can never be equated with the articulation of a particular way of life, or ethos, because it needs the tension between facts and values. Without such atension it is reduced to a positivism of culture. The foundational questions should not be abandoned. They are not rationalistic abstractions precluding experience, but they are the reminders that our norms are norms, i.e. tasks to be fulfilled and not just actualsocial sentiments and preferences. (shrink)

There is a general consensus that the concept of "absolute evil" was coined in order to account for the moral atrocities of the twentieth century. The connotations associated with such a concept are usually threefold: such an evil is not to be understood negatively as a privation of goodness, but as a positive force; such an evil can not be accommodated into any onto-theological order of being, but rather refers to the collapse of such an order; such an evil is (...) diabolical, motivated by the negation of moral law as such, and not by the pursuit of egoistic interests. Moreover, there is a general consensus that Kant's concept of "radical evil" is not radical enough to approximate to this excess of evil, specially since Kant categorically denies the possibility of devilishness. The purpose of this paper is to question this consensus. On the one hand, it is doubtful whether demonic interpretations can provide us with a deeper insight in the moral horrors of the twentieth century. They rather relieve us of our responsibilities, because they withdraw evil from our everyday experiences of weakness. On the other hand, it can be shown that Kant's idea of radical evil, notwithstanding his rejection of the demonic, is much more disturbing than is generally admitted: evil originates in an act of freedom, not in being overwhelmed by desire; the evil of hatred is already prefigurated in the banal evil of indifference; evil is enracinated in a "moral state of nature", where we can only develop our self-respect by continuously comparing ourselves with others, thus initiating ruthless forms of competition. The conclusion proposes to radicalize Kant's notion of evil, not in the direction of a demonic connotation, but in a direction indicated by Levinas: by referring to the experience of the victim. Only confronted with the suffering of others that is caused by me, my moral failure appears to be more than lack or privation: it is inherently excessive, since the victim experiences its own suffering as an intrinsic malignity that can not be accommodated into any order of being. (shrink)

As a consequence of recent discussions on globalization in the last decade, cosmopolitanism has reappeared as an important topic of philosophical debate. The purpose of this article is to explore the possibilities and the limitations of this concept by distinguishing two opposing senses of the term. In one connotation, cosmopolitanism means the tendency to realize a cosmopolis, i.e. a unified and rationalized system of culture, commerce and politics. It implements the ideal of an encompassing logos, as is obvious not only (...) in stoicism, but in recent ideologies of technocratic globalism. On the other hand, cosmopolitanism can mean exactly the opposite: world citizenship as an attitude respectful of diversity and imperfection, and resisting all temptations of uniformity. It is shown that Kant's idea of cosmopolitan right is based primarily on such a pluralistic view, expressing the conditions under which a plurality of humans can share a public space. On the institutional level, recent ideas on a post-Westphalian world-order, implemented in theories of "cosmopolitan democracy", mesh well with this pluralistic connotation. They imply that citizens escape from the all encompassing and massive sovereignty oftraditional nation-states, not to stumble into an abstract universalism, but to reconfigure sovereignty into a plurality of concrete commitments that are also based on multi-layered trans-national associations of civil society. Potentialities and dangers of such proposals are studied. On the cultural level as well, it can be shown that citizens transcend particular national cultures, not to enter an uprooted global culture, but to enter new forms of concrete cultural environments. (shrink)