Fundamentación antropológica de la bioética: expresión de un nuevo humanismo contemporáneo / Anthropological bases of bioethics: expression of a new and contemporary humanism

RESUMO

The general circunstances that assisted the genesis and development of bioethics in the various regions of the world in wich it has sprung, are in most points analogous. Notwithstanding, bioethics has developed under diferent expressions, such as the angloamerican and the european, mostly under the influence of philosophical tradition, wich shapes differently the analytical and critical spirit of a whole society. The empiric, pragmatic and utilitarian tradition of the angloamerican philosophy shapes bioethics in an individualistic way, sensitive to weighing of rights and duties, in a perspective particularly attentive to microproblems, of a consequentialistic and relativistic nature. The european philosophy, characterized by different fecund articulations among discrete tendencies such as phenomenology, existencialism and hermeneutics, leads bioethics towards a social direction particularly sensitive to questions of equity, in a perspective that favors the macro problems, assuming a rationalistic and deontologic nature. Besidesd these important aspects, angloamerican bioethics stays essentially at the normative plane, whereas european bioethics searches for a universal foundation to act and, as such, can only be assumed by man understood as person. It is in this sense that we sustain an antropologic foundation of bioethics to be an expression of a genuine humanism