Pandemic – Utopia – Bioethics

ABSTRACT

Although it does not seem so at first glance, the COVID-19 pandemic did not make any fundamental changes, both in terms of the socio-economic framework of our actions and in terms of moral action. The reason for this lies primarily in the neglect of the utopian approach, which turned out to be necessary for looking at the socio-economic relations in the sphere of morality. Bioethics can provide a framework for such an in-depth moral questioning. I start this paper with the presentation of the attitude toward the pandemic, which remains within the parameters the inalterability of the world dogma. I then briefly ponder the notion of utopia and the concept of ‘degrowth’, the latter being an exemplary utopian approach to the human relationship toward the environment. Since the destructive attitude toward nature is the main cause of pandemic outbreaks, and both issues are of interest to bioethics, the latter should consider the attitude towards pandemics in a utopian way, primarily because the human destructiveness towards life stems primarily from the current socio-economic system. A characteristic of non-utopian thinking is that it neglects the reasons for the occurrence of certain moral conflicts, thus enabling it to be constantly perpetuated. As I try to show in the last part of the paper, the pluri-perspective methodology of integrative bioethics provides the tools to thwart this perpetuation. © 2022 University of Rijeka, Faculty of Medicine. All rights reserved.