BIOETHICS COMMON SENSE

Bioethics is a domain in which many academic disciplines and cultural traditions converge. Accordingly, we may wonder whether or not there could be an authentic communication among them. The present article seeks to support the idea that bioethics can effectively develop a common sense by which people of very different backgrounds and cultures can understand each other. This communication can occur only because we share a similar human nature. Therefore, the philosophies that deny human nature, as well as those that reduce the human being to mere nature, do not serve as a basis for a common bioethics, but will probably lead to the fragmentation of the bioethics. Consequently, here I will argue in favor of a concept of human nature that integrates the biological, social and spiritual aspects of human being. According to this concept, every human being is not only an organism of the species Homo sapiens, but mainly a person belonging to the human family, in virtue of which she possesses inherent dignity and inalienable rights.