Bioethics and Biolaw through Literature

In today's world, the increasing progress in biotechnologies has paved the way for profound challenges to basic notions definingthe human existence. Paramount concepts, such as autonomy, dignity and the very assumption of human finitude, need to be reframed in the light of unprecedented innovations and possibilities. The multidisciplinary encounter of literature, bioethics and biolaw offers the opportunity to investigate the impacts on human life stemming from scientific potentialities and pretensions. The aim of this book is to merge the two fields of bioethics and law (or biolaw) through the literary text, by taking into consideration the transformations of the concept of persona at which we have nowadays arrived.

Autorentext

Daniela Carpi, University of Verona, Italy.

Zusammenfassung

In recent years, the well-established field of human anthropology has been put under scrutiny by the new data offered by science and technology. Scientific intervention into human life through organ transplants, euthanasia, genetic engineering, experiments connected to the genetic code and the genome, and varied other biotechnologies have placed ethical beliefs into question and created ethical dilemmas. These scientific inventions influence our views on birth and death, on the construction of the body and its technical reproducibility, and have problematized the concept of the human persona. The purpose of bioethics, the science of life, is to find new values and norms which will be valid for a multicultural society. Bioethics is, today, a well-respected topic of research that has brought together philosophers and experts to discuss the limits of science and medicine.

The aim of this book is to merge the two fields of bioethics and law (or biolaw) through the literary text, by taking into consideration the transformations of the concept of persona at which we have nowadays arrived. The new meaning of the term 'persona' represents in fact the final point of a long-standing quest for man's sense of his own being and human dignity, and of his capacity to live in social interrelations. The volume presents a wide range of perspectives, comprising methodological approaches, legal and literary aspects.