Integrative Bioethik und Pluriperspektivismus - Integrative Bioethics and Pluri-Perspectivism

Collected in these Proceedings are the papers from the 4th Southeast European Bioethical Forum, held on September 3-5, 2008 in Opatija (Croatia), as a satellite conference of the 9th World Congress of Bioethics. The importance of this conference demonstrates itself in two aspects; on the one hand, the conference was the place of acknowledgment of the concept of integrative bioethics, previously developed through dialogue and cooperation of bioethicists in Central, South, and South-East Europe, as a highly innovative concept which generally brings bioethics to a higher level of development, and, on the other hand, by the very fact that this conference was held within the 9th World Congress of Bioethics, this concept actually arose on the world scene. Historical development of bioethics towards the stage of integrativity proceeded on the methodological level as a gradual widening of the circle of perspectives dealing with bioethical issues, from promoting certain moral principles, through ethical pluralism and scientific interdisciplinarity, to pluri-perspectivism. Simultaneously, a process of expansion and intensification of the domain of bioethical issues took place, from the initial issues in health care and biomedical research, through the issues regarding non-human living beings and general conditions of the preservation of life (ecology), all the way to reaching the deep, philosophical-historical dimension of these issues.