Plenary Session II: THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND THE BIOETHICS OF CARE

Abstract

View of Volume 66, Special Issue, September 2021

The lecture illustrates how three fundamental dimensions of the human condition (vulnerability, interdependence, uncertainty), highlighted by the pandemic, are also at the root of the bioethics of care. In the first model proposed by Warren T. Reich, the bioethics of care is, in fact, based on Heidegger’s concept of Care and its link with vulnerability. It is proposed that two fundamental principles that remain implicit in the bioethics of care derive from this link: the principle of responsibility and the principle of solidarity.

In the first part of the lecture, the theme-problem of preparedness is viewed in light of the principle of responsibility. Dwelling on Hans Jonas’s ideas on responsibility, I examine the duty of fore-seeing and its implications: the heuristics of fear, the difficulty of the shift from individual to collective responsibility, ultimately opposing the parental paradigm of responsibility proposed by Jonas with the paradigm of fraternity.

In the second part, the relationship of interdependence between individual health and public health is examined, highlighting the marked inequalities that remain. Starting with some reflections on the principle of solidarity and its relationship with responsibility, the shift from the “fact” of interdependence to the ethical principle of solidarity is retraced, also through the rereading of an opinion issued by Italy’s National Bioethics Council (CNB) in 2020.  

This shift is seen in conclusion as both utopian and necessary if we are to re-interpret the pandemic emergency as a crisis that may result in a new beginning.