The Philosophical Concept of Life and Its Role in the Foundation of an Integrative Bioethics

The essay demonstrates how bioethics can find an ethical dimension of its own and an original source of normativity by taking a fresh look at the concept of life. This requires a concept of life which is more than empirical, the logic of which is developed, in the first instance, from the insights arrived at by the philosophers of German idealism, but also from those of the more recent phenomenology of life. The basic problem of an integrative bioethics consists then in thinking through the development of an ethics with a fundamental attachment to the actuality of life, where the latter always precedes the former. Depending on the side that the emphasis is placed, bioethics acquires either a more 'Apollonian' rational or a 'Dionysian' vitalistic character, although integrating the two into a synthesis is what is essential.