Constructing critical bioethics by deconstructing culture/nature dualism

Twine, R. (2005) Constructing critical bioethics by deconstructing culture/nature dualism. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 8(3), pp. 285-295. (doi: 10.1007/s11019-004-7812-2)

Abstract

This paper seeks to respond to some of the recent criticisms directed toward bioethics by offering a contribution to a “critical bioethics”. Here this concept is principally defined in terms of the three features of interdisciplinarity, self-reflexivity and the avoidance of uncritical complicity. In a partial reclamation of the ideas of V.R. Potter, it is argued that a critical bioethics requires a meaningful challenge to culture/nature dualism, expressed in bioethics as the distinction between medical ethics and ecological ethics. Such a contesting of the “bio” in bioethics arrests its ethical bracketing of environmental and animal ethics. Taken together, the triadic definition of a critical bioethics offered here provides a potential framework with which to fend off critiques of commercial capture or of being “too close to science” commonly directed toward bioethics.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Twine, Dr Richard
• Authors: Twine, R.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences
• Journal Name: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy
• ISSN: 1386-7423
• ISSN (Online): 1572-8633