Bioética e condição humana: contribuições para pensar o nascimento

Ana Míriam Wuensch,Julio Cabrera

doi:10.1590/1983-80422018264266

Abstract

Resumo A bioética recorre à filosofia ao examinar conceitos e valores, problemas e ferramentas metodológicas e ao tratar de problemas específicos da vida humana no mundo moderno. Contudo, tanto na bioética quanto na filosofia, a compreensão existencial do que significa nascer é poucas vezes articulada, enquanto a dimensão existencial da morte e do morrer tem recebido mais atenção. Neste artigo, propomos reconsiderar a condição humana como pano de fundo de uma ética para a vida em seus múltiplos extratos e modulações, e a partir da qual se pode elaborar perspectiva filosófica que pense o nascimento como horizonte mais amplo para tratar problemas bioéticos específicos. Destacamos, neste artigo, algumas contribuições de Hannah Arendt e María Zambrano, duas pensadoras que se ocuparam da condição humana, entre o nascimento e a morte.

Highlights

Bioethics uses philosophy in its practice of analysis of concepts and values, problems and methodological tools in order to deal with specific problems of human life in the modern world
We propose a reconsideration of the human condition as a background from which an ethic for life is constructed – in its multiple extracts and modulations – as a philosophical perspective to the thinking about birth in Bioethics, and as broader horizon for approaching more specific bioethical problems
This public character is reflected in documents such as the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, the International Declaration on Human Genetic Data and the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights

Summary

What conditions the human condition?

The known conditions do not exhaust the meaning of human existence, since new conditions, partly produced by human beings, partly imposed by nature, are continually added to it. Argues Arendt, where man as a social animal rules supreme and where apparently the survival of the species could be guaranteed on a world-wide scale, can at the same time threaten humanity with extinction 17 This is decisive in political terms, since, according to the thinker: If left to themselves, human affairs can only follow the law of mortality, which is the most certain and only reliable law of a life spent between birth and death. We can be reborn because we are born, the birth being the condition of all human life and its realizations, where each one is distinguished, surpassing oneself in the midst of relating with others It is in the course of one’s life that a person can constitute their own individuality, amidst the relationships they establish with others, with the world and with themselves in their life project. The words of the Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero point in this direction: the Arendtian category of birth - as actual rooting - and, real, to the concrete singular subject; and the reality principle that birth founds; this is the fact to which the true discourse must restore meaning 39

Is birth important for philosophy and bioethics?

Final considerations