Ratio ethica and ratio technica: alliance, separation or conflict?

Abstract

The question of the relationship between technical reason and ethical reason has become one of the main issues in the contemporary debate on human being. Both are part of practical reason, which governs the exercise of a person’s freedom and operative dynamics aimed at attaining a goal. Technical reason governs what humans do/make; ethical reason governs actions. Acting is always intransitive and interiorizes the person. Ethical logic is the logic of truth concerning a person’s good and wellbeing. Contemporary prevailing culture reduces practical reason to technical reason alone: this leads to technicism and scientism. The symbolic example of this approach in medicine is the recent approval in Italy of the abortion pill (RU486, acronym for mifepristone treatment) which was granted on the sole basis of an opinion expressed by the technical body AIFA. It would seem that the medical profession no longer has an identity as a source of ethical judgments and norms. Consequently, the physician-patient relationship increasingly appears as the provision of services to satisfy a desire, a need. The medical profession needs a practical testimony that ethics is the breath of eternity in human being.