Abstract
Since a number of years, popular and scientific interest in resilience is rapidly increasing. More recently, also neuroscientific research in resilience and the associated neurobiological findings is gaining more attention. Some of these neuroscientific findings might open up new measures to foster personal resilience, ranging from magnetic stimulation to pharmaceutical interventions and awareness-based techniques. Therefore, bioethics should also take a closer look at resilience and resilience research, which are today philosophically under-theorized. In this paper, we analyze different conceptualizations of resilience and argue that especially one-sided understandings of resilience which dismiss social and cultural contexts of personal resilience do pose social and ethical problems. On a social level such unbalanced views on resilience could hide and thereby stabilize structural social injustices, and on an individual level it might even lead to an aggravation of stress-related mental health problems by overexerting the individual. Furthermore, some forms of fostering resilience could be a latent form of human enhancement and trigger similar criticisms.
Highlights
Since a number of years, scientific interest in human resilience is rapidly increasing especially in psychology and even more recently, with a higher appearance, in neurological research (e.g., Chmitorz et al 2018; Feder et al 2011, 2019; Kalisch et al 2015, 2017; Osorio et al 2017; Russo et al 2012)
(2) We attempt to show that a one-sided concept of resilience—as it is often presented in neurobiological research on resilience—does pose social and ethical problems on three interrelated levels: (2.1) Fueled by neurobiological exceptionalism, resilience has the tendency to be an expanding discourse which might absorb debates on the question as to how the natural, social, and cultural spheres could be better adapted to human needs and pre-conditions to form strategies which would vest humans with abilities or traits to cope with the given situation
(3) In the last and final step of this paper, we argue that a one-sided reading of resilience can be understood as a latent form of enhancement in transition and as such it poses ethical questions similar to those discussed in bioethics in relation to other approaches to the biomedical enhancement of humans
Summary
Since a number of years, scientific interest in human resilience is rapidly increasing especially in psychology (for a review see e.g., Fletcher and Sarkar 2013) and even more recently, with a higher appearance, in neurological research (e.g., Chmitorz et al 2018; Feder et al 2011, 2019; Kalisch et al 2015, 2017; Osorio et al 2017; Russo et al 2012). Resilience research as well as resilience interventions which aim to promote or foster human resilience have surprisingly attracted little attention so far in philosophy, in general, and in ethics, in particular This is despite the fact that concepts of resilience are regularly discussed in the light of liminal experiences and. (2.1) Fueled by neurobiological exceptionalism, resilience has the tendency to be an expanding discourse which might absorb debates on the question as to how the natural (environment), social (work, income, health), and cultural (protection of justified interests, education, meaningful life) spheres could be better adapted to human needs and pre-conditions to form strategies which would vest humans with abilities or traits to cope with the given situation This is how, we argue, complementary perspectives on fundamental challenges in the lives of humans could be cut out. (3) In the last and final step of this paper, we argue that a one-sided reading of resilience can be understood as a latent form of enhancement in transition and as such it poses ethical questions similar to those discussed in bioethics in relation to other approaches to the biomedical enhancement of humans
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