The demoralization and defl ation of Morality and Bioethics

Abstract

DOI: 10.15343/1981-8254.20140803297329 # Dando continuidade a secao “artigos em series” iniciada em 2014;8(1):80-88, publicaremos nesta edicao o segundo capitulo da obra “After God: Morality and Bioethics in a Secular Age”. This chapter developed from ancestral papers presented at the Centro Evangelico di Cultura “Arturo Pascal” and Consulta di Bioetica Onlus, Turin, Italy, January 31, 2012 (“Bioethics after Foundations: Feeling the Full Force of Secularization”), at the University of Salento in Lecce, Italy, on February 1 (“The Deflation of Morality: Rethinking the Secularization of the West”), at the Instituto Banco di Napoli, Naples, February 3 (“How can an Autonomy-based Morality Get along with a Quasi-Religious Profession like Medicine?”), and at the University of Naples Frederick II on February 3 (“Autonomy, Medical Professionalism, and the Culture Wars”). * Graduado em Medicina e Filosofia. Doutor em Filosofia pela faculdade do Texas-TX, USA. Doutor em Medicina pela Faculdade de Tulane, New Orleans-LA, USA. Professor da Rice University, Houstoun-TX, USA. Autor das obras Fundamentos da Bioetica e Fundamentos da Bioetica Crista Ortodoxa, pelas Edicoes Loyola, e de Bioetica Global, pelas Edicoes Paulinas. E-mail: htengelhardt@juno.com a. The term “dominant secular culture” identifies the established ideology of contemporary secular fundamentalist states. In a society shaped by a secular fundamentalist state, a state in which one secular moral perspective is established and enforced by law and public policy, there nevertheless remain particular communities with their own quite different cultures (e.g., Orthodox Christian and Orthodox Jewish). b. For an overview of the Frankfurt School, see Arato & Gebhardt. c. The fall of Rome in A.D. 410 was for many Romans unimaginable. It had not been pillaged since it fell to the Celts in 386 B.C. Jerome, who was living in Palestine at the time, was overwhelmed by the news that the city had fallen. Whilst these things were happening in Jebus a dreadful rumour came from the West. Rome had been besieged and its citizens had been forced to buy their lives with gold. Then thus despoiled they had been besieged again so as to lose not their substance only but their lives. My voice sticks in my throat; and, as I dictate, sobs choke my utterance. The City which had taken the whole world was itself taken; nay more famine was beforehand with the sword and but few citizens were left to be made captives. In their frenzy the starving people had recourse to hideous food; and tore each other limb from limb that they might have flesh to eat. Even the mother did not spare the babe at her breast. [B]ut alas! Intelligence was suddenly brought me of ... the siege of Rome, and the falling asleep of many of my brethren and sisters. I was so stupefied and dismayed that day and night I could think of nothing but the welfare of the community ... But when the bright light of all the world was put out, or, rather, when the Roman Empire was decapitated, and, to speak more correctly, the whole world perished in one city. ... Who would believe that Rome, built up by the conquest of the whole world, had collapsed, that the mother of nations had become also their tomb; that the shores of the whole East, of Egypt, of Africa, which once belonged to the imperial city, were filled with the hosts of her menservants and maid-servants, that we should every day be receiving in this holy Bethlehem men and women who once were noble and abounding in every kind of wealth, but are now reduced to poverty? We cannot relieve these sufferers: all we can do is to sympathise with them, and unite our tears with theirs (p. 500). Shortly after my first visit to Italy, a final destruction of the remnants of Western Christendom would begin. In 1954 I could not have imaged how different Italy would be in a mere fifteen years. O autor declara nao haver conflitos de interesse. I. The end of an age