A Social Vision of Bioethics for the XXI Century: The Impulse of the Encyclical «Laudato si»

Abstract

The enciclical letter Laudato si´ of Pope Francis brings forward the unbreakable link that exists between environmental questions and social and human questions by means of the category of «integral ecology» and «the ethics of care». It is an excellent exercise of honest and committed dialogue of the theological and philosophical thought with the contributions of natural and social sciences, to preserve the survival of humanity. Similar ideas moved the Bioethics of V. R. Potter more than forty years ago, and today, when Bioethics does not go through its best moment, this encyclical constitutes a worthwhile impulse to refocus «Global Bioethics» emphasizing the need of the dialogue either among disciplines or among cultures and religions. It is not easy but necessary. Injustice and inequality adopt new forms in this time of global interdependence, demanding from ethics a new social vision, with the extension of the field of morality that must include not only human relations but relations with nature, and of a social justice goes beyond the national State and reaches inter and intra generational as well as global dimensions.