Marcus Düwell & Christoph Rehmann-Sutter 
The Contingent Nature of Life 
Bioethics and the Limits of Human Existence

The development of bioethics has presented us with an ever increasing number of very different discussions over the last four decades. Bioethicists were initially c- cerned about questions of reproduction, end of life, organ transplantation, and a broad range of moral problems raised by the forward march of the life sciences. Meanwhile these sciences grew to be a major in?uence in nearly all areas of our lives. Biotechnology has brought about considerable changes in agriculture, plant breeding, pharmacy, veterinary medicine and medicine in general. These scienti?c and technological changes in turn are having a profound in?uence on economy, law, politics and culture. The life sciences are now certain to change our world in important ways. Because of their potentially all-pervasive and highly diverse impact, bioethical discussions concerning the life sciences are no longer simply about ethical gui- lines or legal regulation of concrete technologies. Certainly, the on-going debates concerning rules and regulations are complicated – and becoming more so. Nev- theless, bioethics cannot be restricted to these topics – they cover but a fraction of the social and personal consequences of bio-technological change. The life sciences drive us to rethink long-time-honoured concepts of humanness, of personhood, of nature. Bioethics therefore needs to develop an understanding of the impact those changes have on the conceptualization of the ethical dimension of the life sciences.

Table of Content

Contingency of Life and the Ethical.- The Value of Natural Contingency.- Between Natural Necessity and Ethical Contingency.- Of Poststructuralist Ethics and Nomadic Subjects.- Genetics, a Practical Anthropology.- Science, Religion, and Contingency.- Ethical Theories and the Limits of Life Sciences.- Bioethics and the Normative Concept of Human Selfhood.- Human Cognitive Vulnerability and the Moral Status of the Human Embryo and Foetus.- Needs and the Metaphysics of Rights.- The Authority of Desire in Medicine.- Procreative Needs and Rights.- Needs, Capacities and Morality.- Moral Judgement and Moral Reasoning.- Philosophical Reflection on Bioethics and Limits.- Cases of Limits.- Finite Lives and Unlimited Medical Aspirations.- Reproductive Choice: Whose Rights? Whose Freedom?.- Assisted Reproduction and the Changing of the Human Body.- On the Limits of Liberal Bioethics.- The Human Embryo as Clinical Tool.- The Naked Emperor.- Abilities and Disabilities.- Disability: Suffering, Social Oppression, or Complex Predicament?.- Disability and Moral Philosophy: Difference Should Count.- Neuro-Prosthetics, the Extended Mind, and Respect for Persons with Disability.- Others’ Views: Intercultural Perspectives.- Normative Relations: East Asian on Biomedicine and Bioethics.- Limits of Human Existence According to China’s Bioethics.- There is the World, and there is the Map of the World.- Reflections on Human Dignity and the Israeli Cloning Debate.- Conceiving of Human Life.- Globalization and the Dynamic Role of Human Rights in Relation to a Common Perspective for Life Sciences.