Bioethics as an emerging moral tradition and some implications for adversarial cooperation

In a forthcoming book titled The Emerging Tradition of Secular Bioethics, we take up Parker’s timely question, ‘How should the role(s) of bioethics be understood in the context of a world of intense value conflict and polarisation?’.1 Specifically, we focus on whether the field of bioethics in the pluralistic and increasingly polarised American context can give justified moral guidance in foundational, clinical, research and public health domains. We argue against a proceduralistic account of bioethics that limits the field to analysing moral problems and clarifying key concepts but never offering substantive moral guidance. We also reject an Enlightenment account of bioethics based on universal, neutral and abstract rational standards and moral first principles that are undeniable by any reasonable person and that can (in theory) eliminate all fundamental moral disagreements. Rather, we argue that while once naming a discourse through which various historically embedded moral traditions could discuss…

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