Bioethics and human condition: contributions to thinking about birth

Abstract

Bioethics uses philosophy in its practice of analysis of concepts and values, problems and methodological tools in order to deal with specific problems of human life in the modern world. We propose a reconsideration of the human condition as a background from which an ethic for life is constructed – in its multiple extracts and modulations – as a philosophical perspective to the thinking about birth in Bioethics, and as broader horizon for approaching more specific bioethical problems. We highlight in this article some contributions by Hannah Arendt and Maria Zambrano, two thinkers who addressed the human condition between birth and death. The existential
understanding of what it means to be born is rarely articulated dimension from a philosophical and bioethical viewpoint, whereas the existential dimension of death and dying has received better attention in these areas.