Dialectics between liberalism, State paternalism, and biopolitics. The conceptual analysis and the democratic and bioethical implications

Abstract

The political culture of the Western world often opposes liberalism and paternalism, assuming that the first term indicates a defense of the value of individual freedom, constitutive of the human rights culture, while the second would deny this value. This paper defends the thesis that such terms, as a whole, have a dialectical relationship, because the first would take the place of a thesis and the second of an antithesis, which synthesis would be represented by the moment of biopolitics, which would in turn, constitute a new thesis, in a new dialectical process in which the place of the antithesis would be represented by bioethics, both of which would converge in a new synthesis, represented by the empowering of people, and that is constitutive of democratic societies, or that claim themselves as such.