INTER‐ETHICS: TOWARDS AN INTERACTIVE AND INTERDEPENDENT BIOETHICS

TLDR

Bioethics has traditionally been a specialized academic discipline that applies global principles to guide healthcare, but the rise of pluralism, declining trust in experts, and fragmented moral narratives now demand a new, more interactive approach. The study proposes moving bioethics from external critique and legal defense toward embedded, interactive practice improvement and interdependent responsibility. The authors redefine the bioethicist as a relationally sensitive facilitator who engages stakeholders in reciprocal dialogues, integrates embodied, experiential, visual, and cognitive‑scientific knowledge, and illustrate this with a stakeholder‑driven case study on an elderly‑care innovation.

Abstract

Since its origin bioethics has been a specialized, academic discipline, focussing on moral issues, using a vast set of globalized principles and rational techniques to evaluate and guide healthcare practices. With the emergence of a plural society, the loss of faith in experts and authorities and the decline of overarching grand narratives and shared moralities, a new approach to bioethics is needed. This approach implies a shift from an external critique of practices towards embedded ethics and interactive practice improvement, and from a legal defence of rights towards fostering interdependent practices of responsibility. This article describes these transitions within bioethics in relation to the broader societal and cultural dynamics within Western societies, and traces the implications for the methodologies and changing roles of the bioethicist. The bioethicist we foresee is not just a clever expert but also a relationally sensitive person who engages stakeholders in reciprocal dialogues about their practice of responsibility and helps to integrate various sorts of knowledge (embodied, experiential, visual, and cognitive-scientific). In order to illustrate this new approach, we present a case study. It concerns a project focusing on an innovation in elderly care, based on the participation of various stakeholders, especially older people themselves.