Philosophical Hermeneutics Hermeneutic Bioethics

Introduction If we were to acknowledge the interpretive character of our public debates over some of the issues that concern us, we would secure a firm foundation for a deliberative form of democracy. For we would then talk and listen to one another with mutual respect, not simply because political theorists encourage us to do so, but because we recognize the interpretive status of our own positions. We could then no more close our minds to alternative understandings of life and liberty than we can to alternative understandings of our texts. It follows that we could no longer close our minds to the different un-derstandings of our practices with which different understandings of our principles are allied. In our practices and social interactions around health care, we are confronted with bioethical issues about which we frequently have fundamentally different ideas. Public debate on moral issues, such as assisted dying, abortion, stem cell research, or distribution in health care reflect significant social dissent and inveterately contrasting opinions on the question of how these practices should be ethically and politically evaluated. In her book " Legitimate Differences " , Giorgia Warnke (1999) holds that theoretical analyses usually frame such debates as if they were about a clash of two or more opposing moral principles. Yet what is actually at stake is not so much the relevancy of principles , or which principle should prevail over another. What is at stake in these debates is not the conflict about the principles themselves, but rather the way we interpret and evaluate them. In the debate about assisted dying, we see for example, pro-life activists arguing that assistance in dying violates the principle of the intrinsic value of life, while pro-choice activists argue for the legalization of forms of assisted dying on the base of the principle of autonomy. Warnke assumes that these debates are especially troubling to us, because-as members of a Western society-most of us refer at least to a good extent to the same fundamental principles. Indeed most likely all of us believe that life is intrinsically valuable, and that we should have the right to make our own choices freely, as long as this does not interfere with the self-determination of others. And, it might be precisely on account of our assumption that we share these fundamental principles that we are so eager to try to convince others to see specific …