Violence and practical ethics

https://doi.org/10.18294/sc.2009.228

Published 4 April 2009 Open Access


Fermin Roland Schramm Licenciado en Letras. Doctor en Salud Pública. Post-Doctor en Bioética. Investigador Titular de la Escuela Nacional de Salud Pública Sergio Arouca, Fundación Oswaldo Cruz, Brasil.



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Keywords:

Violence, Bioethics, Philosophy

Abstract


This paper states that the violence phenomenon is a topic poorly studied in bioethics and it intends to outline the conditions of possibility of such study from a double challenge: a) the epistemological study of intelligibility and comprehension of violence as a real and "complex" phenomenon; b) the normative and ethical challenge of control and treatment of this "dark" phenomenon.
The paper starts with a brief conceptual analysis of the term violence, highlighting the characteristics which are considered pertinent to bioethics. Secondly, it deals with its conceptual history, differentiating three moments in the history of philosophy: I) the archaic or mitopoietic phase; II) the philosophical or rational phase and III) the contemporary or hybrid phase, in which contributions from René Girard, Emmanuel Lévinas and Judith Butler are presented. It concludes by pointing out the necessity of a proper definition of the category of violence so that it becomes a subject of bioethics, human voluntary acts of morally competent agents that use an unjustifiable strength to impose avoidable and non consented sufferings to moral patients.