4th South-East European Bioethical Forum
Dear colleagues,
It is with great pleasure that we are inviting you to participate in the 4th South-East European Bioethical Forum international conference, which is to take place between 3rd and 5th September 2008, as an associated conference within the framework of the 9th World Congress of Bioethics (3rd-8th September 2008, Rijeka/Opatija, Croatia). The topic of the 4th South-East European Bioethical Forum is: Integrative Bioethics and Pluri-perspectivism.
Allow us to briefly introduce you to the origin and spiritual profile of this project of bioethical cooperation, within the framework of which the innovative concept of integrative bioethics was developed as its greatest achievement.
The first time that the bioethicists from South, South-East and Central Europe gathered and entered a dialogue was at the "Bioethics in South and South-East Europe" international conference (1st-3rd October 2004, Dubrovnik, Croatia). Programmatically speaking, the conference centred on "integrative ethical reflection based on intercultural differences in Europe". Within the then initiated discussions, which continued in the following year within the framework of the newly instituted regular South-East European Bioethical Forum, this integrative point of departure was developed into the rounded concept of integrative bioethics.
With respect to its subject of interest, integrative bioethics merges diverse approaches and perspectives into a unique spiritual horizon, which means that a pluralism of perspectives - i.e. pluri-perspectivism - represents its methodological determination. Pluri-perspectivism is a concept that transcends the familiar forms of scientific integrative methodology (interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity) since it also and equally embraces non-scientific approaches, such as religious, artistic, worldview, etc., all of which can be placed under the common denominator of cultural perspectives. Furthermore, it is possible to place all the scientific and cultural perspectives under the same epistemological denominator and integrate the same into the unique scheme of creating "orientative knowledge" based on the presupposition of the categorical difference between "object-truth and meaning-truth" (Friedrich Kaulbach), which can epistemologically be expressed as the difference between "instrumental and orientative knowledge" (Jürgen Mittelstrass).
With respect to its subject matter, integrative bioethics discusses a wide range of issues of different levels of importance, all of which centre on the category of life and are joint into a single problem and subject field: from the initial questions in the field of medical care and biomedical research, through the issues of responsibility for non-human beings and for the preservation of general conditions of life (ecology), to the questions of the fate of contemporary civilisation and the survival of the human race.
Not only does this concept of bioethics facilitate an all-embracing discussion of the vastest array of actual bioethical problems, it also penetrates into their philosophical-historical dimension, which opens up the most fundamental questions about the scientific-technological character of our era, about the methodological constitution and historical role of modern science, as well as about the transformations in the fundamental relationship between man and nature. Only in this underlying perspective it is possible to reflect the Modern Age as the era of scientific-technological civilisation, to survey the historical processes in which the world-historical eras turn, and to illuminate bioethics itself as the key "sign of the times" in which a new era has emerged.
We are firmly convinced that the idea of integrative bioethics can indeed be stimulating within the global bioethical debate, and that it can lead to fruitful answers and solutions particularly during the discussions to be opened within the general topic of "The Challenge of Cross-cultural Bioethics in the 21st Century" Congress. We, thus, look forward to both your participation application and contribution to this conference.
The official languages of the 4th Bioethical Forum are English and German. We, therefore, kindly ask that you submit both your application and paper summary in either English or German following the guidelines outlined on the web page of the Congress.
Sincerely yours,
Prof. Dr. Ante Covic
University of Zagreb, Croatia
Co-director of International Conference
South-East European Bioethical Forum
Prof. Dr. Walter Schweidler
Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
Co-director of International Conference
South-East European Bioethical Forum
Note: Sessions will be held in German and English
