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In dealing with human corpses, notions of dignity play a decisive role, especially within legal texts that regulate a corpse’s handling. However, it is quite unclear how the claim “Treat human corpses with dignity!” should be understood and justified. Drawing upon examples and problems from forensic medicine, this paper explores three possible lines of interpreting such demands: (a) positions that closely link the dignity of the human corpse to the dignity of the former living persons and (b) accounts that derive the dignity of the dead from consequentialist considerations. We argue that both lines heavily rely on contestable metaphysical claims and therefore propose an alternative account for the dignity of the dead. Our proposal (c) focuses on action-guiding attitudes and the symbolic value of the dead. Such a conception allows for a variety of morally appropriate groundings of individual attitudes. It avoids metaphysically troublesome premises and, at the same time, allows to classify certain actions and manners of acting as clearly inappropriate and blameworthy.

Working with the dead is a very specific kind of work. Although a dignified handling of the corpses is demanded by the legislator and by the general public, neither the legal status of the corpse is undisputed nor is it obvious what a dignified handling of the deceased should consist of. In our hypothesis generating pilot study, we asked which concrete considerations are involved in daily practice of forensic specialists. We used an online questionnaire (invitations via e-mail) consisting of questions with single choice, multiple choice, and free text entries. The answers to single or multiple choice questions were displayed in pivot tables. The data was thus summarized, viewed, descriptively analyzed, and displayed together with the free text answers. 84.54% of the physicians and 100% of the autopsy assistants stated that considerations concerning the dignity of the deceased should play a role in daily autopsy practice. 45.87% stated that the conditions surrounding the autopsy need improvement to be ethically suitable. The analysis of the survey’s results was based on Robert Audi’s ethics, according to which three aspects need to be lightened in order to evaluate the conduct of a person morally: the actions, the motivation, and the way in which the actions are carried out. This systematization helps to identify the need for improvement and to make the vague demands for a dignified handling of corpses more concrete.

Schonau et al. (2021) put forward an “agency map” that brings together the so far underappreciated interrelation of responsibility, privacy, authenticity, and trust for the purpose of better unders...

Since a number of years, popular and scientific interest in resilience is rapidly increasing. More recently, also neuroscientific research in resilience and the associated neurobiological findings is gaining more attention. Some of these neuroscientific findings might open up new measures to foster personal resilience, ranging from magnetic stimulation to pharmaceutical interventions and awareness-based techniques. Therefore, bioethics should also take a closer look at resilience and resilience research, which are today philosophically under-theorized. In this paper, we analyze different conceptualizations of resilience and argue that especially one-sided understandings of resilience which dismiss social and cultural contexts of personal resilience do pose social and ethical problems. On a social level such unbalanced views on resilience could hide and thereby stabilize structural social injustices, and on an individual level it might even lead to an aggravation of stress-related mental health problems by overexerting the individual. Furthermore, some forms of fostering resilience could be a latent form of human enhancement and trigger similar criticisms.

In some strains of current philosophy, there is a growing interest in the passive and receptive aspects of the human condition. This interest is often paired with a criticism that ‘Western’ philosophy unduly neglects those aspects because of an ‘agential bias.’ This criticism has also been directed against the philosophy of Charles Taylor. I try to show that this criticism has some force in principle but is not plausible in the case of Taylor. First, I analyse John Rawls’ hugely influential concept of a life plan and show how this ‘agential bias’ applies here. Second, I argue that such a bias does not apply to Taylor’s The Language Animal by showing how active and passive moments are interwoven in his concepts of articulation and narration.

Verfahren der modernen Reproduktionsmedizin, wie die In-vitro-Fertilisation (IVF), die Praimplantationsdiagnostik (PGD) oder die Samenspende, werden nicht selten wegen ihrer „Kunstlichkeit“ kritisiert. Da die Leihmutterschaft immer eine IVF und eine Samenspende, oft auch eine PGD voraussetzt, ist sie also diesen Einwanden ausgesetzt. Daruber hinaus wirft die Leihmutterschaft aber zwei weitere ethisch relevante Fragen auf: Darf eine Frau, etwas einfach gesprochen, ihre Gebarmutter fur neun Monate „vermieten“? Wird damit nicht eine Grenze uberschritten, insbesondere dann, wenn dies gegen Geld geschieht? Zudem wird damit verbunden der Vorwurf erhoben, die Wurde der Frau wurde in diesem Fall verletzt, da sie als Austragerin eines fremden Kindes verobjektiviert wurde. Eine weitere Frage lautet: Wird durch eine Leihmutterschaft nicht die Mutterschaft sozusagen gespalten? Als Mutter im deskriptiven und normativen Sinn, wurde bis vor dem Aufkommen der modernen Reproduktionsmedizin die Frau verstanden und anerkannt, welche das Kind ausgetragen und geboren hat.

Regenerative medicine is the scientific approach to medical treatment by means of replacing, regenerating, or engineering human tissue. RM goals present no inherent ethical difficulty and this paper addresses legal and ethical issues presented by potential RM methods. These methods include the creation and use of artificial gametes and tissues for organ replacement using various genetic technologies.

The question of whether humans can, may, or should be ‘improved’ through biotechnological means that go beyond the healing of diseases, and, if yes, how far and under which conditions, is a disputed one (e.g., Savulescu and Bostrom 2010; Coenen et al. 2010). This is unsurprising, insofar as the debate about enhancement in general seems to be about fundamental questions of what it means to be human. However, these anthropological arguments are particularly associated with the opponents of enhancement, such as Jurgen Habermas and Francis Fukuyama. In the following text, therefore, I want to show that the proponents of enhancement also engage with these fundamentally anthropological issues. I highlight a trend whose representatives have established themselves in recent years as the most vehement proponents of ‘improving’ humans: the transhumanists. Among the most influential representatives of transhumanism is the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, who currently heads the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. He is co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), the umbrella organization of the transhumanists, and author of the Transhumanist FAQ (Bostrom 2003b), which provides a program for the WTA. The investigation below will concentrate on Bostrom’s works; based on his role within the transhumanist movement, it is fair to assume that Bostrom can be taken as generally exemplary of the principles of transhumanism.