The “Oviedo Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine” (1997/1999) and the UNESCO “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights”(2005)

The year 1997 proved very significant for the realization of the importance of the relatively fresh term “bioethics”, adopted by Van Ransellaer Potter in 1970 —though used for the first time in an environmental sense by Fritz Jahr in 1926. It was during 1997 that “the member States of the Council of Europe… conscious of the accelerating   developments in biology and medicine” and of the danger that “misuse of biology and medicine may lead to acts endangering human dignity”, affirmed that “progress in biology and medicine should be used for the benefit of present and future generations”, and proceeded towards the well-known “Oviedo Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine” which entered into force two years later. In    the same year the General Conference of UNESCO circulated the “Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights”

Linguistic Naturalism and Natural Style. From Varro and Cicero to Dionysius of Halicarnassus

NWO276-30-009Classics and Classical Civilizatio

Eros: An unexpected god of the stoic cosmopolis

In this paper, I discuss the Stoic views on eros in general and “Eros as a god of the Stoic cosmopolis” in particular. In the first part I present the works on Eros written by the Early Stoics; I discuss the fragmentary evidence about their views focusing on Zeno, the founder of the Stoic School. I point out how puzzling most Stoic views appeared to the opposing schools whose members did not hesitate to ascribe many scandalous and shameful views to them, though the Stoic view on eros is not very different from the pedagogical one defended by Socrates as presented in the works of Plato, Xenophon, Aeschines of Sphettus and others. In the second part I focus on a single piece of information attested by Athenaeus, according to which Zeno in his Republic, a work written as an answer to Plato's Republic, took “Eros who brings about friendship, freedom, and concord, to be the god of the city” (SVF I 263). This statement has been interpreted in various ways by eminent scholars, some of whose views I present in brief. In the third and last part, based on the testimony that the Stoics wanted to be called “Socratics,” I argue that Zeno proved himself a genuine Socratic, taking into account not only the Platonic Socrates's view of eros, but also that of Xenophon, to whom Zeno's philosophical education can be traced back. I also tend to believe that Zeno's Republic is not a case of a conventional city, but that of the famous Stoic cosmopolis governed by the law of nature in a spirit of friendship, concord and freedom. © 2015 Philosophy Documentation Cente

Humanism, secularism and embryos

In this paper I discuss the moral status of the embryo in the light of secularism and humanism. After having clarified the terms of the title on which I was asked to speak, and taking for granted that humanism is essential to bioethics, I focus on secularism and sketch some versions of secular bioethics, that of Engelhardt in particular, who has elaborated the most full-fledged view of secular morality according to which only persons have moral worth and embryos get whatever moral significance is attributed to them by the actual persons who want them. Given that there is a consensus that before the 14th day from fertilization, human pre-embryos, particularly those that are not destined to develop into children, can be objects of experimentation, and that embryonic stem cells can be utilized for therapeutic reasons, I argue that it is consistent with a moderate version of secular humanism to use pre-14-day embryos as means and not only as ends. Humanism and secularism are too broad concepts to dictate a single opinion on the moral status of the embryo. © 2007 Published by Reproductive Healthcare Ltd