The future possibility of bioethics, biolaw and the rule of law
Authors: Beyleveld, D., Brownsword, R.
Publication Date: 01/01/2025
Pages: 50-70
DOI: 10.4337/9781788116671.00008
Abstract:This chapter adopts a Gewirthian perspective to speculate on the nature and possibility of bioethics and biolaw in the future (indeed, on the possibility of governance by the rule of law generally) in the face of current and threatened global political, cultural, technological, and environmental developments and upheavals. After outlining and defending Alan Gewirth's Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC) as the categorical imperative, the chapter argues that, given human nature, only incremental steps are possible and justified by the PGC itself to attain its ideal final ends. Given the reasons for this, the PGC requires a political legal order structured along the lines of Rawls's political liberalism, for which the premises of David Gauthier's morals by agreement are necessary conditions. However, the developments that are the focus of this chapter seriously threaten these conditions, auguring a possible Malthusian-Luddite nightmare. Two paths might be taken to forestall this: a ‘reductive’ one that abandons altogether the ideals of a political liberal democratic order purely in the interest of order; or an ‘expansive’ one that tries rapidly to reinstate and strengthen the conditions for a pragmatic order guided by the PGC. The chapter offers no solutions. What ought to be done and needs to be done is clear. But time is running out if it has not already done so.
Source: Scopus