Behrens Kevin G
Dev World Bioeth. 2018 Jun;18(2):126-134. doi: 10.1111/dewb.12145. Epub 2017 May 3.
I give an account how the principle of 'respect for autonomy' dominates the field of bioethics, and how it came to triumph over its competitors, 'respect for persons' and 'respect for free power of choice'. I argue that 'respect for autonomy' is unsatisfactory as a basic principle of bioethics because it is grounded in too individualistic a worldview, citing concerns of African theorists and other communitarians who claim that the principle fails to acknowledge the fundamental importance of understanding persons within the nexus of their communal relationships. I defend the claim that 'respect for persons' is a more appropriate principle, as it is able to acknowledge both individual decision making and the essential relationality of persons. I acknowledge that my preference for 'respect for persons' is problematic because of the important debate around the definition of 'personhood' in bioethics discourse. Relying on Thaddeus Metz's conception of moral status, I propose a relational definition of personhood that distinguishes between persons with agency and persons without agency, arguing that we have different moral obligations to these distinct categories of persons. I claim that this conception of personhood is better able to accommodate our moral intuitions than conventional approaches, and that it is able to do so without being speciesist or question-begging.
我阐述了“尊重自主性”原则如何主导生物伦理学领域，以及它是如何战胜其竞争对手“尊重人”和“尊重自由选择权”的。我认为，“尊重自主性”作为生物伦理学的基本原则并不令人满意，因为它基于一种过于个人主义的世界观，并引用了非洲理论家及其他社群主义者的担忧，他们认为该原则未能认识到在社群关系网络中理解人的根本重要性。我捍卫“尊重人”是更合适原则这一观点，因为它既能承认个人决策，又能承认人的本质关联性。我承认，由于生物伦理学话语中围绕“人格”定义存在重要辩论，我对“尊重人”的偏好存在问题。依靠撒迪厄斯·梅茨的道德地位概念，我提出了一种人格的关系性定义，区分了有行为能力的人和无行为能力的人，并认为我们对这两类不同的人有不同的道德义务。我声称，这种人格概念比传统方法更能容纳我们的道德直觉，并且能够做到这一点而不陷入物种主义或循环论证。
