The thorny way of European Bioethics

Abstract

The ambiguity of the term bioethics has brought different views and has resulted in the development of European bioethics, which relies on the postulates of Fritz Jahr. The intention of this paper is to follow the development of the idea of European Bioethics by analyzing the growth of the journal Jahr – European Journal of Bioethics. Undoubtedly, Jahr had to counterbalanced mainstream bioethics (medical ethics) with the emerging European Bioethics based on Fritz Jahr’s and Van Rensselaer Potter’s original teachings, Euro-Mediterranean (and other non-Anglo-American) values, and the Integrative Bioethics methodology. Due to the broadness of the pluri-perspective approach, Jahr slipped into »thematic inconsistency« and its epistemological »rebelliousness« certainly will remain a problem for a long time.