Chapter 2. A Challenge to the Concept of Human Rights and Human Dignity From the Philosophical Viewpoint of Global Bioethics

Abstract

Because it is an extension of social individualism, the concept of human rights is not adapted to solving the issues that human activity raises for the environment. On the contrary, as a basis for “global bioethics” we need to create a new humanism, less anthropocentric, able to integrate the diversity of cultural approaches. Closer to the traditional ethics of the Asian countries, it would no longer make human rights an absolute principle but would take into account man in a situation: member of a family, a neighbourhood, a community, a society.