Towards an Embodiment of Environmental Bioethics

Abstract

"A major issue arising from the recent UNESCO Bangkok Consultation Workshop on Codes of Ethics in Engineering, Science and Technology (May 2006) was a concern to teach ethics at key social levels. The Sri Lankan participant stressed that an approach towards ethics pedagogy has “to come from the heart” and not be confined to intellectualism. During the course of the conference co-participants concurred with this view due to the massive ethical abuses occurring worldwide. While the transmission of ethics is crucial in present modernity, the systemic entrenchment of non-ethical attitudes reflects both misinterpretations of socioreligious worldviews and the pre-eminence of unbridled materialism. This paper is a philosophical response to the aforementioned workshop and will elucidate an approach to environmental ethics that concerns itself with human embodiment. A concern with human embodiment not only privileges our perceptual engagement with our life-worlds but also our capacity for self reflexivity. My approach conjoin concepts from the philosophers Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and David Abram. A common feature of each thinker is the recognition of ethical issues in response to human ways of being. "