[...]... irreconcilable: autonomy and care, autonomy and justice, autonomy and solidarity, autonomy and trust, etc Last in this series, for instance, constitutes the focus of a recent book by Onora O’Neill,1 in which she describes in quite a straightforward manner, the conflict between autonomy, as precondition for individual liberty, on the one hand, and trust, as basis for social cooperation and solidarity, on... demands which complement one another, and, if truth be told, this is what we expect and how things really work We do justice only when and if, we really consider what people’s wishes look 1 Onora O’Neill, Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics (Cambridge University Press, 2002) 2 bogdan olaru like, and we show respect for their wishes especially when we take care of them Or, to put it another way, to care. .. deals with some well-known and very popular assumptions about personal autonomy and human identity The main line of the traditional approach identifies autonomy with the ability to recognize and pursue one’s interests and preferences To act autonomously means to act fully independent of external factors and exclusively dependent of internal influences Regine Kather shows that this understanding of autonomy... conceived outside these moral requirements The obligation to care about others and the feeling that others are caring about you is another feature that morally bounds autonomy in medical practice We get a better picture about what autonomy means when we understand the moral demands, which mark the boundary of self-determination Ethics of care and ethics of responsibility are such prospective approaches,... habitat, and similarly, we cannot explore and protect human integrity regardless of what makes and secures the integrity of our lifeworld, that is the very possibility for moral interactions I call this the argument of preserving the special language-game of moral discourse foreword 11 In the last contribution to this volume, Eugen Huzum approaches a subject related to the high costs of health care and. .. liberation, as Singer does? If embryos and even newborn children have no rational interests, because they are not yet self-conscious, why should we protect pigs and cows since they will never become self-conscious? Either the concept of suffering must be widened and thus embrace also feelings of beings which are not self-conscious, that is, of embryos, newborns, and people with severe dementia, or animal... given, and therefore, we must include the anthropological dimension in a more comprehensive understanding of foreword 3 the autonomy concept Only then, the charge of border-crossing could eventually make sense (if ever)—not because of some kind of incompatibility between one’s age and what he or she wants to achieve in some circumstances, but because of the gap between the self-assumed decisions and the... which care and autonomy are complementary to one another in the matter of end-oflife decision-making The next contribution assesses the question of pursuing or ending life-sustaining treatments seen from the viewpoint of the German legislation Once again, the concept of autonomy is crucial for this topic Volker Lipp begins by discussing the various legal forms of conceiving diminished or reduced autonomy,. .. patient’s demands Legal regulation must provide with instruments to mediate the wish of those patients even if, or precisely when, they cannot speak for themselves Guardianship legislation and living wills are such instruments, meant to reestablish the proper conditions for end-of-life decision-making The author shows that these legal instruments must be seen as elaborated forms of 8 bogdan olaru care, as... The same should be the case for life-supporting care and, in general, any treatment which is mainly intended for the prolongation of patient’s life, in the light of strong evidence that the patient did not consent to this treatment (p 105) The third step applies the legal considerations about autonomy and patient-physician relationships to different forms of voluntary and/ or active euthanasia Volker . class="bi x0 y0 w0 h1" alt="" AUTONOMY, RESPONSIBILITY, AND HEALTH CARE AUTONOMY, RESPONSIBILITY, AND HEALTH CARE Critical Reections edited by Bogdan. http://www.romanian-philosophy.ro/person/Bogdan.Olaru or write to: bogdan.olaru@phenomenology.ro ISBN: 97 8-9 7 3-1 99 7-1 6-2 (paperback) ISBN: 97 8-9 7 3-1 99 7-1 7-9 (eBook) TABLE