ABSTRACT
Major public and private laboratories have entered into a race to find an effective COVID-19 vaccine. When that vaccine arrives, the governments will have to implement vaccination programs to achieve the necessary immunization levels to prevent the disease transmission. In this context, the ethical dilemma of compulsory vaccination vs. voluntary vaccination will be raised. Underlying this dilemma, lies the problem of the ethical models on which the political decisions of governments in matters of health are based. The article proposes and argues the need to base health policy decisions on an ethical «first person¼ model, based on responsibility, that allows us to move from a normative ethic to an ethic of responsible behavior. This change in the ethical model, together with certain proposals for political action, will help us to restore institutional trust so that the necessary levels of collective immunity against COVID-19 can be achieved through the voluntary vaccination of the citizens.
ABSTRACT
This paper attempts to reconstruct the ethics of human response-ability as a theological reflection on the current climate catastrophe, seeing humans as moral actors or a moral actor network. In the meantime, I will argue the relationality and interdependence of matter and discourse, nature and society, and humans and non-humans through crosstalk between ecofeminist theologies and new materialism. In doing so, I reinterpret the human subject as a potential for liberation from modern human exceptionalism, acknowledging the subversive power of the concept of the subject.
ABSTRACT
What happens during an emergency situation? And which ideas about the future stem from these events? The COVID-19 pandemic offers the opportunity to reflect on human actions occurring with a dimension of solidarity only in situations of emergency. We will start from Sorokin's intuition, which can be summarized in the statement:The future of humanity is in the hands of humanity itself. We will assume that collective damage requires collective strategies, reinforcing and renovating networks in the community. To highlight the necessary changes to turn individual and collective dynamics towards resilience, we follow with the consideration that it is necessary to rediscover the positive values of individuals. This, in turn, leads to further reflection on the problems of choice and the ethics of responsibility that permits individuals to embrace the concept of "common good", something that they experience as members of a community and that they can only pursue from the standpoint of solidarity. The latter, indeed, is what gives meaning to human action and the very development of humankind.
ABSTRACT
Major public and private laboratories have entered into a race to find an effective Covid-19 vaccine. When that vaccine arrives, the governments will have to implement vaccination programs to achieve the necessary immunization levels to prevent the disease transmission. In this context, the ethical dilemma of compulsory vaccination vs. voluntary vaccination will be raised. Underlying this dilemma, lies the problem of the ethical models on which the political decisions of governments in matters of health are based. The article proposes and argues the need to base health policy decisions on an ethical "first person" model, based on responsibility, that allows us to move from a normative ethic to an ethic of responsible behavior. This change in the ethical model, together with certain proposals for political action, will help us to restore institutional trust so that the necessary levels of collective immunity against Covid-19 can be achieved through the voluntary vaccination of the citizens.