AUTONOMY IN HEALTHCARE THROUGH THE PRISM OF UNIVERSALISM AND CULTURES

Abstract

Talking about autonomy in healthcare is a tall order if we conceive of autonomy as a manifestation of individual freedom and health as a good that every citizen can claim to enjoy. The relationship is no longer simply an individual one: trust (that of the patient) versus conscience (that of the carer)? It is individual but dependent on a collective dimension. The reality is indeed complex, even contradictory, particularly when we analyse autonomy through the prism of universalism and cultures. Proclaimed as universal by human rights, reality nevertheless confronts us with the limits of this principle: the vulnerability of the subject, which does not always allow him or her to consent (well), and the socio-cultural context, which relativises the scope of this principle. So should we turn to the other face of bioethics, that which is applied in context? But how can we reconcile the principle of universality with the diversity of its application, as highlighted by the delicate issue of biomedical research on human beings? Such is the ambiguity of a bioethics in search of effectiveness: it requires us to continue to reflect on the balance between ethical relativism and moral universalism.