Abstract

Francesco D’Agostino’s bioethical and biojuridical reflection is inscribed within the horizon of his philosophy of law perspective, as an emblematic field of application of particular complexity and urgency in the face of the rapidity of the questions emerging from technoscientific progress. On a philosophical level, Francesco D’Agostino’s bioethics starts from an ontological and non-reductionist conception of human nature, a nature that cannot be reduced to a mere mechanism or extended matter in motion, but a nature endowed with logos, which places the dignity of the human person at the center. According to D’Agostino, bioethics from “defense of lifeµ, or “protection against risksµ, should become “bioethics of careµ. If contempt and denial of limits support the arrogance of the strongest, acceptance of human limits activates reciprocal duties. Awareness of vulnerability opens care, which frees itself from cold reciprocity, to embrace asymmetrical reciprocity as bioethics of love, gift, compassion, solidarity.