Copyright

Henk ten Have

Published On

2026-09-14

Language

  • English

Print Length

40 pages

THEMA

  • QDTQ
  • MBDC
  • JHB
  • PDR

BISAC

  • PHI005000
  • MED050000
  • POL029000
  • SCI075000
  • PHI000000

Keywords

  • Bioethics
  • Global crises
  • Resilience
  • Global ethics

4. Developing a Global Ethical Perspective

Chapter of: Bioethics in Apocalyptic Times

Chapter four examines how a global ethical perspective has developed and what are its major components. The vulnerabilities experienced and exposed in the pandemic reveal that people are connected at multiple levels. Human beings are situated in a web of relationships with each other, and flourish not as isolated individuals but as social beings. They are furthermore embedded in the environment which provides the conditions for their health. The significance of connectedness for human well-being is recognized in the development of the perspective of global bioethics that brings together individual, social and environmental dimensions of life. This perspective presents a broader ethical horizon so that processes of globalisation and new global problems can be critically reviewed and addressed. Its core notion is relationality, with the consequence that moral attention shifts from autonomy to vulnerability, from individualism to sociality, from self-interests to common interests, and from human value to the value of all living and non-living beings. The result is a global ethics vision that articulates ethical ideals and values that are crucial in a globalised world and that can counteract prevailing apocalyptic sentiments, offering hope for a better future.

Contributors

Henk ten Have

(author)
Emeritus Professor at Duquesne University
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3224-7943

Henk ten Have has been Director of the Center for Healthcare Ethics at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, USA (2010–2019). He studied medicine and philosophy in the Netherlands and worked as professor in the Faculty of Medicine of the Universities of Maastricht and Nijmegen. From 2003 until 2010 he has joined UNESCO in Paris as Director of the Division of Ethics of Science and Technology. Since 2019 he is Emeritus Professor, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA, and since 2021 Research Professor at the Faculty of Bioethics in the Universidad Anahuac Mexico. He is editor of the International Journal of Ethics Education, and Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy. He currently is President of the International Association for Education in Ethics.His recent book publications are Global Bioethics: An Introduction (2016), Vulnerability: Challenging Bioethics (2016), Global Education in Bioethics (2018), Wounded Planet: How Declining Biodiversity Endangers Health and How Bioethics Can Help (2019), Dictionary of Global Bioethics (with Maria do Céu Patrão Neves, 2021), Bioethics, Healthcare and the Soul (with Renzo Pegoraro, 2022), Bizarre Bioethics: Ghosts, Monsters and Pilgrims (2022), The Covid-19 Pandemic and Global Bioethics (2022). He has edited the Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics (2016) and Global Education in Bioethics (2018). His most recent book is Color, Healthcare and Bioethics (2025), published by OBP and available at https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0443