Pnenomenological Bioethics and Education in Life-Care (Lebenssorge): Husserl, Stein, and Conrad-Martius

In recent decades, phenomenology has had significant applications in different sectors of the world-of-life. Specifically, phenomenological bioethics has been discussed in reference to the primacy of lived experience, to the centrality of the body to ways of being-in-the-world, to the formation and maintenance of empathic relationships between healthcare professionals and patients, and more. Drawing on the thought of the major exponents of classical phenomenology, this essay emphasizes the urgency of a phenomenological bioethics as a “reformulation” of a new ethos for humanity. Building on Husserl’s notion that life inherently carries a sense (telos), Husserlian ethics proposes a care for life that corresponds to care for the intentional correlation among all creatures sharing the same environment. Following Conrad-Martius, Edith Stein further asserts that minerals, plants, and animals also carry this sense, implying that life-care encompasses everything that expresses a “vital form” (ψυχή). This perspective thus reveals the necessity of an ethical discipline that fosters a renewed pedagogical formation in respect for all forms of life, as expressions of that unique sense and unrepeatable individuality. Such an education is rooted in a profound sense of responsibility for what we have received as a gift – something we are constitutionally called to safeguard and continuously renew (immer wieder).