Religion and Bioethics

The Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology, University of Padova, announces the advanced European Lecture Series on ‘Religion and Bioethics’. In our globalized and multicultural societies, religions play an important role since they profoundly shape the different cultures. Given this phenomenon, the traditional modern strategy of managing conflicts by separating public and private sphere doesn’t work anymore. Indeed, many authors have suggested that we live in post-secular societies, in which religious attitudes and secular values are closely interconnected and influence each other. Also for this reason, it has become more and more evident that bioethical issues cannot be dealt with just with principles and rules, because they always involve dimensions of meaning. Since the most important sources of meaning for the life of people come from religious traditions, reference to religions is inescapable. Yet, the more such reference and consideration of religions become inevitable, the more bioethics must create the conditions for a fruitful dialogue among these traditions and between religious and secular persons. The lecture series explicitly identifies the basis for this dialogue in the anthropological dimension. Such strategy seems to make possible and justify, better than other approaches, the link between bioethics and religions. Contents of the course include: (1) a characterization of religion as a fundamental human experience; (2) a discussion of the role of religion in the public sphere, within a multicultural context; (3) anthropological presuppositions and bioethical implications of important Western and Eastern religious traditions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism. As to the methods, the course will combine lectures, group discussions and workshops. Since the course will have participants from different religious traditions, group discussions will be of particular interest and a source of reciprocal enrichment. All course activities and materials are in English. Our faculty includes: Stefano Allievi (University of Padova, Italy), Michael Barilan (Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Israel), Mohammed Ghaly (Institute for Religious Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands), Marcello Ghilardi (University of Padova, Italy), Massimo Reichlin (University “Vita e Salute – San Raffaele”, Milano, Italy), Antonio Rigopoulos (Department of Asian and North African Studies, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy). The course should be of interest for health care professionals working in multicultural settings; health care ethics committees members; health care chaplains; hospital volunteers; philosophers and sociologists interested in the role of religion in the public sphere; theologians dealing with the inter-religious dialogue. Location: University of Padova, Italy. Language: English. Price: Euro (€) 600 for early registration before April 30, 2013, Euro (€) 700 for registration after April 30, 2013 (from May 1 to May 27, 2013). For more information, please visit our website: www.masterbioethics.org, under Lecture Series, or write to Silvia Tusino: emmbpadova@gmail.com. The lecture series Religion and Bioethics is part of the Erasmus Mundus Master of Bioethics program.