Eleni Kalokairinou

Various disasters have been affecting our societies for the last few decades, ranging from earthquakes, floods and tsunamis to economic crises, terrorism and migration. When a disaster strikes, it upsets the normal way of life of the society and leaves behind hundreds of thousands of victims and casualties. The questions that arise automatically are first, how one is going to conceive and understand the disasters that occur and, secondly, in what way one is going to intervene, especially after these disasters have struck, and help those affected and injured. What obviously concerns us here is to track down the ethical account which will enable us to consider the disaster theoretically and will guide us to intervene on the field when the actual disaster has occurred. A number of different ethical approaches to dealing with disasters have been propounded by philosophers, among which are notably two, utilitarianism and Kant’s deontology. However, even though these two ethical theories seem to be the “ideal” theories for dealing with the problematic situations arising from disasters, it is argued that they are not ideal at all, as they overlook and do not take into account the particular features of the problematic situations and the feelings of both, the victims and the workers. However, on a more careful examination, it turns out that Kant’s deontological account is not just the formal distanced ethical theory that first appears to be. It also possesses an empirical account, the ethical account of virtues, which can be directly applied to the problems caused by disasters in the real world. Especially, by presenting us with an elaborate analysis of the duty of justice and the duty of beneficence, Kant succeeds in bringing out the practical relevance that his theory of virtues has for disasters.

Abortion and euthanasia are still one of the greatest bioethical challenges. Previous studies have shown that there are differences in attitudes towards these issues depending on socio-demographic characteristics and socio-cultural environment (country of residence). As part of the scientific research project EuroBioMed, we compared the attitudes of students from three Mediterranean countries towards abortion and euthanasia and examined them from the perspective of Mediterranean bioethics. A pen-to-paper survey was conducted on a convenient sample of students (N = 1097) from five universities and four fields of study (Medicine, Law, Theology and Philosophy) in Croatia, Greece and Italy to investigate their attitudes towards abortion and euthanasia. Three hypotheses were tested using t-test and ANOVA for differences in attitudes according to country, field of study, year of study, gender, religiosity, political orientation, financial status, and size of place of residence. While attitudes towards abortion were not statistically significantly different between students from different countries, the analysis showed that students from Italy had more liberal attitudes towards euthanasia. Theology students had more conservative attitudes towards both abortion and euthanasia, while there were no differences between the other groups. Women, final year students, non-religious and politically left-oriented students had more liberal attitudes. The results provided an insight into students’ attitudes towards abortion and euthanasia. Knowledge of the attitudes of these future experts can be valuable for the discussion of these issues. These results also provided a basis for a better understanding of the construct of Mediterranean bioethics.

In this paper I examine which is the most appropriate moral theory for dealing with disaster bioethics contexts. It is pointed out that, contrary to what is usually believed, moral theories of right action cannot actually guide us in such difficult situations. Instead, it is claimed that a virtue ethics theory of an Aristotelian version, which gives emphasis not only on the virtuous person but also on the relevant developmental process of becoming virtuous, can provide us with the right theoretical framework for coping with the problems which the victims of such disastrous situations face.