ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by the search for ‘European bioethics’ by looking at the terms in isolation. Some commentators have suggested that there is indeed something identifiable and distinctive about bioethics within the different territories in which it is practised and theorised, Europe included. Distinctive identities can also be detected at the other end of the spectrum, at–and even beyond–the level of continents. Starting with ‘bioethics’, the origins of which are somewhat contested, Campbell points out that this literally ‘just means the “ethics of life”’. Bioethics therefore provides a meeting place for various disciplines, which are themselves potentially heterogeneous. Bioethics’ status as a discipline has nevertheless been contested, on the basis that it lacks the required unity. European bioethics then builds on the European ideas to develop its idiosyncratic approaches and values. The arguments combine to suggest that bioethics should be pluralistic: values and approaches, plural, should be drawn upon in order to address bioethical problems, wherever they arise.
