Rethinking Life and Death through the Lens of NESTs

Abstract

The goal of the presentation is to outline changes in thinking about and understanding of life and death as the basic notions for philosophy, ethics, biology, anthropology, etc. The presentation will refer to examples from new practices mentioned above. Rethinking death helps us not only to realize essence of this phenomenon, but it also clarifies importance of valuing lifе

Book of Abstracts Death is an integral and inevitable part of all lives. Not only man has to die, s/he also – at least after gaining self-awareness – realises this necessity and has to take an approach toward it, which is experienced, reflected and shaped by daily life, myths, art, religion, philosophy, science and other forms of culture. The unprecedented technological, economic and demographic deve lopments of industrialised civilisation have pushed out this topic from modern men ́s thoughts. However, the consequences of these developments brought the issue back to relevance within the last 50 years, especially in medicine and healthcare. After the initial marginalisation, a renaissance of reflection upon issues of death and dying in philosophy, ethics, theology, and sciences, has resulted in the rise of thanatology and interdisciplinary character of this discourse. Within the research project VEGA no. 1/0521/17, Critique of Theoretical and Methodological Foundations of Contemporary Bioethical Discussions on Death and Dying, the conference would like to follow up on the discussion involving issues which were kept aside. The aim of the conference is to create a platform for creative exchange of opinions on the issue of death and dying from the perspective of contemporary bioethics, as well as from the more complex point of view, encompassing all of its forms and in its current and past forms.