Preface

*Bioethics in Medicine and Society* provides readers with an overview of several topics in the broad field of ethics, ranging from the very personal topics of end-of-life decision making and cancer screening to the larger global practices of geoengineering, the Internet of Things, and medical missions to low- and middle-income countries. Several chapters also provide a broad overview of the field of medical ethics to lay a solid foundation for the more specialized topics. Few readers will be familiar with the broad range and applications of bioethics. Bioethics not only applies to direct patient care but also to laboratory medicine, to our response to climate change, and even to the evolution of religious marriage. Although no single textbook can comprehensively address the entire field of bioethics, this book offers in-depth discussions of a broad range of several important topics in the field.

#### **Thomas F. Heston, MD, MS, FAAFP, FASNC, FACNM**

Clinical Associate Professor, Elson S Floyd College of Medicine, Washington State University, Spokane, Washington, USA

#### **Sujoy Ray**

IQ City Medical College, Durgapur, West Bengal, India

**1**

Section 1

Clinical

Section 1 Clinical

**3**

**Chapter 1**

**Abstract**

bioethics, and theology?

**1. Introduction**

The Quality of Life in the Light of

Immanence and Its Sacrality in the

One of the biggest current issues of European society is the dramatic decrease of the natality rate in most countries. Comparing these low natality rates and the increased mortality rates, we can conclude that in a not too distant future, the European demographic fund will differ greatly from the current one. In this context, the biotechnological industry is looking for a way to extend life for as long as possible. The paper analyses the way in which the two categories – people who want to extend their life and people who want to bring it to an end – report to the transcendental relationship. The questions for which an answer is sought are: Can we, in the light of immanence, reach the truth? Which are the answers of medicine,

The concept of "quality of life" has several traits that have been analysed by researchers to assess human life in society [1]. Without the intention of analysing this phrase exhaustively, we want to show how this concept should be understood in

**Immanence** is a term which, referring to a thing or a being, states that existence and reality exist and evolve by themselves, undetermined by an outside cause and it

The term **transcendence** refers to what lies beyond any given domain, beyond the material world. In Immanuel Kant's philosophy, the term designates what lies beyond the limits of experimental knowledge, inaccessible to experience-based knowledge, which exceeds the limits of reality. In religious philosophies, it refers to

**The quality of life** (in a comprehensive interpretation) represents the totality of conditions that ensure the integrity of biological life, the satisfaction of socioeconomic requirements related to the level of material and spiritual living that allows balance, the formation and assertion of human personality. The paradigm that characterises the research related to the quality of life refers to bridging the de facto conditions (the conditions of existence) with the people's perceptions and evaluations, with their moods of satisfaction/dissatisfaction, happiness/frustration. The concept of "quality of life" leads us to the crucial question "What is life?" whose answer, from a scientific-rational perspective, is ambiguous, since there are

Light of Transcendence

*Ungureanu Mihail Adeodatus and Vasile Astărăstoae*

**Keywords:** quality of life, immanent, transcendent, biotechnology

the light of the notions of *immanent* and *transcendent*.

is characteristic to the nature of the object or being.

that instance of divinity that lies above its creations.
