Human Emotions and the Origins of Bioethics

Bioethical questions are never only abstract puzzles: they touch bodies, relationships, communities, and the environments people inhabit. In Human Emotions and the Origins of Bioethics, Susi Ferrarello asks what changes when emotional experience is treated as part of ethical reasoning rather than dismissed as a distraction from it.

Drawing on phenomenology and psychology, Ferrarello develops a view of bioethics that reaches beyond medical decision-making to consider individual and environmental well-being. The result is an interdisciplinary examination of how people understand themselves, respond to others, and take responsibility for the conditions of life.

Why emotions belong in bioethical thinking

The book first considers what bioethics is, how it emerged, and how approaches shaped by rationalism and dualism can leave important parts of human experience out of view. Ferrarello makes the case for bringing emotions into bioethical discussion, connecting intimate and social life with wider ethical concerns.

From emotional experience to ethical questions

Across its chapters, the book explores the intentionality of emotions and the relationship between parts and wholes. These philosophical discussions are brought into contact with concrete cases, including medical bias in pain management, emotionally engaging artificial intelligence, environmental work in classrooms, pregnancy, and the ethical questions raised by CRISPR-Cas9.

These examples show how ethical problems can cross personal, interpersonal, and societal boundaries. Looking at them together invites a more connected account of responsibility and well-being.

A phenomenological perspective on life and responsibility

Ferrarello’s phenomenological approach asks readers to attend to lived experience: how emotions relate to what matters to us, how identity develops through time, and how the self is situated among other people and the environment. This perspective offers a way to consider bioethics not only as a framework for resolving dilemmas, but also as a sustained inquiry into the quality and conditions of life.

For readers across philosophy, psychology, and health sciences

This book will interest students and readers in bioethics, philosophy, psychology, and health sciences, especially those curious about the role of emotion in ethical judgment. Its interdisciplinary focus also makes it relevant to readers thinking about medical ethics, environmental well-being, and the human consequences of emerging technologies.

For anyone asking how ethical reflection can better account for the fullness of human experience, Ferrarello offers a thoughtful meeting point between philosophical inquiry and real-world concerns.