Public Bioethics Amidst a Pluralist People: A Project of Presumption, Despair, or Hope?

This article examines political theorist Michael Lamb's interpretation of Augustine of Hippo's virtue of hope and its application to bioethics, proposing a framework for bioethicists to evaluate whether their theories and practices embody hope. Lamb's "politics of hope" emphasizes cooperation among diverse citizens united by shared proximate goods despite differing ultimate moral and metaphysical beliefs, positioning hope as the mean between despair and presumption. Applying this to bioethics, the article identifies three features of hopeful bioethics: recognizing shared proximate bioethical goods across diverse perspectives, fostering cooperation to attain these goods, and maintaining robust dialogue about underlying moral and metaphysical differences to understand the limits and possibilities of collaboration. This framework encourages bioethicists to engage in self-reflection and cooperative efforts toward difficult but attainable bioethical aims within pluralistic contexts.