A doutrina de diotima: metaxo e neuroética na tensão existencial e o impulso por uma fundamentação ética do direito

Abstract

The search for foundations of behavior is part of the human condition. Thrown into the existential tension, the human being continually projects itself to these justifications. This happens with the law and its ethical foundations: to give legitimacy and authority to legal systems, human beings present different justifications for their moral options in the constitution of the law, searching for its foundations in ideal instances. In the conflict between jusnaturalisms and juspositivisms, the values relevant to the legal system have been reduced to the convenience of those who dominates the production of formal sources of law. With the complexity of western hegemony and the strengthening of juspositivism, the different legal orders were reduced to the imperative of positive law, giving rise to a radical separation between law and morality. Adopting an approach based on realist rhetorical philosophy, the aim of this research is to analyze such circumstances and reflect on new ways of determining the founding elements of the legal systems, especially in its human rights content. In the face of multiculturalism and the consequent moral relativism, these rights have suffered a loss of effectiveness. The research opted for the adoption of strategic rhetoric for the purpose of renewing of the epistemological paradigm that erected walls between morals and science. To this end, it joined the studies of moral biologism, specifically those of neurophilosophy, a branch of neuroscience that studies morality by examining the existence of neuroethic. This ethics can be identified from the functioning of the mind-body relationship mediated by the brain and its sensory portals. In an conjecture interpretive, the research approached the concept of metaxy, from Plato’s Symposium, with Socrates' inner voice, and conscience, understood according to the philosophy of mind to propose the use of observable values from the neuroethics as the foundation of human rights. This proposal is based on the premise that brain neuroimaging techniques make it possible to identify certain behaviors and their effects on human well-being, providing a criterion for assessing their harmful or beneficial character and increasing human well-being. The thesis defends that the displacement of the ethical foundations of an essentialist rationality for the corporeality of the human being, perceived from the brain functions, true interpreters of phenomena, will allow to combat the relativisms alleged in the disrespect to human rights.