In English

Speakers: Judit Sándor. Márton Varju, Ilona Kappanyos, Viola Lászlófi, Sámdor Horváth, György Majtényi, József Kovács, Péter Kakuk, Elena Brodeala, Barna Szamosi

During the postwar period, European societies were increasingly medicalized. Medicine was extended to all spheres of social life: health became an implicit or explicit right, health care accessible to (almost) everybody, medicines a medico-industrial complex, and medical advances critical to both utopian and dystopian visions. Medical sciences and institutions (e.g. the pharmaceutical revolution, psychiatric reforms etc.) played a central role in imagining the future. However, life sciences often nourished radically new (utopian) conceptions of living, cohabitation, and self-realization. Ideals, goals, and objectives may have been different on each side of post war Europe but what was shared was the common concern for life and limb of their respective populations. The Budapest team will examine how ethical and legal policies reflect differences and similarities in the East and in the West. We shall focus on specific elements of the legal system, such as, right to health, principle of autonomy, principle of non-commodification. In our first Budapest workshop we intend to develop collaborations and focusing on the context of the socialist health care and medicine through some selected themes. We plan to organize regular workshops on the themes of the Leviathan Project.