Everyone engaged in the interdisciplinary bioethical research knows that bioethics has to translate different scientifi c languages in one another and these different scientifi c languages often relate to different normative orders, if not apparently exclusive world views. A bioethicist therefore must have a reflective knowledge of the different “logics” of the languages that need to be combined in each effort to solve a bioethical problem. The “dialogue” between sciences is a “dialogue” between comprehensive “systems” of interpreting the world; it is a dialogue between “perspectives” which normally include their own concepts of what is true and valuable and of how truths and values should be expressed. An integrative bioethics needs to acknowledge this fact and to at least foster refl ection on the problem.

The contributions collected in this volume – mostly based on lectures and presentations at the IV. International Summer School “Bioethics in Context”, held from 4th to 10th September 2017 in the Guest House of St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, in Kiten, Bulgaria – are dedicated to basic concepts which underlie or have to be shared in a fruitful dialogue between philosophy and the life sciences and also to some concrete aspects of this dialogue. The authors are concerned with two main questions: the question of what an integrative bioethics can contribute to the philosophy / life sciences dialogue, and the question of what the specifi c role of philosophy in this context is.