The political culture of the Western world often opposes liberalism and paternalism, assuming that the first term indicates a defense of the value of individual freedom, constitutive of the human rights culture, while the second would deny this value. This paper defends the thesis that such terms, as a whole, have a dialectical relationship, because the first would take the place of a thesis and the second of an antithesis, which synthesis would be represented by the moment of biopolitics, which would in turn, constitute a new thesis, in a new dialectical process in which the place of the antithesis would be represented by bioethics, both of which would converge in a new synthesis, represented by the empowering of people, and that is constitutive of democratic societies, or that claim themselves as such.
Bioethics; Biopolitics; Democracy; Empowerment; Freedom; Paternalism