Bioethics : Ancient Themes in Contemporary Issues

by Mark G. Kuczewski and Ronald Polansky (Eds.)

• ISBN13: 9780262112543
• ISBN10: 026211254X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-01
• Publisher: MIT PRESS

Summary

In recent years, bioethicists have worked on government commissions, on ethics committees in hospitals and nursing homes, and as bedside consultants. Because ethical knowledge is based on experience within the field rather than on universal theoretical propositions, it is open to criticism for its lack of theoretical foundation. Once in the clinic, however, ethicists noted the extent to which medical practice itself combined the certitudes of science with craft forms of knowledge. In an effort to forge a middle path between pure science and applied medical and ethical knowledge, bioethicists turned to the work of classical philosophy, especially the theme of a practical wisdom that entails a variable knowledge of particulars. In this book contemporary bioethicists and scholars of ancient philosophy explore the import of classical ethics on such pressing bioethical concerns as managed care, euthanasia, suicide, and abortion. Although the contributors write within the limits of their own disciplines, through cross references and counterarguments they engage in fruitful dialogue.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword
Introduction
The Character of Medical and Ethical Knowledge	p. 1
Remembering the Hippocratics: Knowledge, Practice, and Ethos of Ancient Greek Physician-Healers	p. 3
Is Medicine Art, Science, or Pratical Wisdom? Ancient and Contemporary Reflections	p. 31
Phronesis and the Misdescription of Medicine: Against The Medical School Commencement Speech	p. 57
Aristotle, Phrenesis, and Postmodern Bioethics	p. 67
Confessions of an Unrepentant Sophist	p. 93
Philosophical Therapy, Ancient and Modern	p. 109
The Heuristic Value of Classical Approaches	p. 129
Thrasymachus and Managed Care: How Not to Think about the Craft of Medicine	p. 131
Potentiality and Persons: An Aristotelian Perspective	p. 155
Can Communitarianism End the Shrill and Interminable Public Debates? Abortion as a Case-in-Point	p. 179
Classical and Modern Reflections on Medical Ethics and the Best Interests of the Sick Child	p. 193
Facing Death Like a Stoic: Epictetus on Suicide in the Case of Illness	p. 229
Euthanasia and the Physician's Role: Reflections on Some Views in the Ancient Greek Tradition	p. 251
Contributors	p. 291
Index	p. 293
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