Fragmentation and Consensus

by Kuczewski, Mark G.

• ISBN13: 9780878407545
• ISBN10: 0878407545
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-07-01
• Publisher: Georgetown Univ Pr

Summary

Both communitarianism and casuistry have sought to restore ethics as a practical science -- the former by incorporating various traditions into a shared definition of the common good, the latter by considering the circumstances of each situation through critical reasoning.Mark G. Kuczewski analyzes the origins and methods of these two approaches and forges from them a new unified approach. This approach takes the communitarian notion of the person as its starting point but also relies upon the narrative and analogical tools of case-based reasoning. He separates out the rhetoric that is incongruent with the Aristotelian aspirations of each method to show that the two are complementary, and that consensus can emerge from fragmentation.He then applies his resulting method to three major problems in bioethics: the difficulties that the issue of personal identity poses for advance directives, the role of the family in medical decision making, and the refusal of treatment because of religious beliefs. He analyzes the need to assume a communitarian notion of the person as a starting point for the application of casuist insights.Combining theoretical, practical, and scholarly insights, this book will be of interest to philosophers, political and social scientists and bioethicists.

Author Biography

Mark G. Kuczewski, is the director of the graduate program in bioethics at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He is also the coauthor, with Rosa Lynn B. Pinkus, of An Ethics Casebook for Hospitals: Practical Approaches to Everyday Cases (Georgetown University Press).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
How Medicine and Aristotle May Yet Save the Life of Ethics	p. 1
Tension Between Communitarian and Casuist: a Case of Sibling Rivalry?	p. 6
Similarities Among the Neo-Aristotelians: the Importance of Practice and Social Role	p. 8
Procedure: Aristotelian Aspirations as the Key to Progress	p. 13
Postscript: Whom to Ponder and the Role of Bioethics	p. 18
Notes	p. 19
The Origins and Methods of Communitarianism	p. 24
Macintyre's Origin-Contra-Babel	p. 26
The "Whole Tradition View" of Communitarianism	p. 31
Sandel's Origin-Contra-Liberalism	p. 45
Communitarianism as Mutual Self-Discovery	p. 51
Conclusion	p. 56
Notes	p. 57
The Origins and Methods of Casuistry	p. 60
The Origin-Contra-Thomism	p. 62
Casuistry as a Freestanding Method of Paradigms and Cases	p. 71
Casuistry as a Rejection of a Tyranny of Principles	p. 80
Casuistry as Kinetic Taxonomy	p. 87
Challenges to Casuistry as Kinetic Taxonomy	p. 89
Conclusion	p. 94
Notes	p. 95
Communitarianism, Casuistry, and Ethical Truth	p. 100
Communitarianism and Truth	p. 102
Whole Tradition Communitarianism: Ethical Truth as a Shared Vision of the Good Life	p. 105
Ethical Truth as Mutual Self-Discovery	p. 108
Casuistry and Truth: Building on Paradigms and Cases	p. 112
Casuistry and Truth: Practical Wisdom, Narrative, and Kinetic Taxonomy	p. 114
The Convergence of Fragmentation: a Communitarian Casuistry	p. 117
Notes	p. 121
Applications of a Communitarian Casuistry in Bioethics	p. 124
The Problem of Advance Directives and Personal Identity	p. 125
The Problem of the Family in Medical Decision Making	p. 138
One Case, Two Tales: the Problem of Religiously Based Treatment Refusals	p. 151
Conclusion	p. 159
Epilogue	p. 159
Notes	p. 160
Literature Cited	p. 163
Name Index	p. 169
Subject Index	p. 171
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