Reconceiving Medical Ethics

This volume of original work comprises a modest challenge, sometimes direct, sometimes implicit, to the mainstream Anglo-American conception of the discipline of medical ethics.

It does so not by trying to fill the gaps with exotic minority interest topics, but by re-examining some of the fundamental assumptions of the familiar philosophical arguments, and some of the basic situations that generate the issues. The most important such situation is the encounter between the doctor and the suffering patient, which forms one of the themes of the book. The authors show that concepts such as the body, suffering and consent - and the role such concepts play within patients' lives - are much more complicated than the Anglo-American mainstream appreciates. Some of these concepts have been discussed with subtlety by Continental philosophers (like Heidegger, Ricoeur), and a secondary purpose of the volume is to apply their ideas to medical ethics. Designed for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students with some philosophical background in ethics, Reconceiving Medical Ethics opens up new avenues for discussion in this ever-developing field.

Christopher Cowley is Lecturer in Philosophy at University College Dublin, Ireland. His previous publications include Medical Ethics: Ordinary Concepts, Ordinary Lives (2008).

Contributors \ Introduction Christopher Cowley \ Part I. The suffering patient, the suffering body \ 1. The body: property, commodity or gift? Alastair V. Campbell \ 2. Ricœur's medical ethics: the encounter between the physician and the patient Gaëlle Fiasse \ 3. Bringing the lived body to medical ethics evaluation: learning to see the suffering other Kristin Zeiler \ Part II. When high-tech medicine fails: old age, dying, and mental illness \ 4. Old age and dependency Eric Matthews \ 5. An ethical enquiry into the concept of palliative care Rien Janssens and Guy Widdershoven \ 6. Mental illness and medical ethics: Insights from Heidegger and Values-Based Medicine Steve Ramplin and Julian C. Hughes \ 7. Depression, physician-assisted suicide and the Dutch Chabot case Christopher Cowley \ Part III. Autonomy and autonomous decision-making \ 8. Autonomy: presumptively precluding consequentialism in medical ethics D.K. Levy \ 9. Respecting patients' religious beliefs David Albert Jones \ 10. Luck and risk in medicine Nafsika Athanassoulis and Allison Ross \ 11. The lay patient and genetic illness Ruth Stirton \ Part IV. The law, the profession and ethics \ 12. Law at the limits at the limits of life? Richard Huxtable \ 13. Bringing the profession into disrepute - an ethical or legal issue? Cliona McGovern \ 14. Conscientious objection in medicine Mark Wicclair \ 15. Clinical and ethical judgement Julian C. Hughes and Steve Ramplin \ Notes \ Bibliography \ Index