There Is No Moral Authority in Medicine: Response to Cowdin and Tuohey
Central to the Cowdin-Tuohey paper is the concept of a moral authority proper to medical practitioners. Much as I agree with the authors in refusing to degrade doctors to the status of mere technicians, I argue that one does not succeed in retrieving the moral dimension of medical practice by invest...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Oxford University Press
1998
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| In: |
Christian bioethics
Year: 1998, Volume: 4, Issue: 1, Pages: 63-82 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Electronic
Non-electronic |
| Summary: | Central to the Cowdin-Tuohey paper is the concept of a moral authority proper to medical practitioners. Much as I agree with the authors in refusing to degrade doctors to the status of mere technicians, I argue that one does not succeed in retrieving the moral dimension of medical practice by investing doctors with moral authority. I show that none of the cases brought forth by Cowdin-Tuohey really amounts to a case of moral authority. Then I try to explain why no such cases can be found. Developing an insight that is common to all the major moral thinkers in the philosophia perennis, I show that doctors are professionally competent with respect only to a part of the human good; morally wise persons are competent with respect to that which makes man good as man. I try to show why it follows that a) professional expertise has no natural tendency to pass over into moral understanding, and that b) doctor and non-doctor alike start from the same point in developing their understanding of medical morality. It follows that the authors fail in their attempt to de-center the moral magisterium of the Church by setting up centers of moral authority outside of the Church. |
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| ISSN: | 1744-4195 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Christian bioethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1076/chbi.4.1.63.6910 |