The significance of Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics of responsibility for medical judgment

Bibliographic Data

ID21702494
AuthorsLazare Benaroyo (0000-0002-9852-0463, University of Lausanne, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume25
Issue3
Pages327-332
Publication date2022-09-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedicine Health Care and Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1386-7423 • E-ISSN: 1572-8633
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11019-022-10077-0
PMID35909196
OpenAlexW4289028928
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited5

At a time when the practice of medicine is subject to technical and biopolitical imperatives that give rise to defensive bioethics, it is essential to revitalize the ethical dimensions of care at the very heart of the clinic, in order to give new meaning to the moral responsibility that inhabits it. This contribution seeks to meet this challenge by drawing on the ethical resources of the work of Emmanuel Levinas. In Levinas’ view, ethical responsibility is the response to the injunction, the interpellation, of the other’s face, and humaneness is conceived entangled in the other’s face. Against this background, I suggest that Levinas’ philosophical insight constitutes a turning point from a traditional to a new conception of responsibility that may bear great significance to a renewed understanding of an hermeneutics and an ethics of care. By drawing on this aspect of Levinas’ thought, I would like to reveal the ethical core of an ethics of clinical care that shapes a new insight on medical judgment

Bioethics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Hermeneutics · Medical ethics · Medical law · Philosophy of biology · Philosophy of medicine · Philosophy of science · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Ethics in medical practice · Law · Medicine · Patient Dignity and Privacy · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism

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