Travelling Companions: ethics and humanities in medicine

Evans, HM

Abstract

The question of whether medicine is essentially a technical science, or rather an existential practice with a centrally ethical task, is one of the mainsprings of the field of enquiry known as «medical humanities», in which ethical and other questions concerning medicine are explored over a broader disciplinary canvas than philosophical medical ethics alone. Here, humanities disciplines (which take human experience as their avowed subject matter, and allow significance to subjectivity as a source of knowledge) focus attention on individual and collective experiences of health, illness, disability and healthcare. Medical humanities recognises that art and imagination can «transfigure the ordinary» in the ethical arena (as well as in contemplating medicine’s ontology and epistemology), thus reminding us that ethical attention (and analysis) has an imaginative as well as an intellectual dimension. Thus, medical humanities offers a broader interdisciplinary engagement that can open and enrich our grasp of the ethical.

Citation

Evans, H. (2011). Travelling Companions: ethics and humanities in medicine. Bioethica Forum (Schwabe, Online), 4(4), 129-134

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2011
• Deposit Date: Dec 16, 2011
• Journal: Bioethica forum.
• Print ISSN: 1662-6001
• Electronic ISSN: 1662-601X
• Publisher: Schwabe Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 129-134
• Keywords: Medical humanities, Medical ethics, Interdisciplinarity, Wonder.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1500927
• Publisher URL: http://www.bioethica-forum.ch/content/e_Archive.php