The Use of Narrative in Jewish Medical Ethics

Anne Jones has pointed out that over the last three decades, stories have been important to medical ethics in at least three ways: (1). Stories as cases for teaching principle-based medical ethics (2). Narratives for moral guides on what is considered living a good life (3). Stories as testimonials written by both patients and physicians. A pioneer in this effort, particularly in regard to using narratives as moral guides, has been the ethicist and philosopher Stanley Hauerwas. Heavily influenced by virtue ethics, Hauerwas believes that it is a person’s particular narrative tradition that provides one with convictions that form the basis of one’s morality. Befitting a Protestant theologian, he is particularly concerned with the Christian narrative. From a Jewish perspective, there has been much less written on the use of narrative in medical ethics. However, it is a mistake to think that narrative has little, if any, role in Rabbinic ethical decision making. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the centrality of narrative in the thought of Orthodox Jewish decisors and the problems inherent in this methodology.     

Casuistry in medical ethics: Rehabilitated,or repeat offender?

For a number of reasons, casuistry has come into vogue in medical ethics. Despite the frequency with which it is avowed, the application of casuistry to issues in medical ethics has been given virtually no systematic defense in the ethics literature. That may be for good reason, since a close examination reveals that casuistry delivers much less than its advocates suppose, and that it shares some of the same weaknesses as the principle-based methods it would hope to supplant.     

Computer Ethics and Moral Methodology

In computer ethics, as in other branches of applied ethics, the problem of the justification of moral judgment is still unresolved. I argue that the method which is referred to as "The Method of Wide Reflective Equilibrium" (WRE) offers the best solution to it. It does not fall victim to the false dilemma of having to choose either case-based particularist or principle-based universalist approaches to the problem of moral justification. I claim that WRE also provides the best model of practical moral reasoning available for computer ethics. It does not pretend to provide quasi-algorithmic procedures for moral decision-making, but neither does it abandon the regulative ideal of communicative transparency in discursive public justification.     

Genetic Counseling and the Ethical Issues Around Direct to Consumer Genetic Testing

Over the last several years, direct to consumer(DTC) genetic testing has received increasing attention in the public, healthcare and academic realms. DTC genetic testing companies face considerable criticism and scepticism,particularly from the medical and genetic counseling community. This raises the question of what specific aspects of DTC genetic testing provoke concerns, and conversely,promises, for genetic counselors. This paper addresses this question by exploring DTC genetic testing through an ethic allens. By considering the fundamental ethical approaches influencing genetic counseling (the ethic of care and principle-based ethics) we highlight the specific ethical concerns raised by DTC genetic testing companies. Ultimately,when considering the ethics of DTC testing in a genetic counseling context, we should think of it as a balancing act. We need careful and detailed consideration of the risks and troubling aspects of such testing, as well as the potentially beneficial direct and indirect impacts of the increased availability of DTC genetic testing. As a result it is essential that genetic counselors stay informed and involved in the ongoing debate about DTC genetic testing and DTC companies. Doing so will ensure that the ethical theories and principles fundamental to the profession of genetic counseling are promoted not just in traditional counseling sessions,but also on a broader level. Ultimately this will help ensure that the public enjoys the benefits of an increasingly genetic based healthcare system.     

Islam and Gender in the Thought of a Critical-Progressive Muslim Scholar-Activist: Ziba Mir-Hosseini

This article highlights the scholarly contribution of the Iranian-born Muslim scholar-activist Ziba Mir-Hosseini to the academic field of gender and Islam. In the first part, Mir-Hosseini's thought is positioned within the larger processes of the shifting loci of authority and normativity in contemporary Islamic discourses, particularly with reference to the emergence of what will here be termed critical-progressive Muslim scholar-activists. There follows a brief justification as to why a study of Mir-Hosseini's thought in relation to gender and Islam warrants examination. Mir-Hosseini's personal journey in the field of gender and Islam is then outlined and her major contributions to the field are noted. This is followed by a discussion of the support Mir-Hosseini finds for her ideas in the hermeneutical theories employed by reformist male Muslim scholars, and then an examination of her views on the relationship between Islamic feminism discourses and (neo-)traditional expressions of Islam. Mir-Hosseini's deconstruction of the assumptions governing classical Muslim family law and ethics that have been re-appropriated and legally enforced by some contemporary Muslim majority nation states is presented next, followed by a discussion of her proposals for the reform of Muslim family law and ethics. The final section discusses Mir Hosseini's activism with special reference to her involvement with Musawah, the global movement for equality in Muslim family law based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.     

Deconstruction is not vegetarianism: Humanism,subjectivity, and animal ethics

This essay examines Jacques Derrida’s contribution to recent debates in animal philosophy in order to explore the critical promise of his work for contemporary discourses on animal ethics and vegetarianism. The essay is divided into two sections, both of which have as their focus Derrida’s interview with Jean-Luc Nancy entitled “‘Eating Well’, or the Calculation of the Subject.” My task in the initial section is to assess the claim made by Derrida in this interview that Levinas’s work is dogmatically anthropocentric, and to determine whether Levinas’s conception of ethics leaves a place for animals. In the second half of the essay I turn to an analysis of Derrida’s discussion of vegetarianism and its critical relation to the humanism and anthropocentrism that he is calling into question. The main argument that I seek to advance here is that deconstruction should not be strictly identified with vegetarianism (as certain of Derrida’s readers have suggested), but rather that what is needed is a thorough deconstruction of existing discourses on vegetarianism, a project that remains largely to be developed.     

Being an Intelligent Slave of God

How did premodern Muslim thinkers talk about living authentically as a Muslim in the world? How, in their view, could selves transform themselves into ideal religious subjects or slaves of God? Which virtues, technologies of the self and intersubjective relations did they see implicated in inhabiting or attaining what I shall call ?abdī subjectivity? In this paper, I make explicit how various discursive, ethical strategies formed, informed, and transformed Muslim subjectivity in early Muslim thought by focusing on the writings of an important ninth century Muslim moral pedagogue, al‐Mu?āsibī (d. 857). This study illustrates the advantages of approaching early Muslim texts and discourses through the tools and methods made available by comparative religious ethics in order to reexamine our understanding of Muslim subject formation and the role of ethical and theological discourses in the same.     

Beyond a western bioethics?

Like theology and ethics generally, bioethics has increasingly developed a global consciousness. Controversies over AIDS research and access to affordable AIDS treatment have generated new awareness about the importance of international collaboration as well as the difficulty of achieving moral consensus across economic, political, and cultural divides. Advances in scientific and medical knowledge through initiatives such as the Human Genome Project invite new questions about the nature of health care as a common good. This budding global consciousness serves as a starting point for examining contemporary challenges to the secular, principle-based Western bioethics that has dominated national and international debate for three decades.     

The concept of risk and responsible conduct of research

Assessment of risk is one of the key issues in the field of responsible conduct of research which covers discourses of research ethics and research integrity. The principle of minimizing risks and balancing of risks and benefits is one of the main requirements of research ethics. In addition, the content of informed consent that is another fundamental principle of research ethics derives from the assessment of risks and benefits related to a particular research project. Risk assessment also plays a crucial role in methodological design of the research project. This is an important point where research ethics and research integrity discourses overlap. Firstly, because the choice of a control group (e.g., placebo control) is a key ethical issue related to the protection of the research subjects' interests. Secondly, because the quality of the research data, that is one of the key elements of research integrity, is closely connected to the choice of research methodology as well. The problem of biased interpretation or manipulation of risk related features of biomedical research should also be taken into account. Despite the importance of the concept of risk to the field of biomedical research, its relevance has not yet attracted a sufficient attention in the responsible conduct of research debate.     

Hermeneutics of Medicine in the Wake of Gadamer: the Issue of Phronesis

The relevance of the Aristotelian concept ofphronesis – practical wisdom – for medicine and medical ethics has been much debated during the last two decades. This paper attempts to show how Aristotle’s practical philosophy was of central importance toHans-Georg Gadamer and to the development of his philosophical hermeneutics, and how,accordingly, the concept of phronesiswill be central to a Gadamerian hermeneutics of medicine. If medical practice is conceived of as an interpretative meeting between doctor and patient with the aim of restoring the health of the latter, then phronesis is the mark of the good physician, who through interpretation comes to know the best thing todo for this particular patient at this particular time. The potential fruitfulness of this hermeneutical appropriation of phronesis for the field of medical ethics is also discussed. The concept can be (and has been) used in critiques of the conceptualization of bioethics as the application of principle-based theory to clinical situations, since Aristotle’s point is exactly that problems of praxis cannot be approached in this way. It can also point theway for alternative forms of medical ethics, such as virtue ethics or a phenomenological andhermeneutical ethics. The latter alternative would have to address the phenomena of healthand the good life as issues for medical practice. It would also have to map out in detail the terrain of the medical meeting and the acts of interpretation through which phronesis is exercised. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Hysterical Again: The Gastrointestinal Woman in Medical Discourse

This article suggests increased attention to how medical discourses of gastrointestinal (GI) disorder and distress are fraught with social assumptions and consequences by examining nineteenth-century and contemporary medical texts focused on chronic constipation and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). I suggest that these medical discourses present what I call the “gastrointestinal woman,” who is characterized as having unjustified anxiety and is to blame for her condition. My approach to understanding, and ultimately revising, the representation of the gastrointestinal woman is shaped by disability studies scholarship, which encourages intervention in problematic medical discourses and more active shaping of discourses of chronic pain and illness by those who have these conditions.     

Islamic university theology

In the present article, the author discusses the emergence of new centres and chairs in Islamic theology in the Northern European context. Being mainly explorative, the article seeks to formulate a theoretical framework for analysing what happens to Islamic theology when it becomes integrated into a Northern European, secular university setting. Do we see a shift in emphasis from religion-specific traditionalism to de-culturalized universalism and interfaith dialogue? Key notions in the author’s analysis are formatting, university theology and the three publics (David Tracy) of theology. Empirical examples of how Islamic theology is currently being done (or formatted) in a European university setting are taken from two German centres for Islamic theology. With reference to publications originating from these centres, the author discusses different, but overlapping discourses in emerging Islamic university theologies – one centred on general subjects such as ethics, hermeneutics and humanism, another oriented towards “innovation in tradition”.     

Discriminating Against “Organ Takers”

This paper offers an exposition of what the question of method in ethics consultation involves under two conditions: when ethics consultation is regarded as a practice and when the question of method is treated systematically. It discusses the concept of the practice and the importance of rules in constituting the actions, cognition, and perceptions of practitioners. The main body of the paper focuses on three elements of the question of method: canon, discipline, and history, which are treated heuristically to outline what the question of method in ethics consultation fully involves.     

The question of method in ethics consultation

This paper offers an exposition of what the question of method in ethics consultation involves under two conditions: when ethics consultation is regarded as a practice and when the question of method is treated systematically. It discusses the concept of the practice and the importance of rules in constituting the actions, cognition, and perceptions of practitioners. The main body of the paper focuses on three elements of the question of method: canon, discipline, and history, which are treated heuristically to outline what the question of method in ethics consultation fully involves.     

Responsibility,Complexity Science and Education: Dilemmas and Uncertain Responses

While complexity science is gaining interest among educational theorists, its constructs do not speak to educational responsibility or related core issues in education of power and ethics. Yet certain themes of complexity, as taken up in educational theory, can help unsettle the more controlling and problematic discourses of educational responsibility such as the potential to limit learning and subjectivity or to prescribe social justice. The purpose of this article is to critically examine complexity science against notions of responsibility in terms of implications for education. First, themes of complexity science prominent in contemporary educational writing are explained. Then dilemmas of responsibility in complexity are explored, such as what forms and meanings responsibility can have in a ‘complexified’ perspective of education, how care for others is mobilised, and how desire can be understood. Analyses of ethical action grounded in complexity science are then examined, as well as theories of the ethical subject and participatory responsibility that are congruent with certain tenets of a complexity ontology. Finally, the possibility of an educational vision of responsibility animated by complexity theories is considered, drawing from related writings of Bai, Biesta, Derrida, Levinas and Varela.     

Empirical Adequacy and Virtue Ethics

Situationists contend that virtue ethics is empirically inadequate. However, it is my contention that there is much confusion over what “empirical adequacy” or “empirical inadequacy” actually means in this context. My aim in this paper is to clarify the meanings of empirical adequacy in order to see to what extent virtue ethics might fail to meet this standard. I argue that the situationists frequently misconstrue the empirical commitments of virtue ethics. More importantly, depending on what we mean by empirical adequacy, either virtue ethics has no need to be empirically adequate or where it does have such a need, the psychological evidence fails to show that it is empirically inadequate. An additional contribution the paper intends to make is to provide a more detailed discussion of the explanatory nature of virtue ethics.     

What is Working,What is Not,and What We Need to Know: a Meta-Analytic Review of Business Ethics Instruction

Requirements for business ethics education and organizational ethics trainings mark an important step in encouraging ethical behavior among business students and professionals. However, the lack of specificity in these guidelines as to how, what, and where business ethics should be taught has led to stark differences in approaches and content. The present effort uses meta-analytic procedures to examine the effectiveness of current approaches across organizational ethics trainings and business school courses. to provide practical suggestions for business ethics interventions and research. Thus, the primary questions driving this research are as follows: (1) what course characteristics moderate the effectiveness of ethics instruction?, and (2) have ethics education and training efforts improved? Findings suggest that professional, focused, and workshop-based training programs are especially effective for improving business ethics. However, results also reveal considerable problems with many of the criteria used to evaluate the effectiveness of business ethics interventions. Practical suggestions for course design and evaluation in business ethics efforts are discussed along with future research needs.     

走向深层发展伦理学——贝克风险社会理论的发展伦理学意蕴

对发展伦理学而言,贝克“风险社会理论”的根本方法论意义,在于启发我们思考这样一个问题:“应该用什么方法、在什么层面上建构发展伦理学”?贝克风险社会理论对明确发展伦理学的研究视域、学理层次、研究平台等具有重要方法论启示。