Contemporary medical ethics is developing under the influence of various philosophical currents. Among the more important developments of this ethics, the following three proposals stand out: (1) the ethics of the good of the patient related to virtue ethics proposed by the American physician Edmund D. Pellegrino, (2) the ethics of the four principles by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress called principlism, and (3) the contractualist ethics of the social contract by Robert M. Veatch. What they have in common is that they were developed by physicians, philosophers and scientists at the same bioethics centre in the USA, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University in Washington DC. What makes them different are the philosophical assumptions, consciously and unconsciously adopted by their creators at the basis of these ethical systems. The aim of this article is not just to cite the strengths and weaknesses of the three proposals for medical ethics mentioned and to reveal which of them is close to Hippocratic ethics, but to answer two questions: is Hippocratic ethics still relevant? Can medical ethics be developed by leaving aside the philosophy of man and metaphysics together with the philosophy of God? The article answers the first question positively, indicating what needs to be changed and developed in Hippocratic ethics. On the other hand, it answers the second question negatively, arguing that building a medical ethics without a metaphysical and anthropological basis does not meet the criteria of a philosophically justified ethics.
HIPPOCRATIC ETHICS IN RELATION TO OTHER STRANDS OF MEDICAL ETHICS
14 December 2022