Bücher der Reihe Studies in Medical Philosophy

In this unique study, Jean-Pierre Clero examines medical ethics from a philosophical perspective. Based on the thoughts of great philosophers, he develops a theory of medical ethics that focuses on the values of intimacy.

In our time of well-publicized health care travails, in the USA and the UK and elsewhere, matters of financing too often subsume the dimension of patient care. In his latest book, Alexander L. Gungov studies a vital but neglected aspect of patient safety. Of the thousands of medical errors committed on a daily basis, in the bulk of unfortunate clinical decisions, a significant share pertains to various logical flows and epistemological fallacies. By focusing on the logical dimensions of clinical medicine, Gungov promotes awareness of the logical and epistemological traps that lie in the day-to-day care of patients. Such a focus not only allows us to avoid falling into them, but demonstrates the practical value of looking at medicine from a new philosophical perspective. That perspective involves a broad and unusual collection of philosophers. The discussion takes its starting point from J. S. Mill''s inductive methods and Giambattista Vico''s verum-factum principle, but then sets out a unique combination of Charles Sanders Peirce''s abductive reasoning, Immanuel Kant''s reflective judgment, as well as G. W. F. Hegel''s and D. P. Verene''s speculative thinking, all marshalled to present a novel philosophical account of clinical diagnostics. Interpretation of practical examples elucidate the logical aspect of medical errors and suggests strategies of overcoming them. The book as a whole demonstrates the value of Hans-Georg Gadamer''s hermeneutical insights into the enigmatic character of health. This much-needed book will be of interest to medical practitioners, health policy-makers, patients and their families, and to advanced students and scholars in medicine, the medical humanities, medical epistemology, and the philosophy of medicine in general.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in transforming the impersonal character of the medical experience into a personalized, relational, spiritual, and holistic dialogue about human health. It promotes a holistic vision of the doctor-patient relationship, a medicine that ought to be based on the totality of the human experience rather than on the reductive view of the patient as a person with a certain disease. Ken A. Bryson describes the character of medicine as the gateway to holistic healing and argues that we need to secure the ethical foundation of universal medicine as not relative to a cultural setting, thus establishing the Oath of Hippocrates as the universal gateway to human dignity. This view emboldens us to raise medicine from the level of an impersonal technological encounter with disease to its rightful place as a sacred activity that includes all the levels of the human experience. The book offers practical suggestions on how to accomplish that objective.