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Travelling Companions: ethics and humanities in medicine

Evans, HM

Authors

HM Evans



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
Publisher Schwabe Verlag
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 4
Issue 4
Pages 129-134
Keywords Medical humanities, Medical ethics, Interdisciplinarity, Wonder.
Publisher URL http://www.bioethica-forum.ch/content/e_Archive.php


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