Description
Book SynopsisBioethics tells a heroic story about its origins and purpose. The impetus for its contemporary development can be traced to concern about widespread paternalism in medicine, mistreatment of research subjects used in medical experimentation, and questions about the implication of technological developments in medical practice. Bioethics, then, began as a defender of the interests of patients and the rights of research participants, and understood itself to play an important role as a critic of powerful interests in medicine and medical practice. Autonomy and the Situated Self argues that, as bioethics has become successful, it no longer clearly lives up to these founding ideals, and it offers a critique of the way in which contemporary bioethics has been co-opted by the very institutions it once sought (with good reason) to criticize and transform. In the process, it has become mainstream, moved from occupying the perspective of a critical outsider to enjoying the status of a respected
Trade ReviewHaliburton here criticizes bioethics for relinquishing its critical stance for the 'status of a respected insider, whose primary role is to defend both existing institutional arrangements and its own privileged position.' She warns that 'if mainstream bioethics doesn't change its ideological ways, [and] refuses to risk its insider status ..., then it increasingly won't matter whether it exists at all.' . . . .This volume analyzes the situated self primarily through gender, given the author's feminist inspirations, but considers the implications such a self has for virtue ethics; narratives as culturally informing selfhood; the ethics of suffering; and bioethical practice that must consider political, economic, and social structures. Overall, Haliburton offers a refreshing, critical outlook on bioethics and its politicization. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers. * CHOICE *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1: The Chimeric Self: Exploring the Landscape of Bioethics Chapter 2: The Troubled Self of Bioethics: The Unhappy Offspring of Immanuel Kant and J.S. Mill Chapter 3: The Divided Self: Liberal Politics and the Rise of Autonomy in Bioethics Chapter 4: The Choosing Self: Bioethics and the Paradox of Autonomy Chapter 5: The Gendered Self: Bioethics and the Feminist Critique Chapter 6: The Virtuous Self: Autonomy and Value Chapter 7: The Suffering Self: Illness Narratives and the Postmodern Divide Chapter 8: The Storytelling Self: The Place of Case Studies in Bioethics Chapter 9: The Situated Self: Freedom and Virtue Notes
