Description
Book SynopsisOver the last several decades, bioethicists have championed a bewildering variety of methods for understanding and resolving difficult ethical problems in medicine, including: principlism, wide reflective equilibrium, casuistry, feminism, virtue theory, narrative, and others. Much of this advocacy overlooks the limitations of the favored method, and also neglects the strengths found in alternative approaches.Tom Tomlinson systematically uncovers and evaluates both the strengths and limits of a variety of ethical tools, and in so doing develops a comprehensive appreciation of the roles that various methods can play in deepening our understanding of ethical problems in medicine, and in supporting well-grounded judgments about what to do. He critically evaluates each method to identify both limits and advantages, which he then illustrates through discussion of specific cases and controversies. Tomlinson not only demonstrates that there is no single method adequate to the task, but tries t
Trade ReviewNo other bioethics book so adroitly combines methodological survey with critical synthesis as this one does... This book should be regarded as mandatory reading for all serious students of medical ethics. * Doody's Notes, Jan 2013 *
Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Chapter 1: The Indispensability of Principles ; Chapter 2: The Limits of Principles ; Chapter 3: Putting Principles in Context: Balancing, Specification and Reflective Equilibrium ; Chapter 4: Casuistry: Ruled by Cases ; Chapter 5: Narrative Ethics: The Uses of Stories ; Chapter 6: Feminism, Context and Care ; Chapter 7: Virtue Theory ; Chapter 8: Fitting Methods to Cases
