Torah and scalpel: A critique of utilitarian medical ethics from a Maimonidean perspective

摘要

This dissertation speaks to a number of ethical problems and issues which exist within the field of medicine, according to the perspective of Orthodox Judaism. To articulate the positions of this perspective, the project has chosen the norms, language and method(s) employed by Moses Maimonides (Moshe ibn Maimon), the foremost medical, philosophical and rabbinical figure of the Medieval period. His approach to the practice of medicine has been given the designation of Ha Shomer Akhee, which is Hebrew for "Brother's Keeper"; and under this heading, five synthetic categories have been derived to clarify the methodology and validity of the Maimonidean system of ethical medical philosophy. These categories are: (1) Primacy-of-Life, (2) Patient as Person, (3) Care of the Elderly as Applied Ethics, (4) Hedonistic vs. Statutory Pleasures, (5) Physician as Ethical Agent.;To illustrate the contemporary relevance of this undertaking, two modern-day Jewish philosophers have been incorporated both to add credence and to clarify the vernacular of their Medieval predecessor; the particular thinkers chosen are Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas. It is through the interworking of their respective streams of thought and an exegesis of Scriptural ethical precepts as they apply to the five synthetic categories that one systematically discovers that the historical as well as the conceptual opponent of the "Brother's Keeper" approach to medicine is found to be Utilitarianism. That is to say, the body of thought and action that is more concerned with expedience and pleasure than with what it is to be human and how to correctly care for the same. This dissertation, therefore, is also an advocacy of "Ethics as First Philosophy"; and how such a philosophy can deter and even offset the negatives found in a utilitarian approach, and thus, should be the physician's guide to medical practice. To accomplish this final end, an exegesis of the five synthetic categories employing the philosophical method used extensively by Maimonides in "The Guide," the via Negativa, will be undertaken.