[Qualified particularism and affiliative virtue: emphasis of a recent trend in ethics]

Abstract

This paper explores the implications for medical ethics of ethic of care. It characterizes the ethic of care in terms of two principal commitments, to qualified particularism and to the challenge to the centrality of affiliative virtue. Both of these commitments pose a much standard work in medical ethics characterizing moral judgment and responses as essentially impartial, principled and dispassionate. A care-oriented medical ethics will, it is suggested, call on us to focus on those virtues needed to sustain community and enhance effective communication and interpersonal understanding within the practices of health care. It stresses healing rather than curing as the objective of medical and nursing care; and it emphasizes the importance of trust in clinical relationship. As a methodological approach, the ethic of care highlights the limitations of principle-based approaches in guiding moral judgment and response, asserting the value of institutional narratives as guides to moral practice.