Reflections on Medical Ethics A Search for Categories of Medical Ethics

This book questions the notions of person, personality, dignity, and other connected notions such as (informed) consent, and discusses new perspectives on categories that allow ethical debates in medicine to overcome morals and ordinary religious schemes. The book states that one has to be careful when thinking about situations in terms of notions and principles that have been obtained in similar situations. Though this book is mostly philosophical, it is also of great practical interest to healthcare givers. It warns caregivers not to rely too much on notions such as person, autonomy, and consent, which are supposedly firm but can be proven to be unreliable in spite of appearances. Furthermore, this work warns against a narrow anthropologisation of ethics which would make technophobian positions unavoidable. On the contrary, this book is open to robotics and offers – among other things - a sustained exploration of the notion of intimacy.

Jean-Pierre Cléro is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rouen and Director of the Centre Bentham (Sciences Po - Paris). He contributed to the edition and translation of Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Vrin, Paris, 2011). He is the author of many books on classical utilitarianism: Bentham, philosophe de l’utilité, and Calcul moral ou comment raisonner en éthique (A. Colin, Paris, 2004). He also translated many other books of Bentham, Stuart Mill, Moore, Harsanyi. The problem that leads him in ethics was first the functioning of passions and then is the question what is a fiction ? in different fields like epistemology and ethics (conducing to the book Essai sur les fictions, Hermann, Paris, mai 2014). About the questions of ethics he has much published in reviews (Revue Française d’Éthique appliquée, Cahiers de l’espace éthique de l’université Paris Sud) and much taught in universities and university hospitals. His activity is not limited to the theoretical field. He is a member of several French « espaces éthiques » where the question is to give a piece of advice on ethical problems that arise today. He never separates his occupation of teaching and writing from these of practical activity of counsel in ethical questions (at Rouen: CHU & CHR -psychiatry- ; and abroad, in Belgium, Spain, Romania and Quebec with which the University of Rouen is actually connected).