ABSTRACT

The debate now well underway in contemporary medical ethics between proponents of philosophical and interpretive approaches to moral reasoning about the relative merits and limits of these approaches recalls an exchange between David Burrell and Stanley Hauerwas, and Edmund Pellegrino that occurred twenty years ago. In a 1977 article 1 Burrell and Hauerwas made a case for narrative as a form of rationality particularly well suited to ethical reflection. They argued that the (then, and arguably, still now) prevailing pattern of moral rationality, whether in a Kantian or utilitarian mode, distorts the moral life and ethical reflection by providing no account of the way in which moral selves are formed, by insisting on the separation of moral selves and their interests, and by limiting ethical considerations to decisional aspects of morality. “We are given the impression that moral principles offer actual grounds for conduct, while in fact they represent abstractions whose significance continues to depend on original narrative contexts.” 2