ABSTRACT
This chapter brings the medieval thinkers Moses Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas into dialogue and contends that they raise some key considerations that can still inform medical ethicists and others today. For instance, Maimonides holds that health care professionals are obliged to restore what their patients have lost (as per Deut. 22:2), affirms that we must be concerned for the welfare of animals, and provides various practical guidelines for safeguarding our own health – many of which are consistent with contemporary research. Aquinas maintains that actions that have good and bad effects can be permissible as long as the bad ones are not intended and outlines a number of noteworthy arguments against suicide, but he also says that we should love our lives in “due measure.” Furthermore, both authors call attention to the goodness of visiting the sick, suggest that caring for ourselves is a moral task, and demonstrate that moderation in food and drink is conducive to other virtuous conduct and to our physical and emotional well-being. Fitzgerald also attends to some of the more questionable claims of these thinkers, and he concludes with some reflections on the benefits of engaging in comparative ethics and interreligious dialogue, both in general and in a Jewish-Catholic-medical context.
