ABSTRACT
The primary aim of this chapter is to challenge that common assumption that medical ethics is just an application of common morality to the medical professions. In taking this stand, I follow John Rawls who notes that “the distinct purposes and roles of the parts of the social structure … explains there being different principles for distinct kinds of subjects” (Rawls, 1993: 262). Perhaps every profession and a variety of areas of the social world have their own sets of moral rules and require a distinctive sort of character from their members.
To make my case, I shall first present an argument for holding that medical ethics is different from the common morality of everyday life. After showing just how distinctive the ethics of medicine is, I follow Hobbes’s model in constructing the core set of distinguishing principles of medical ethics and the medically specific uncommon justifications for them. We can read Hobbes’s Leviathan as providing a deduction of the ethical laws that should guide the actions of sovereigns (members of the profession of rulers). The moral laws for sovereigns follow from the recognition of their core commitment as seeking and preserving peace. In a parallel analysis, I will show how the core commitment of medicine is seeking and preserving trust. With that as a starting point and in a Hobbesian manner, I will then explicate the ethics of medicine from an analysis of what seeking trust and being trustworthy entails for a physician. Finally, I shall highlight important moral implications of this dramatic new view of the ethics of medicine.
