ABSTRACT
This chapter will ask how bioethics can rehabilitate the soul within medicine and healthcare. In the previous chapters, we discussed the reasons why the soul has been erased in these settings. We pointed out that medical writers, health practitioners, and patients regret that medicine has lost its soul. The removal of the soul from scientific and medical discourse has been interpreted as a cultural and historical phenomenon, particularly in Western civilization; rationalization and bureaucratization came to determine social life; the sense of mystery and wonder but also emotions and meaning have been displaced from the public to the private sphere. Medicine and healthcare, in particular, have been determined by the world views of naturalism and physicalism that regard the soul as an illusion. That this is an error has already been argued by Plato in his dialogue Charmides. A physician cannot cure illnesses of the eyes without paying attention to the head, or cure the head without the body, or the body without the soul. Parts cannot be cured without the whole, Plato pointed out. Rather than separating the soul from the body, the physician should begin by curing the soul if he wants to heal the head and body to be well. Many bodily conditions can be treated but not cured. In healing, the charisma and charm of the healer are important for success. Humanistic qualities such as respect, compassion, and integrity are essential if physicians really want to heal and help patients.
