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165Echo calling narcissus: What exceeds the gaze of clinical ethics consultation?HEC Forum 22 (1): 171-171. 2010.Erratum to: Echo Calling Narcissus: What Exceeds the Gaze of Clinical Ethics Consultation? Content Type Journal Article Pages 171-171 DOI 10.1007/s10730-010-9132-7 Authors Jeffrey P. Bishop, Saint Louis University Tenet Chair of Health Care Ethics, Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics Salus Center, Room 527, 3545 Lafayette Ave St. Louis MO 63104-1314 USA Joseph B. Fanning, Vanderbilt University Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society 2525 West End Ave., 4th Floor, Suite 400 Nashville TN …Read more
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149Transhumanism, Metaphysics, and the Posthuman GodJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 35 (6): 700-720. 2010.After describing Heidegger's critique of metaphysics as ontotheology, I unpack the metaphysical assumptions of several transhumanist philosophers. I claim that they deploy an ontology of power and that they also deploy a kind of theology, as Heidegger meant it. I also describe the way in which this metaphysics begets its own politics and ethics. In order to transcend the human condition, they must transgress the human
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101Fides Ancilla Medicinae: On the Ersatz Liturgy of Death in Biopsychosociospiritual MedicineHeythrop Journal 49 (1). 2008.
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98Bioethics as biopoliticsJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 31 (3). 2006.This Article does not have an abstract
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91Medically Assisted Nutrition and Hydration: The Vegetative State and BeyondChristian Bioethics 17 (2): 97-104. 2011.
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89The Roman Catholic Church, Biopolitics, and the Vegetative StateChristian Bioethics 17 (2): 165-184. 2011.Compelled by recent public and politicized cases in which withdrawal of nutrition and hydration were at issue, this essay examines recent Church statements and argues that the distinction between private and public forms of human life is being lost. Effacing the distinction between the sphere of the home (oikos), where the maintenance of life (zoē) occurs, and the city (polis), where political and public life (bios) occurs, may have unforeseen and unwanted consequences. Through their well-intent…Read more
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77Reviving the Conversation Around CPR/DNRAmerican Journal of Bioethics 10 (1): 61-67. 2010.This paper examines the historical rise of both cardiopulmonary resuscitation and the do-not-resuscitate order and the wisdom of their continuing status in U.S. hospital practice and policy. The practice of universal presumed consent to CPR and the resulting DNR policy are the products of a particular time and were responses to particular problems. In order to keep the excesses of technology in check, the DNR policies emerged as a response to the in-hospital universal presumed consent to CPR. We…Read more
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75Biopsychosociospiritual Medicine and Other Political SchemesChristian Bioethics 15 (3): 254-276. 2009.In the mid-1970s, the biomedical model of medicine gave way to the biopsychosocial model of medicine; it was billed as a more comprehensive and compassionate model of medicine. After more than a century of disentangling medicine from religion, the medicine and spirituality movement is attempting to bring religion and spirituality back into medicine. It is doing so under a biopsychosociospiritual model. I unpack one model for allowing religion back into medicine called the RCOPE. RCOPE is an inst…Read more
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75The History and Future of Bioethics: A Sociological View (review)Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 23 (1): 105-107. 2014.
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71Modern liberalism, female circumcision, and the rationality of traditionsJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 29 (4). 2004.Tolerance is at the heart of Western liberalism, permitting mutually exclusive ideas and practices to coexist peacefully with one another, without the proponents of the differing ideas and practices killing one another. Yet, nothing challenges tolerance like the practice of sunna, female circumcision, clitorectomy, or genital mutilation. In this essay, I critique the Western critics of the practices, not in order to defend these practices, but rather to show that Western liberalism itself does n…Read more
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68Of goals and goods and floundering about: A dissensus report on clinical ethics consultationHEC Forum 21 (3): 275-291. 2009.Of Goals and Goods and Floundering About: A Dissensus Report on Clinical Ethics Consultation Content Type Journal Article Pages 275-291 DOI 10.1007/s10730-009-9101-1 Authors Jeffrey P. Bishop, Vanderbilt University Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society 2525 West End Avenue, Suite 400 Nashville Tennessee 37203 USA Joseph B. Fanning, Vanderbilt University Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society 2525 West End Avenue, Suite 400 Nashville Tennessee 37203 USA Mark J. Bliton, Vanderbilt University …Read more
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66Rejecting Medical Humanism: Medical Humanities and the Metaphysics of MedicineJournal of Medical Humanities 29 (1): 15-25. 2008.The call for a narrative medicine has been touted as the cure-all for an increasingly mechanical medicine. It has been claimed that the humanities might create more empathic, reflective, professional and trustworthy doctors. In other words, we can once again humanise medicine through the addition of humanities. In this essay, I explore how the humanities, particularly narrative medicine, appeals to the metaphysical commitments of the medical institution in order to find its justification, and in…Read more
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59Maturing the Minor, Marginalizing the Family: On the Social Construction of the Mature MinorJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 38 (3): 300-314. 2013.The doctrine of the mature minor began as an emergency exception to the rule of parental consent. Over time, the doctrine crept into cases that were non-emergent. In this essay, we show how the doctrine also developed in the context of the latter part of the 20th century, at the same time that the sexual revolution, the pill, and sexual liberation came to be seen as important symbols of female liberation—liberation that required that female minors be granted the status of a mature minor. To do s…Read more
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58Biopolitics, Terri Schiavo, and the Sovereign Subject of DeathJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 33 (6): 538-557. 2008.Humanity does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity, where the rule of law finally replaces warfare; humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination. (Foucault, 1984, 85)In this essay, I take a note from Michel Foucault regarding the notion of biopolitics. For Foucault, biopolitics has both repressive and constitutive properties. Foucault's claim is that with the rise of modern governmen…Read more
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55Euthanasia, efficiency, and the historical distinction between killing a patient and allowing a patient to dieJournal of Medical Ethics 32 (4): 220. 2006.Voluntary active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should not be legalised because too much that is important about living and dying will be lostIn the first of this two part series, I unpack the historical philosophical distinction between killing and allowing a patient to die in order to clear up the confusion that exists. Historically speaking the two kinds of actions are morally distinct because of older notions of causality and human agency. We no longer understand that distinction …Read more
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55Norming COVID‐19: The Urgency of a Non‐Humanist HolismHeythrop Journal 63 (3): 333-348. 2022.The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 3, Page 333-348, May 2022.
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52Finite Knowledge/Finite Power: “Death Panels” and the Limits of MedicineAmerican Journal of Bioethics 10 (1): 7-9. 2010.This paper examines the historical rise of both cardiopulmonary resuscitation and the do-not-resuscitate order and the wisdom of their continuing status in U.S. hospital practice and policy. The practice of universal presumed consent to CPR and the resulting DNR policy are the products of a particular time and were responses to particular problems. In order to keep the excesses of technology in check, the DNR policies emerged as a response to the in-hospital universal presumed consent to CPR. We…Read more
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41Foucauldian Diagnostics: Space, Time, and the Metaphysics of MedicineJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 34 (4): 328-349. 2009.This essay places Foucault's work into a philosophical context, recognizing that Foucault is difficult to place and demonstrates that Foucault remains in the Kantian tradition of philosophy, even if he sits at the margins of that tradition. For Kant, the forms of intuition—space and time—are the a priori conditions of the possibility of human experience and knowledge. For Foucault, the a priori conditions are political space and historical time. Foucault sees political space as central to unders…Read more
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39Echo Calling Narcissus: What Exceeds the Gaze of Clinical Ethics Consultation?HEC Forum 22 (1): 73-84. 2010.Guiding our response in this essay is our view that current efforts to demarcate the role of the clinical ethicist risk reducing its complex network of authorizations to sites of power and payment. In turn, the role becomes susceptible to various ideologies—individualisms, proceduralisms, secularisms—that further divide the body from the web of significances that matter to that body, where only she, the patient, is located. The security of policy, standards, and employment will pull against and …Read more
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38Framing euthanasiaJournal of Medical Ethics 32 (4): 225-228. 2006.Death cannot be mastered through a metaphysics of efficiency that interprets all actions in terms only of cause and effect, but it can be transcended if we leave the frame open to death’s ambiguityIn the second of this two part series, I describe how in shifting our frames from one of human purpose and meaning to one of efficiency, we shift the possible answers we get to our questions about voluntary active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide . Thus, by placing VAE/PAS within the frame of …Read more
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33Subjective Experience and Medical PracticeJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 37 (2): 91-95. 2012.
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32Building Moral BrainsMaynooth Philosophical Papers 10 135-149. 2020.Technology is evolving at a rate faster than human evolution, especially human moral evolution. There are those who claim that we must morally bioenhance the human due to existential threats (such as climate change and the looming possibility of cognitive enhancement) and due to the fact that the human animal has a weak moral will. To address these existential threats, we must design human morality into human beings technologically. By moral bioenhancement, these authors mean that we must interv…Read more
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32The Moral Imperative to Morally EnhanceJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 43 (5): 485-489. 2018.What is morality? Is “morality” something that admits of technological enhancement? What could it possibly mean for a society to have a moral imperative to morally enhance? We are compelled to take up questions like these as we move into the future of moral bioenhancement. Each article in this issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy attempts to bring some clarity as to what is meant by morality, such that one could be morally obligated to morally enhance. These articles broaden the scope…Read more
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31Beyond health care accountability: The gift of medicineJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 29 (1). 2004.E. Haavi Morreim's book, Holding Health Care Accountable , insightfully describes several features of the current crisis in malpractice in relation to the health care marketplace. In this essay, I delineate the key and eminently practical guide for reform that she lays out. I argue that her insights bring us to more fundamental aspects than immanent medical economy and accountability - aspects that are ignored at present. I describe the features of immanent economy and how they tend to cover ove…Read more
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31Waiting for St. Benedict among the Ruins: MacIntyre and Medical PracticeJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 36 (2): 107-113. 2011.
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29From Anticipatory Corpse to Posthuman GodJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 41 (6): 679-695. 2016.The essays in this issue of JMP are devoted to critical engagement of my book, The Anticipatory Corpse. The essays, for the most part, accept the main thrust of my critique of medicine. The main thrust of the criticism is whether the scope of the critique is too totalizing, and whether the proposed remedy is sufficient. I greatly appreciate these interventions because they allow me this occasion to respond and clarify, and to even further extend the argument of my book. In this response essay, I…Read more
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28Secular Dreams and Myths of Irreligion: On the Political Control of Religion in Public BioethicsJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 46 (2): 219-237. 2021.Full-Blooded religion is not acceptable in mainstream bioethics. This article excavates the cultural history that led to the suppression of religion in bioethics. Bioethicists typically fall into one of the following camps. 1) The irreligious, who advocate for suppressing religion, as do Timothy F. Murphy, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins. This irreligious camp assumes American Fundamentalist Protestantism is the real substance of all religions. 2) Religious bioethicists, who defend religion by e…Read more
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Saint Louis UniversityDepartment of Philosophy
Center for Health Care Ethics
Department of Theological StudiesTenet Endowed Chair
St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
20th Century Philosophy |
Continental Philosophy |
Metaphysics |