Exploring the "Other" Role of Philosophy in Bioethics: The Case of Addressing Moral Distress and Rediscovering Meaning and Purpose.

Abstract

These two ways correspond to other branches of philosophy implied in the article but not presented in the examples. There is a need to explicitly present these “other” role to intentionally include them in helping achieve a more comprehensive approach to continuing to integrate philosophy to the practice of bioethics, as argued by the authors. While there is a need to help resolve perplexity about big issues that impact how professionals make ethical decisions, e.g. defining “death,” “interests”, etc., philosophy has another role to play to help professions chronically affected by moral distress. Philosophers who serve as clinical ethicists can provide live bioethical analysis in close proximity to the user of that analysis as well as help those who experience moral distress to make sense of how they can still live with integrity. Blumentahal-Barby et al. (2022) made a compelling point that the many branches of philosophy still have a very meaningful and important role to play in the field of bioethics. The reasons and examples they presented are convincing and clearly show how bioethics “practice” can continue to be significantly edified by the conceptual and analytic contributions of philosophical inquiry. Simple application of past theoretical contributions of philosophy is not enough as the need to continue moving back and forth between considered judgments and theoretical/conceptual understanding of guiding norms persists in practice. The five concrete suggestions offered toward the end of their article (Blumentahal-Barby et al. 2022, 11–14) can help realize the need to unleash the potential of philosophy to make significant impact. They pertain to the need for philosophers who practice in bioethics centers to continue to engaging philosophy (suggestion 3), philosophers who study bioethics to engage bioethics Centers (suggestion 4) and philosophers who teach in professional schools should teach good philosophy instead of using the typical “philosophy light approach” to teaching bioethics (suggestion 5). Even if philosophers can take these suggestions and realize them in practice, the content, scope of philosophical approaches and methods of analysis need not be confined to only one tradition. It seems that the style/tradition of philosophy the authors accounted for only covered the analytic kind of philosophizing, i.e. analysis of principles, concepts and theories in the face of ethical issues. While both analyticand continental-trained philosophers are experts in doing analysis as presented in the examples reviewed by the authors, analysis is NOT the only legitimate way to do philosophy! Philosophers who are hired as clinical ethicists sometimes need to provide support to those who are not experiencing uncertainty due to a moral dilemma but rather experiencing constraints on what they believe to be the right thing to do. In view of this, there is also a need to explore the “other” role of philosophy that goes beyond bioethical analysis from a distance (i.e. analysis that can be used by those who find them relevant to the ethical