著者

丸橋 裕

出版者

日本医学哲学・倫理学会

雑誌

医学哲学医学倫理 (ISSN:02896427)

巻号頁・発行日

no.30, pp.40-51, 2012-09-30

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Viktor von Weizsacker's significance as an originator of "anthropological medicine" and as a critic of medicine oriented solely to the scientific-biological standpoint encourages us in the present critical situation caused in connection with many problems in medical ethics to seek an adequate paradigm of medical ethics in his works. True, he wrote no systematic ethics of anthropological medicine as such. But his 'Euthanasia' and Experiments on Human Beings (1947) was a salient contribution to the foundation of that field, since in it he asserts that the real, though invisible, defendant on the Nuremberg bench was no particular doctor, but the general spirit of scientific-biological medicine, and declares his guiding principle that the solidarity and mutuality of doctor and patient should guide medical practice. Therefore, in this article I intend to describe the origin of the medical ethics inherent in Weizsacker's "Medical Anthropology" (Medizinische Anthropologie) where he formulates the concepts of solidarity and mutuality. First I try to show clearly how he proves, with the help of the principle of solidarity, that there was no "as such justification" for the 'euthanasia' and human experiments Nazi doctors had put into practice, and further how he tested, in every morally doubtful case, whether it complied with the law of mutuality. Secondly I will clarify in what kind of context medical practice must occur under the law of solidarity, if one is taking the law of mutuality seriously in the association between doctor and patient. And thirdly after showing that the concept of "the solidarity of death" tends to reduce various aspects of the personal and social structure of death to an abstract common denominator, I will consider the meaning of Weizsacker's utterance that the order of life is a fusion of "the solidarity of death" and "the mutuality of life."