著者

坪井 雅史

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

vol.18, pp.1-11, 2000-12-15 (Released:2018-02-01)

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In recent years, 'narrative' has become a matter of remarkable concern in many research areas. Bioethics is one of these areas. It is said, "one of the recent developments in the field of bioethics has been an engagement with narrative". In health care, each patients' illness narrative, the medical staffs' listening of the story, and making a narrative that can provide richly rendered ethics cases, etc., are significant practices that attract our attention. If we want to understand moral problems in health care, it is helpful to use a literary account that places issues in a context of the lives and activities of particular characters. In philosophy and ethics, narratives deserve attention from those who research the relationship between the narrative, personal identity, and moral reasoning. Personalist moral philosophers, especially, who criticize the impartialist system of moral reasoning, have conjoined the narrative and ethics. The critical method of narrative studies can assist the analysis of moral problems. On the grounds of such research, a concern with the nature of narrative should be of pivotal concern to bioethics because the ethics case is central to the discipline. I make clear, in this paper, the significance of narrative in philosophy, health care, ethics and bioethics, and then discuss why we should use the narrative in the study of bioethics.