Erich H. Loewy – författare

When physicians in training enter their clinical years and first begin to become involved in clinical decision making, they soon find that more than the technical data they had so carefully learned is involved. Prior to that time, of course, they were aware that more than technology was involved in practicing medicine, but here, for the first time, the reality is forcefully brought home. It may be on the medical ward, when a patient or a patient's relatives ask that no further treatment be given and that the patient be allowed to die; it may be in ob/gyn, when a 4- or 5-month pregnant lady with two other children and just deserted by her husband pleads for an abortion; it may be in the outpatient setting, where patients unable to afford enough to eat cannot afford to buy antibiotics for their sick child or provide him or her with the recom­ mended diet. Whatever the setting, students soon find themselv. es con­ fronted with problems in which an answer is not given by the technical possibilities alone; indeed, students may have to face situations in which, all things considered, the use of these technical possibilities seems ill-advised. But choices need to be made. Some of us may choose to hide behind a mastery of technology.

This book grounds ethics in the capacity for suffering shared by all sentient beings, and sees the avoidance and amelioration of suffering as the prima facie condition of moral interaction. Loewy sees social contract as originating in the original nurturing of individuals, and selfhood and autonomy as emerging in the embrace of beneficence. Communities thus have an implicit obligation to their members, which necessitates a just distribution of resources.

In this book, Loewy grounds communitarian ethics in contemporary terms, particularly as a response to the intractable social problems in the United States and the shocking collapse of the Soviet Union and Soviet-style communism. He goes far beyond his work in ethics to date, moving from a dialectical relationship between community and autonomy to a notion in which the ends and means of both community and individual interact to produce a homeostatic balance. Rather than the relationship being purely one of competition between the claims of beneficence and the claims of individuality, there is a necessary interrelation in which a homeostatic balance occurs, assuring communal and individual survival.Loewy illustrates some of the contemporary consequences of the philosophy he develops here, using medicine, education, and affirmative action as models. He expands the notion of community and shows that individual communities are related to each other, as are individuals and small communities.

Elaborates an ethic in which beneficence on a personal and communal level has moral force; proposes the idea of an interplay between compassion and reason to help address moral problems; and sketches the conditions necessary for a democratic approach to such problems.The author deals with the problem of shaping a more than minimalistic ethic in a pluralistic world. He discusses the notions of various types of moral valuing and the idea of a homeostatic balance between the demands of individuals and the requirements of community. He also proposes an idea of an interplay between compassion and reason which can help address moral problems; and, lastly, he sketches the necessary conditions for a democratic approach to such problems.

Die vielfältigen Möglichkeiten, die der naturwissenschaftlich-technische Fortschritt der Medizin in Diagnose und Therapie eröffnet, verlangen von Ärzten und Pflegepersonal, in konkreten Situationen zwischen vielfältigen Möglichkeiten zu wählen. Dabei haben sie nicht allein das körperliche Wohl des Patienten zu berücksichtigen, sondern auch dessen Selbstbestimmungsrecht sowie gesellschaftliche Anforderungen. Die Medizinethik vermittelt Grundkenntnisse, um solche Situationen zu analysieren und eine angemessene Auswahl treffen zu können.