Community As Healing: Pragmatist Ethics in Medical Encounters

The brief history of 20th century bioethics has been dominated by discussions of principles and appeals to autonomy that both divorce theory from practice and champion a notion of the individual as prior to and isolated from society. Pragmatism, on the other hand, has long sought to reconstruct ethical thought with the belief that distinctions between theory and practice, individual and society are not a priori starting points but purposeful developments of inquiry. Using insights from clas...