Keeping Company: Ethics and the Talk in the Commons

Abstract

The field of bioethics is by definition based on the presupposition that questioning, arguing, interruption, and response are the means by which we evaluate the truth claims of medicine and healthcare policy. The field began with the premise that another voice, one of at least critique, if not dissension, was just what was needed in any arena in which hegemonic expertise held sway. The field of the humanities is similarly based on the idea that both the literary and cultural canon—and the disputation and resistance to the canon—are acknowledged, taught, and honored. In situ in the clinic, on national boards, or in the literature, when a philosopher perceives a unanimity, she begins to be uneasy and begins to do the very thing she is trained for: to raise the questions of definition, method, data, motive, and goal.