Moral progress or evolution? Lessons from narrative bioethics

Abstract

We consider two perspectives in the analysis of clinical ethical cases from a narrative bioethics perspective: personal moral progress, and gregarious adaptation to sociocultural contexts. Our bioethical deliberations change substantially if we adopt one perspective or the other. In fact, the two perspectives can only be reconciled if we use a superior theoretical framework: hermeneutics. If we apply hermeneutics methodology to ethical deliberation, we can distinguish two phases: a) the moment of occurrence, when hermeneutics can be used to explore the motivation and intentions of moral agents with affective neutrality and a naturalistic vision, and b) the narrative reconstruction model, in which we must avoid the temptations of bioethical proposals based on models of perfection (in particular Kohlberg's model, described as a model of a 'happy ending' narrative), and instead strive to describe mechanisms of moral mediocrity.