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A volume on religious/theological methods in biomedical ethics inevitably of whether the methodological dimension can be distin raises the question guished from the various other things that go on in ethical discourse. It is difficult to answer this question definitively since many elements in moral conversation can be interpreted in different ways. Barbara Hilkert Andolsen illustrates this issue in this volume when she defines one of her crucial cate gories, gender justice, as being both procedural and substantive/normative. This difficulty of finally separating the methodological from the normative arises in many areas of contemporary ethical writing, both feminist and otherwise. Nevertheless, it seems that in many cases we can separate out the method ological issues with considerable precision. Albert Jonsen and James Childress achieve just such a sharp focus in their essays. This does not mean that a careful dissecting of their papers would not reveal normative elements lurking about their methodological points. It is simply to say that the issues they analyze and the positions they take are, at least prima facie, overwhelmingly method ological. They are much more about how we think about ethical matters than they are about what we think about them.
List of contents
Section I: Methods of Biomedical Ethics in the Religious Traditions.- Hindu Bioethics.- Methodology of Buddhist Biomedical Ethics.- Taoist Bioethics in the Final Age: Therapy and Salvation in the Book of Divine Incantations for Penetrating the Abyss.- Islam and Medical Ethics.- Method in Jewish Bioethics.- Text and Tradition in Contemporary Jewish Bioethics.- Section II: Methodological Questions Across Traditions.- Bioethics and Impartial Rationality: The Search for Neutrality.- The Confessor as Experienced Physician: Casuistry and Clinical Ethics.- Ethical Theories, Principles, and Casuistry in Bioethics: An Interpretation and Defense of Principlism.- Why the Virtues Are Not Another Approach to Medical Ethics: Reconceiving the Place of Ethics in Contemporary Medicine.- Elements of a Feminist Approach to Bioethics.- Section III: Methodological Foci and Resources within a Tradition.- Scripture and Medical Ethics: Psalm 51:10a, the Jarvik VII, and Psalm 50:9.- A Moral Matrix: Religious Practices and Health Care.- On Being Medieval Without Menace: Catholic Magisterial Teaching as a Source for Bioethics.- On Donating Bone Marrow to an Unknown Half-Brother: A Guided Tour Through a Liberal Jewish Responsum on a Biomedical Issue.- Notes on Contributors.
