Читать книгу This Is Bioethics - Udo Schüklenk, Ruth F. Chadwick - Страница 9

1.9 In the 1850s, the American Medical Association (AMA) was busy developing the content of its Code of Medical Ethics. At the time James L. Phelps, an influential Christian doctor in New York, tried to insert in this code a professional obligation for doctors to preach the truth of the Christian gospel. He referred to ‘the paramount duty of the profession to their patients not only as regards their body in disease, but also the higher interests of the immortal soul. And hence, also the just claim of religion, the great anaesthetics of the immortal mind, to be considered an element of medicine or the healing art’ (Baker, 2013, 181).

1.10 His fellow doctors at the AMA rejected his approach. They aimed instead for a secular code of medical ethics, and also a secular interpretation of professionalism for its members. Their reasons were entirely pragmatic, as you will notice when you read their rationale: ‘the principles promulgated by this code have been assumed as a common ground upon which every member of the Association may stand, without reference to the distinctive principles or doctrines which distinguish the various religious societies existing among the vastly extended and diversified population of our country’ (Baker, 2013, 181).

1.11 There are a number of problems with religious approaches to ethics. An obvious one is that many competing religions and claims about God or gods exist. It is in the nature of these claims that they cannot be tested. They rely entirely on belief. Given that we cannot know which of these gods – if any – is the right one, we are better off, in assuming with Plato that even if a God or gods exist, they would also need sound ethical reasons for their ethical judgments. Many people doubt the very idea that a God exists, mostly because of the enduring nature of the terrible evil that persists in the world. This just does not seem to gel well with the idea of an all‐knowing, all‐powerful and good God of most monotheistic religions. In any case, we do not have to settle the difficult question of whether a God or gods exist, thanks to an ancient Greek philosopher, Plato.

1.12 Plato created about 380 years before reportedly the historical Jesus was born a now‐famous dialogue aimed at addressing various questions to do with the relationship between God or gods and ethics. The dialogue is called Euthyphro¹¹ and plays out between Plato’s teacher, Socrates and the said Euthyphro. The story essentially takes place at a plaza in front of a court house. Euthyphro busily prosecutes no less than his father for manslaughter committed on a murderer.

1.13 Euthyphro’s relatives thoroughly disagree with his actions. When Socrates (i.e. Plato’s protagonist) questions Euthyphro, he replies, criticizing his relatives, ‘Which shows, Socrates, how little they know what the gods think about piety and impiety.’ The dialogue goes on for some time, and during the course of it Socrates makes among others a crucial point that is salient to the question of the relationship between religion and ethics: He asks whether something is good because the God or the gods approve of it, or does God (or do the gods) approve of it because it is good. This is a crucial question, because if something is good only because God or the gods approve of it, ultimately what is good would depend entirely on God’s or the gods’ preferences. For all we know God (or the gods) could have approved of Euthyphro’s actions. Slavery might be ok, too. This take implies that the act in question is neither intrinsically good nor bad, because it is entirely dependent on what God’s or the gods’ take is on the issue at hand. It is doubtful that you consider this answer persuasive. Surely, if God or gods exist, they need to have some sort of ethical reason for saying that something is morally wrong. Their answer cannot be completely arbitrary.

1.14 This leads us to an alternative answer to the question. That answer suggests that some actions are good or bad as such, and that we are able to evaluate such acts by means of using the tools of ethical analysis. Or, as Gordon Graham suggests, ‘Plato’s arguments in Euthyphro seems [sic!] to show that … religion cannot logically serve as a ground for morality’ (Graham 2004, 185–188).

1.15 There are other problems, too. Most religious authoritative scriptures, such as for instance the Qur’an¹² or the Bible¹³, do not actually provide us with clear guidance to address most ethical questions that we face during our lives. Even if, miraculously, all of us would agree tomorrow that one of these two documents, and not the Hindu’s Bhagavat Gita¹⁴ is the true God’s source of wisdom, we would discover that it actually would not help us to solve the ethical problem our NGO‐manager faces. We might as well go back to Plato then and try to figure out ourselves what is right and what is wrong, what is a good action and what is a bad one.

1.16 To what extent then will religious arguments feature in this book? Not to a great extent. It is true that extensive literature, for instance on the stances of Roman Catholicism, Judaism and Islam on assisted dying, exists. However, these kinds of arguments will not be dealt with in great depth in this book. The main reason for this is that these kinds of arguments are only of relatively uncontroversial moral significance to a subset of people, namely those who subscribe to the views expressed on this issue in the authoritative guidance documents published by these faiths. Obviously, Catholic arguments derived from the Bible only matter to Catholics or other Christians who accept the authoritative status of the Bible. The same holds true for Jewish and Muslim believers and their religious texts. Lisa Sowle Cahill, a professor of Christian Ethics, got it right when she wrote¹⁵ (Sowle Cahill 1990):

Public bioethical discourse (or public policy discourse) is actually a meeting ground of the diverse moral traditions that make up our society. Some of these moral traditions have religious inspiration, but that does not necessarily disqualify them as contributors to the broader discussion. Their contributions will be appropriate and effective to the extent that they can be articulated in terms with a broad if not universal appeal. In other words, faith language that offers a particular tradition's beliefs about God as the sole warrant for moral conclusions will convince only members of that tradition.

1.17 What we are looking for, therefore, are reasons that can best be described as public reasons¹⁶. Public reasons don’t rely on us making metaphysical assumptions about gods, afterlives or any number of other beliefs requiring a significant leap of faith, so to speak. Instead they aim to persuade us by way of arguments that reasonably educated people from different cultural and religious backgrounds or other ideological persuasions can accept (Quong 2013). This approach is much in line with thinking going back to the seventeenth century, drawing a clear line between religion and the secular state. The state by necessity must remain neutral with regard to religious affairs, it cannot privilege one religion over another (Locke 1689). That way the citizens’ right to hold their own religious beliefs is protected. If the state decided to privilege one religious viewpoint over another, inevitably unjust discrimination of the not‐privileged religious point of view would follow. This view is supported by many judgments passed by the highest courts in various countries. For instance, a Canadian Supreme Court judgment notes, ‘the State is in no position to be, nor should it become, the arbiter of religious dogma’ (Syndicat Northcrest v. Amselem 2004).That makes perfect sense; how could judges possibly adjudicate conflicting views between religious dicta or even within a religion? They are not trained to do so. Accordingly, secular societies remain neutral vis a vis religious points of view, and public discourse relies on public reason based arguments. We will do the same in this book.

1.18 Let us turn now to the complex relationship between the law and ethics.