Abstract
The concept of a philosophy of medicine and in medicine frequently is reduced to medical ethics. Given the centrality of ethical questions for medicine, this is understandable, although such a reduction is obviously inadmissible because there are many other problems of philosophy of medicine besides those pertaining to medical ethics, for example the epistemological question discussed before: “What is the knowledge gained in medicine?” or the questions pertaining to a philosophy of life and of philosophical anthropology, “What is human health?” or, “What is human life?”.
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References
See on the many varieties of the confused and pseudo-scientific theory of evolution Josef Seifert, “Philosophy and Science in the Context of Contemporary Culture,” in The Human Search for Truth: Philosophy, Science, Theology. The Outlook for the Third Millennium. International Conference on Science and Faith. The Vatican 23–25 May 2000 (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press), pp. 23–71.
See my thesis that seven distinct factors are morally relevant and thus ought to motivate the morally good (obligatory) action in Josef Seifert, Was ist und was motiviert eine sittliche Handlung? (Salzburg: Universitätsverlag A. Pustet, 1976).
See on this also Roderick M. Chisholm, Ethics and Intrinsic Values, edited and introduced by John R. White (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2001).
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (393), translated and analysed by H. J. Paton (New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964), p. 61.
Dietrich von Hildebrand and Rudolf Otto have clarified this sense of value far beyond Kant, and in criticizing his epistemology. See Dietrich von Hildebrand, Die Idee der sittlichen Handlung; the same author, Ethics, chs. 1-3, 17-18. See also Rudolf Otto, „Wert, Würde und Recht,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 12 (1931): 1–67.
reprinted in R. Otto, Aufsätze zur Ethik, edited by J. S. Boozer (München: Beck, 1981), pp. 53–106.
See on this Dietrich von Hildebrand, “Zum Wesen der Strafe,” in Dietrich von Hildebrand, Die Menschheit am Scheideweg, hrsg. v. Karla Mertens (Regensburg: Habbel, 1955), pp. 517–533.
by the same author also, “Über die christliche Idee des himmlischen Lohnes,” in Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft, 32. Jg. (Fulda, 1919), pp. 1–14.
reprinted in Dietrich von Hildebrand, Die Menschheit am Scheideweg, hrsg. v. Karla Mertens (Regensburg: Habbel, 1955), pp. 107–126.
See Max Scheler, “Zur Rehabilitierung der Tugend,” in Max Scheler, Vom Umsturz der Werte (Bern-München: Francke-Verlag, 1955).
See Dietrich von Hildebrand, “The Modes of Participation in value,” in International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. I, no. 1 (New York, 1961), pp. 58–84.
See John Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).
see also the same author, Natural Law and Natural Rights.
This idea leads Dostoyevsky and a great number of philosophers and theologians to the idea that even eternal suffering of hell is not an externally imposed punishment but an inner consequence of the evil person being confronted with the vision of the good. This is not only a view developed by Christian and other religious mystics (St. Catherine of Genoa says in her Treatise on Purgatory that she has clearly seen this truth in her mystical visions) but traces of it can also be found in Plato who thought that the ‘incurably evil’ not only deserve but necessarily will suffer hell. See Josef Seifert, “Salvezza e condanna come problemi filosofici: riflessione sul Gorgia di Platone,” Revista Teologica di Lugano III, 2 (1998): 265–289.
According to some audacious thinkers, hell is still a mild punishment for the evil man because his seeing the goodness of God, while remaining fixed in evil, would be a more excruciating hell still than being banished from God’s sight. Consider the passages in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment on Marmeladov’s greatest suffering upon looking at his daughter Sonya’s loving eyes and silent response to her father’s alcoholism and stealing her money which ‘forces’ her into prostitution.
Kant implies this clearly when he says that neither in this world nor outside it we find anything that could be called good unqualifiedly except a good will, and that means the good will as bearer of moral perfection. This can only be said if evidence of moral goodness as pure perfection is presupposed by Kant. For otherwise there could be a higher and more unqualified sense of ‘goodness’. That moral perfection is not essentially limited and its possession absolutely speaking better than its non-possession does not apply to all moral perfections: it is not true of essentially human moral perfections such as modesty or correctness in one’s profession, but it does apply to the good will as it underlies not only all moral actions but also all moral virtues and the fundamental morally good attitude. It also applies to many moral virtues such as justice or truthfulness. The innermost essence of moral goodness and its source in what Kant refers to in our text by the term ‘good will’ (even if he has a limited understanding of the good will by restricting it to the sphere of action [Handlung]) are pure perfections. See on this notion Josef Seifert, “Essere persona come perfezione pura. II beato Duns Scoto e una nuova metafisica personalistica,” in De Homine, Dialogo di Filosofia, 11 (Rome: Herder/Università Lateranense, 1994), pp. 57–75.
whose name and decisive contribution is not even mentioned in Leo Sweeney, S.J., Divine Infinity in Greek and Medieval Thought (New York/San Francisco/Bern/Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Wien/Paris: Peter Lang, 1992).
If the book were called: Some Studies on Divine Infinity in Greek and Medieval Thought, a title that would suit the book better since it appears to be a collection of papers, one would have less reason to demand that the name of Anselm be mentioned. This is hard to comprehend given the fact that Anselm possibly made the most original and significant contribution towards the understanding of divine infinity by the discovery of the pure perfections. More sorely missing in Sweeney’s book is the proper recognition of the metaphysics of pure perfections (perfections absolutely speaking) as the sole ground for a rational concept of divine infinity and the understanding that the objective reality of these pure perfections is necessarily required for this divine infinity itself to be reality.
M. Scheler has analyzed this attitude of resentment in detail in his monograph, Das Ressentiment im Außau der Moralen, in Max Scheler, Vom Umsturz der Werte (Bern/München: Francke-Verlag, 1955), pp. 96–107.
This was seen by philosophers of all ages and of different religions. It achieved a special importance in the fathers and doctors of the Church. Within phenomenology, the point of analyzing the essence of religion and of religious data in their purely rational intelligibility became an important development within philosophy of religion. See Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy. An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, translated by John W. Harvey, 27th Printing (London/Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).
the same author, Aufsätze zur Ethik.
See also Max Scheler, “Probleme der Religion,” in Max Scheler, Vom Ewigen im Menschen; in English: On the Eternal in Man, transi. Bernard Noble (Hamden: Archon Books, 1972).
for an analysis of specifically Christian virtues of charity and others see Dietrich von Hildebrand, Transformation in Christ. On the Christian Attitude of Mind, last edition with a new sub-title: Transformation in Christ. Our Path to Holiness (Reprint of 1948. New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press. 1989); and his Das Wesen der Liebe, ch. 11.
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Seifert, J. (2004). From the Morally Relevant Goals of Medicine to Medical Ethics. In: The Philosophical Diseases of Medicine and their Cure. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 82. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-2871-7_3
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