Beneficence in an Ethics of Virtue

Abstract

Health care is usually discussed in recent medical ethics under the heading of rights and/or justice, as it is in the companion volume to this one. It can be and is also treated under the heading of duty or obligation. In these approaches typical questions are, respectively, (1) Is there a right to health care?, (2) Is the present distribution of health care just?, and (3) Has society, or some segment of it, a duty to provide health care? It is clear that these three approaches may overlap or even coincide, e.g., justice is sometimes subsumed under duty or under respect for rights. In this volume, however, health care is being dealt with under the rubric of beneficence. The idea, 1 take it, is that doing so involves a different perspective from those of rights, justice, or duty. Actually, this is not necessarily the case; beneficence may, for example, be thought of as a right on the part of the beneficiary or at least as a duty on that of the benefactor. In Cicero, Seneca, and Kant it is conceived of as a duty, though without any belief in the existence of a corresponding right. A different perspective is entailed only if one takes an ethics of virtue approach to beneficence and sees health care as falling, at least in part, under beneficence. These points are illustrated to some extent by other essays appearing here. My own assignment is to look at beneficence as it would appear in an ethics of virtue. Such an ethics has often been attributed to Plato and Aristotle and is sometimes advocated in recent thinking about morality.