The Philosophy of Medicine Reborn

A Pellegrino Reader

Edmund D. Pellegrino
Edited by H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., and Fabrice Jotterand

Edmund D. Pellegrino has played a central role in shaping the fields of bioethics and the philosophy of medicine. His writings encompass original explorations of the healing relationship, the need to place humanism in the medical curriculum, the nature of the patient’s good, and the importance of a virtue-based normative ethics for health care.

In this anthology, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., and Fabrice Jotterand have created a rich presentation of Pellegrino’s thought and its development. Pellegrino’s work has been dedicated to showing that bioethics must be understood in the context of medical humanities, and that medical humanities, in turn, must be understood in the context of the philosophy of medicine. Arguing that bioethics should not be restricted to topics such as abortion, third-party-assisted reproduction, physician-assisted suicide, or cloning, Pellegrino has instead stressed that such issues are shaped by foundational views regarding the nature of the physician-patient relationship and the goals of medicine, which are the proper focus of the philosophy of medicine.

This volume includes a preface (“Apologia”) by Dr. Pellegrino and a comprehensive Introduction by the editors. Of interest to medical ethicists as well as students, scholars, and physicians, The Philosophy of Medicine Reborn offers fascinating insights into the emergence of a field and the work of one of its pioneers.

Edmund D. Pellegrino has been Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Medical Ethics at the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University Medical Center since 2001. The recipient of numerous honors and awards, he has authored or co-authored twenty-four books and is the founding editor of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. In 2004, he was named to the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO, and in 2005 he became the chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics.

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., is professor, department of philosophy, at Rice University, and professor emeritus, department of medicine, Baylor College of Medicine.

Fabrice Jotterand is assistant professor of philosophy, University of Texas at Dallas, and assistant professor of psychiatry and of clinical sciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

“In this valuable collection of Edmund Pellegrino’s essays, we witness a major, creative, and challenging mind at work in forging a philosophy of medicine. The carefully selected essays show Dr. Pellegrino in action, working to articulate his guiding vision as well as draw out its implications, always at the same time tying his speculations to clinical experience. There simply is no one else who has been doing this at anything like the intellectual level of Dr. Pellegrino’s writings, nor over a similar duration.” —Jorge L. A. Garcia, Boston College

“After a long period of dormancy, philosophy of medicine has blossomed with new life. The single most important physician-philosopher in that rebirth has been Edmund Pellegrino. His contributions to virtue theory, the concept of beneficence, the dispute over the internal and external sources of a morality for medicine, and the role of the Hippocratic tradition are all critical. The essays collected in this volume have changed the history of the philosophy of medicine. He shows that philosophy of medicine can be done with both passion and compassion.” —Robert M. Veatch, Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University

The Philosophy of Medicine Reborn: A Pellegrino Reader is the inaugural volume in a new Press series called Notre Dame Studies in Medical Ethics under the series editorship of David Solomon.

Reviews

“This volume is composed of a selection from Dr. Pellegrino’s corpus of writings on medical ethics. To date, these essays have been unavailable in one work. . . . This reader provides essays on philosophical foundations of medicine, the medical profession, physician-patient relationship, physician as moral agent, humanism and the Hippocratic tradition.” — Issues in Law & Medicine