The Irony of Disciplinary Specificity: Bioethics and Liberalism
Dallas Gingles, PhD, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX
In the long history of academic inquiry, bioethics is a new discipline. Depending on which sources one takes as authoritative, bioethics emerges as a discipline or subdiscipline sometime after World War II and before 1980—with Ramsey’s Patient as Person helpfully serving as a watershed moment on that 35-year timeline.
I say that it emerges as a discipline or subdiscipline because it is not clear at which point it becomes a discipline with its own object of inquiry, as distinct from the various subfields—law, philosophy, Christian ethics, etc.—which had begun to treat bioethical questions in that period.
Because the discipline has changed rapidly in the intervening 45 years, it can appear to be much older than it really is. But the rapid change has as much to do with the fact that bioethics often responds to technological developments, and that technology has accelerated more quickly in these years than in any previous historical period, as it does with any single intellectual development.
In keeping with the theme of the conference this year, I propose to interrogate the current state of the discipline in relation to the approach of early—founding—figures in bioethics. The discipline currently debates its core concepts (e.g., autonomy) and substantive topics (e.g., genetic interventions) within a context that is dominated by reappraisals of liberalism. In other words, in the years that the discipline became more focused and granular, it was able to rely on the stability of a broader context in which mid-century liberalism provided a shared framework of intellectual endeavor. As that shared framework has come under suspicion, the discipline conducts a covert debate about that framework under the guise of debates about particular issues in bioethics.
The early days of bioethics represent a mirror image that may illuminate our current challenges. Figures like Ramsey were trained as religious—mostly Christian—ethicists, and used the resources of those traditions to engage in debates about the larger society, political order, and the common good. They represent a convergence between substantive traditions and emerging questions.
Because the field of bioethics has focused more and more granularly on its own questions, it no longer presupposes the intellectual resources of traditions that shaped ethical inquiry before 50 years ago. This, I suggest, means that there is an irony in that the discipline has “come apart”—to use the language of the conference—the more that it has come together.
I propose, then, to investigate the way that early bioethicists used the traditions from within which they worked to interrogate questions of bioethics—and in so doing helped create the discipline. Their approach may represent a path toward re-convergence, and it may point a way beyond current debates about liberalism and its discontents in the arena of healthcare.
I say that it emerges as a discipline or subdiscipline because it is not clear at which point it becomes a discipline with its own object of inquiry, as distinct from the various subfields—law, philosophy, Christian ethics, etc.—which had begun to treat bioethical questions in that period.
Because the discipline has changed rapidly in the intervening 45 years, it can appear to be much older than it really is. But the rapid change has as much to do with the fact that bioethics often responds to technological developments, and that technology has accelerated more quickly in these years than in any previous historical period, as it does with any single intellectual development.
In keeping with the theme of the conference this year, I propose to interrogate the current state of the discipline in relation to the approach of early—founding—figures in bioethics. The discipline currently debates its core concepts (e.g., autonomy) and substantive topics (e.g., genetic interventions) within a context that is dominated by reappraisals of liberalism. In other words, in the years that the discipline became more focused and granular, it was able to rely on the stability of a broader context in which mid-century liberalism provided a shared framework of intellectual endeavor. As that shared framework has come under suspicion, the discipline conducts a covert debate about that framework under the guise of debates about particular issues in bioethics.
The early days of bioethics represent a mirror image that may illuminate our current challenges. Figures like Ramsey were trained as religious—mostly Christian—ethicists, and used the resources of those traditions to engage in debates about the larger society, political order, and the common good. They represent a convergence between substantive traditions and emerging questions.
Because the field of bioethics has focused more and more granularly on its own questions, it no longer presupposes the intellectual resources of traditions that shaped ethical inquiry before 50 years ago. This, I suggest, means that there is an irony in that the discipline has “come apart”—to use the language of the conference—the more that it has come together.
I propose, then, to investigate the way that early bioethicists used the traditions from within which they worked to interrogate questions of bioethics—and in so doing helped create the discipline. Their approach may represent a path toward re-convergence, and it may point a way beyond current debates about liberalism and its discontents in the arena of healthcare.