Teleology and bioethics: An Aristotelian and Thomistic approach to mediating the modern moral dichotomy in health care

• Main Author: Slosar, John Paul
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2003
• Subjects: Philosophy
• ISBN: 9780496505029; 0496505025

Modern analytic moral theory has been dominated by a conception of ethics as the search for a monistic, rule-governed procedure of decision-making that is applicable to all moral problems. The predominant theories have generally been either consequentialist or deontological. Accompanying this predominance has been a classification of all cognitivist ethical theories as either deontological or consequentialist. This taxonomy and the propensity to give either the principle of the right or the principle of the good fundamental normative status is what I refer to as “the modern moral dichotomy.” The problem with this conception of moral theory is that the sources of moral value are heterogeneous, and monistic theories do not allow one to mediate tension between the principles of the good and the right adequately. The modern moral dichotomy manifests itself within bioethics in two ways. First, some popular approaches to bioethics have been developed in response to the inadequacies of monistic moral theory. Second, the principles of the good and the right often conflict in the circumstances in which health care decisions must be made. Such conflict may occur at both the individual and societal levels of bioethics. My argument is that an Aristotelian and Thomistic teleological approach to ethics transcends the modern moral dichotomy and provides a framework for mediating considerations of the good and the right in the context of health care. The argument unfolds in three stages. Stage one distinguishes the teleological approach from consequentialism and deontology as a distinct type of cognitive ethical theory. The second stage outlines the way in which this teleological approach allows for considerations of both consequences and rules of right action. The third stage illustrates how this approach allows one to mediate these considerations at both the individual and societal levels of bioethics.