Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-26T20:42:46.483Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Autonomy and informed consent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Get access

Summary

“Why do you assume you have the right to decide for someone else? Don't you agree it's a terrifying right, one that rarely leads to good? You should be careful. No one's entitled to it, not even doctors.”

“But doctors are entitled to the right – doctors above all,” exclaimed Dontsova with deep conviction. By now she was really angry. “Without that right there'd be no such thing as medicine!”

Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

The slave doctor prescribes what mere experience suggests – and when he has given his orders, like a tyrant, he rushes off. But the other doctor, who is a freeman, attends and practices upon freemen – he enters into a discourse with the patient and with his friends – and he will not prescribe for him until he has first convinced him: at last, when he has brought the patient more and more under his persuasive influences and set him on the road to health, he attempts to effect a cure.

Plato, The Laws

In ethics, as in the law, there is often agreement concerning what to do in a particular case, or about the importance of a moral principle, co-existing with disagreement about why we should act in a certain manner, or on the nature or basis of the moral principle. Similarly, moral theories may agree about specific cases of lying while giving different accounts of why a lie is or is not justified.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×