Philosophy of Medicine

Catalog description

This course addresses the questions “What is the nature and goal of medicine?” To gain a better understanding of the question and how it has been and could be answered, we will study some of the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical assumptions of two models of medicine: the (dominant) biomedical model and the humanistic model. The two models provide different answers to questions such as these: What is a disease? Is it a value-free or a value-laden concept? Is the physician attending to a disease or to an illness, to pain or to suffering? Is the therapeutic goal the health or the well-being of the patient? Can and should the patient be reduced to his or her physical body or be regarded as an embodied self? Should emotionally detached care or empathic care characterize the physician’s practice of medicine? What should be the defining features of the patient-physician relationship?