Is there any proper place for narrative ethics in clinical ethics?

Abstract

    In 1996, narrative ethics emerged as an alternative to abstract, principle-based biomedical ethics. Its significance or usefulness in the field of clinical ethics has not been fully and critically investigated yet; some authors have argued that in medical ethics, there had been a tendency to romanticize the word “narrative.” This paper closely examines incoherent narratives by proponents of narrative ethics about its most important features. It is argued that the word “narrative” is not always necessarily to be used, and narrative ethics should be identified simply with the casebased approach or included within hermeneutical, “dramatological” ethics or care ethics. It is also suggested that it may remain, at most a slogan-like dogmatic imperative for medical professionals to handle with care fragile narratives of patients.