Commentary: Beyond Common or Uncommon Morality

Abstract

In “Medical Ethics: Common or Uncommon Morality,”1 Rosamond Rhodes defends a specialist view of medical ethics, specifically the ethics of physicians. Rhodes’s account is specifically about the ethics of medical professionals, rooted in what these professionals do. It would seem to follow that other healthcare professions might be subject to ethical standards that differ from those applicable to physicians, rooted in what these other professions do, but I leave this point aside for purposes of this commentary. Rhodes’s view includes both a negative and a positive thesis. The negative thesis is that precepts in medical ethics—understood as the ethics of physicians—cannot be derived from principles of common morality. The positive thesis is two-fold: that precepts in medical ethics must be derived from an account of the special nature of what physicians do, and that this account is to be understood through an overlapping consensus of rational and reasonable medical professionals. While I agree emphatically with, and have learned a great deal from, Rhodes’s defense of the negative thesis, I disagree with both claims in Rhodes’s positive thesis, for reasons I will now explain after a brief observation about the negative thesis.