From decisions about the end of life to choices about the creation of life and, more recently, to questions concerning the cost and accessibility of health care, bioethics is a field of vigorous and sometimes rancorous public debate. Indeed the moral controversies and dilemmas of medicine and health care often propel bioethics into newspaper headlines and television talk shows.

Moral Acquaintances: Methodology in Bioethics is not part of the standard repertory of books that explore and offer guidance on a particular issue in bioethics. The question Kevin Wm. Wildes poses is not what we can do morally in a field of great moral controversy, but how we can conceive the controversy and seek a moral course of action.

Wildes argues that the methodological issues in bioethics mirror the experience of moral pluralism in a secular society. The different methods that have been used in the field reflect the different moral views found in a pluralistic society. Rather than assume that there is one method for all or that we are lost in deep moral pluralism, Wildes argues that we can imagine ourselves as moral acquaintances. Key to understanding our acquaintanceship are the procedures that bind us together and the moral justifications and assumptions for those procedures.

About the Author

Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J. is Associate Director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and Assistant Professor of Philosophy and of Medicine at Georgetown University. He is the editor of Choosing Life: A Dialogue on Evangelium Vitae (1997) and Infertility: A Crossroad of Faith, Medicine, and Technology (1996).

Reviews

"Wildes (Georgetown Univ.) offers a concise, topical book concerning the paradigms involved in bioethics methodology. He takes the unique perspective that there are many methodological issues in bioethics but we can come to understand how we are all bound together as acquaintances in a similar process. The first part of the book deals with the emergence, early processes, and moral paradigms that have been used in the past. The reader will become familiar with how these differences can actually work for the benefit of all when analyzing and rectifying moral dilemmas in bioethics. The second part elaborates on how moral communities are shaped and how agreement on moral differences can lead to procedures for resolving bioethical problems. Wildes clearly seeks to inform the reader of how bioethics can proceed into the future. The book could function as a required resource in a graduate school seminar on bioethics. Graduate students and up." -Choice

"...Wildes is to be commended for his insistence that procedural ethics is 'thicker' than many of its proponents and critics suggest..." -Second Opinion

"His consistent focus throughout this carefully argued book is on how we conceive and define controversies in bioethics and how we seek a moral course of action. This volume is a worthy addition to college libraries and can be used fruitfully in conjuction with one or more books of readings for a bioethics course. The approach Wildes suggests may have wider application beyond bioethics in areas such as creation/evolution, ecclesiology, and eschatology where Christians disagree with one another." -Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith

"I found the Wildes book helpful in... attempting to develop ethical methodology.... The summaries and conclusion are clear and excellent." -National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly

"Wildes's desire to rethink the direction of bioethics for a new century by moving away from theory to praxis is to be commended and should be studied by all serious scholars and practitioners in this field." -Philosophy in Review

"Wildes's explanation of bioethical proceduralism positions it as a means to implement moral understanding in a pluralistic society and to identify shared moral commitments despite different justifications and moral foundations.... The trek from the reality of moral pluralism to the possibility of justifiable moral proceduralism is difficult at best, but Wildes succeeds in providing an imaginable context from which to proceed." -Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"We should... welcome any book that offers to bring at least some order to this battlefield. Kevin Wm. Wildes proposes to do just that." -Medical Humanities Review

"...an important corrective to standard theories of bioethics." --Religious Studies Review

"...[H]e has done a valuable service in bringing rigorous attention to questions of method. His book should be required reading for graduate courses in bioethics." -Theological Studies

Book Information
ISBN 9780268034528
Author Rev Kevin S.J. Wildes
Format Paperback
Page Count 226
Imprint University of Notre Dame Press
Publisher University of Notre Dame Press
Weight(grams) 308g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 12mm