Disciplining and Professionalizing. The Establishment of Medical Ethics in Germany since the 1970s
Direction: Dr. Mathias Schütz
Funded by Friedrich Baur Stiftung
The ethical reflection of taks, methods and goals of medicine is as old as medicine itself. Only since the 1970s a process of differentiating medical ethics as an inter-disciplinary, academic as well as clinical field of operation was implemented. The research project investigates the institutional and conceptual development at leading to the establishment of medical ethics in Germany: On the one hand, the socio-political conditions – international networks, social change, technical progress, economic constraint – which brought about of the ethical reflection of medicine are put into focus. On the other hand, the question how medical ethics located itself between the humanities, the social and natural sciences and developed the claim of applying normative theories with socio-empirical methods within clinical setting.