Abstract
In Hippocrates’ Oath and Asclepius’ Snake: The Birth of the Medical Profession, Thomas Cavanaugh focuses on performative aspects of the taking of the oath which bear upon the formation of that community we identify as the medical profession. In this paper, I suggest that we can go further than Cavanaugh does in identifying what the Hippocratic oath makes possible. Given its particular content and what it communicates, the oath makes possible, to a degree few other oaths could, and in a way which might be significantly impaired by the absence of an oath, the form of community we have come to call the physician-patient relationship. In Section I, I will discuss Cavanaugh’s treatment of the oath’s relationship to the community of medical professionals. In Section II, I discuss at a relatively abstract level the relationship between communication and community. In Section III I show how the oath can additionally constitute the primordial moment in the existence of the physician-patient relationship.
References
Aquinas, S. T. (1964). Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by C. I. Litzinger. Washington: Henry Regnery Co..
Augustine, St. 1887. De Trinitate. Translated by Arthur West Haddan. Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1301.htm.
Cavanaugh, T. A. (2018). Hippocrates’ oath and Asclepius’ Snake: The birth of the medical profession. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Curlin, F. and Tollefsen, C. Forthcoming. The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Tollefsen, C. (2014). Lying and Christian ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Williams, B. (2002). Truth and truthfulness: An essay in genealogy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tollefsen, C. Hippocrates’ Oath: Commitment and Community. Philosophia 49, 905–912 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00271-w
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00271-w