Abstract
Spirituality refers to the search for meaning and understanding of life, with reference to nonphysical values or powers. The growing recognition of spirituality and its effects on medical outcomes leads to ethical questions including (A) proper assessment of and response to spirituality in medical situations, (B) what to do when someone’s spirituality contradicts standard biomedical judgment, and (C) the underlying assumptions of bioethics as typically presented in the West. These are questions of: how far assessing (or ignoring) patients’ spirituality would be ethical, how far accepting (or overriding) patients’ spiritually grounded decisions would be ethical, and whether the presuppositions of modern Western bioethics ultimately conflict with the presuppositions of spirituality.
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Further Readings
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This entry is the product of an employee of (National) Kyoto University, Japan, but the statements, opinions, or conclusions contained herein do not represent the statements, opinions, or conclusions of Kyoto University or the Japanese government.
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Becker, C. (2014). Spirituality. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_398-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_398-1
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