title: The ethical imperative of medical humanities.
abstract: Medical humanities purchases its presence on the medical side of university campuses by adopting as its own the ends of medicine and medical ethics. It even justifies its presence by asserting promotion of those ends as an ethical imperative, most of all to improve the caring in medical care. As unobjectionable, even praiseworthy, as this imperative appears, it actually constrains the possibilities for interpersonal relationship in the context of medical practice. Development of those possibilities requires openness of self to the existentially challenging ethical imperative to care also literally for nothing at all.
authors.affiliation: Department of Religion, Health, and Human Values, Rush University, 5339 South Cornell Avenue #2, Chicago, IL 60615, USA. rees.geoffrey@gmail.com
authors.forename: Geoffrey
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rees
mesh_terms: D004992:Ethics, Medical; D006809:Humanities / Q000941:ethics*; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008149:Love; D028681:Moral Obligations; D012933:Social Identification