Chapter 6 : Kairos. decision-making in medical ethics

Abstract

this paper assesses the decision making patterns in medical ethics: theformalized pattern of decision science, the meditative pattern of an art ofjudgement and lastly the still-to-be-elaborated pattern of kairology or sense ofthe right time. the ethical decision is to be thought out in the conditions ofmedical action while resorting to the philosophical concepts that shed light onthe issue. And it is precisely where medicine and philosophy of human actionmeet that the Greek notion of kairos, or “propitious moment”, evokes the criticalpoint where decision has to do with what is vital. reflection shows that this kairoscan be thought out outside the sacrificial pattern (deciding comes down to killinga possibility) by understanding the opportune moment as a sign of ethical action,as the condition for the formation of the subject (making a decision) and finallyas a new relationship to time, including in the context of medical urgency. thuswith an approach to clinical ethics centred on the relation to the individual, thefocus is less on the probabilistic knowledge of the decidable than on the meaningof the decision, and the undecidable comes to be accepted as an infinitedimension going beyond the limits of our acts, which makes the contingency andthe grandeur of human responsibility