Stories and Their Limits: Narrative Approaches to Bioethics

Narratives have always played a prominent role in both bioethics and medicine; the fields have attracted much storytelling, ranging from great literature to humbler stories of sickness and personal histories. And all bioethicists work with cases--from court cases that shape policy matters to case studies that chronicle sickness. But how useful are these various narratives for sorting out moral matters? What kind of ethical work can stories do--and what are the limits to this work? The new essays in Stories and Their Limits offer insightful reflections on the relationship between narratives and ethics.

About the Author

Hilde Lindemann Nelson is Director of the Center for Applied and Professional Ethics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is the co-author of The Patient in the Family (Routledge 1995) and Alzeimer's: Answers to Hard Questions for Families (1996) and editor of Feminism and Families (Routledge 1997). She is also the co-editor of the Reflective Bioethics series.