Narrative Ethics Research Articles

Introduction: the narrative ethics of Ali Smith’s <em>Seasonal Quartet</em>

The editors Agnes Andeweg and Jesse van Amelsvoort introduce the special issue on The Narrative Ethics of Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet. They briefly contextualise Smith’s four novels —Autumn (2016), Winter (2017), Spring (2019), and Summer (2020)—and its reception, and outline how this special issue originated at the MLA International Symposium which was themed Being Hospitable: Languages and Cultures Across Borders (Glasgow, 2022). They introduce the contributions, which are bookended by two interviews with Ali Smith conducted by email in October 2023 and in person in June 2022. Andeweg and Van Amelsvoort argue that rather than a prescriptive or universal norm, hospitality in the Seasonal Quartet results from attention and appreciation in specific situations, as an aesthetic practice.

Clinicians' Perspectives and an Ethical Analysis of Safer Supply Opioid Prescribing.

In British Columbia, Canada, many physicians providing care to individuals with high-risk opioid use disorder adopted safer supply (SS) opioid prescribing in the spring of 2020 with the goal of facilitating public health measures for COVID-19. This prescribing practice continued after measures were lifted. This study aimed to explore prescribers' perspectives following several years of local experience in prescribing SS opioids, primarily in the form of hydromorphone tablets, and to apply ethical concepts to explore current challenges and ongoing sources of provider distress. Addiction medicine SS prescribers participated in individual or small group semi-structured interviews. Each interview was transcribed and analysed for recurrent themes. Themes were then integrated into a narrative ethics discussion. Eleven addiction medicine physicians practicing in various settings within Vancouver participated in this study. Six themes were identified: clinical assessment, clinician distress, gaps in care, models of safer supply, research, and special populations. Ethical dilemmas in prescribing SS are identified and explored through a discussion of biomedical ethics principles and the physician role.

The Unique and Important Jewish Responses to Proposition 8 and Marriage Equality

ABSTRACTMarriage equality is a nascent and fragile civil right in the United States. To protect this civil right we must articulate and preserve diverse religious, ethical, and legal positions from the marriage equality debates. Sadly, and incorrectly, both the popular and scholarly narratives of religions' public role and ethics on marriage equality have been told with a Christocentric and “God versus Gay” framing. Here I push the borders of that frame to include the crucially important story of Judaism and the Prop 8 marriage equality debates. Judaism made and still makes vital and unique contributions to the battle for marriage equality: the majority of Jewish congregations and organizations are in favor of marriage equality, as opposed to the majority of Christianities which are against it. Judaism models diversity within the tradition, for example how to be opposed to same‐sex marriage but not expect that it will be illegal. Jewish positions on marriage equality in the public sphere model how the civil rights of marriage equality and religious liberty can coexist and thrive.

Solicitude, Emotions, and Narrative in Technology Design Ethics

The first objective of this paper is to recognize the role of emotion and feeling in Ricœur’s “little ethics” and what they can further add to it, then to explore in more detail how solicitude as a virtue, and affective disposition more broadly, can contribute to a modern ethics of technology. Ultimately, emotions help us to understand technologies and technological ways of being today; Ricœur’s “little ethics”, along with his narrative theory, provide a framework for understanding the ethically salient aspects of technical practice, especially through the openness to the other demanded by solicitude, and essentially by emphasising emotion or feeling as a way of being in the world, and a mode of existence: one which is done with, if not sometimes because of, technology and technical practice.

ANGUISH, TRAUMA AND RESPONSIBILITY: ETHICAL PERSPECTIVE ON ONTOLOGICAL NARRATIVE FORMATION

This article discusses the issue of anguish from a philosophical perspective combining it with the issues of trauma, responsibility and ethics. It is argued that anguish is a painful emotion that has ontological roots and can be etched into a positive form of either arts or writing, which helps to express this particular emotion, according to Maurice Blanchot’s philosophical viewpoint. Further, the article focuses on the ethical narrative formation regarding the victim and the nature of trauma. The paper refers to Julia Kristeva’s notion of the abject to explain that the abuser’s narrative is usually abjected by the society by excluding the abuser from the ethical narrative, while the victim is seen as deficient due to the trauma experience. The article suggests that the trauma narrative can be reformed and changed in such a way as to include both the victim and the abuser into it. The text argues that demystification and dialogical relationship between the victim and abuser, as well as the reduction of the role of narcissism in the abuser’s narrative, can help create an ethical narrative that allows to humanize both the victim and the abuser. The article further argues that the abuser has to take the responsibility for the wrongdoings, which usually falls too often on the victim. There is a further argument about a shift in narrative formation in the society which creates certain values, meanings and socially accepted emotions. The article also emphasizes that empathy and love are important for considering trauma narratives in order to learn to accept new accounts of trauma.

Toward a new clinical pragmatism: method in clinical ethics consultation.

In this paper, I leverage the pragmatist tradition in philosophy, the collective wisdom of scholarship in clinical ethics consultation, and earlier attempts to apply pragmatism in clinical ethics to develop a new vision of clinical ethics practice called New Clinical Pragmatism. It argues that clinical ethics methodology, from the New Clinical Pragmatist's perspective, amounts to the recommendation that consultants should customize a methodological approach, drawing on the various available methods, depending on the demands of the specific case, and should avoid attempts to identify a 'true' methodology but to the incoherence and inevitable failure of those attempts. I argue that pragmatism's emphasis on practical wisdom and experimentation allow the New Clinical Pragmatist to do this while avoiding irrationality in choosing methods. I discuss how the New Clinical Pragmatist gives a unique, constructive perspective on key aspects of clinical ethics consultation such as the choice of common morality vs. internal morality of medicine approaches, process standards, bioethics mediation, and narrative ethics, and suggest how New Clinical Pragmatism's relaxed approach to choice of methodology encourages consultants to balance attention to the particulars of the case with knowledge of what the many insightful scholars of clinical ethics methodology have found useful in the past. I also argue that New Clinical Pragmatism is consistent with efforts to professionalize clinical ethics consultation.

Seeing Others: Ethics of Ghost Narrative in Sinophone Hong Kong Literature

Seeing Others: Ethics of Ghost Narrative in Sinophone Hong Kong Literature

Ethics of Organ Donation and the Problem of the Sacred

The purpose of this article is to analyze the interaction between relatives of potential donors and transplant professionals within the framework of a cultural sociological approach in order to develop valid bioethical recommendations. The key thesis of this article is the assertion that principalist ethical conflicts regarding the problems of organ donation, as well as the tools of narrative ethics, are not sufficient to reveal the motivation of agents. As part of the search for the origins of this, it is proposed to reconstruct the situation of moral choice of family members within the framework of E. Durkheim’s theory of the sacred. The concept of the sacred is revealed with the orientation on the given by P. Smith and D. Alexander. The concept of sacred is revealed with the orientation on the autonomous role of culture given by F. Smith and D. Alexander, oriented to the study of the emotional dimension of social life and the study of cultural structures as a social text. Based on the analysis of the category of the sacred in the context of social circumstances of organ donation in Spain, it is shown that the successful experience of the latter in the field of transplantology is connected with the desacralization of the body undertaken by the Catholic Church in Spain and the subsequent sacralization of the gift of life. The analysis of the narratives of donor relatives and medical professionals shows that the driving force behind the relatives’ motivation is often the sacralization of the deceased’s will, which implies the possibility of a posthumous gift and reinforces the solidarity of the deceased with the society experiencing a shortage of donor organs. Obstacles to successful transplantation are perceived by donor relatives as a possible desecration of the gift of a loved one’s life. Thus, on the way to creating valid bioethical recommendations for interacting with relatives of potential donors, it is recommended to focus on the study of pre-individual cultural and social constructs of the sacred that relate to situations of donation and death. In this case, the sacred is considered as an important constant of social life, not necessarily related directly to religion.

Reijers, W., & Coeckelbergh, M. (2020). Narrative and technology

Published in 2020, Wessel Reijers and Mark Coeckelbergh’s Narrative and Technology Ethics provides insight into contemporary views on virtuous technical practices. As with their 2016 and 2018 papers on narrative technology, Reijers and Coeckelbergh’s stated objective is to expand a philosophical theory of narrative technology in other spheres of human lives—in this case—ethics. Starting with the effects of technology on the Covid-19 pandemic, the book traces the evolution of technology throughout the twenty-first century. In tandem with Plato’s technology of writing, Prometheus’s technology of fire, and the technologies used by Icarus and Pandora, the book argues that technology has been responsible for both the development and the suffering of individuals.

From applied ethics and ethical principles to virtue and narrative in AI practices

AbstractThe question of how we can use ethics and ethical frameworks to avert the negative consequences of AI through guidance on human behaviour and the design of technological systems has recently been receiving increasing attention. The appropriate response to an ethics of AI has certainly been contentious. For some years the wisdom of deontology and utilitarianism in the ethics of technology has been questioned. Today, a kind of AI ethics principlism has gained a degree of widespread acceptance, yet it still invites harsh rejections in recent scholarship. In this paper, we wish to explore the contribution to an ethics of AI made by a narrative philosophy and ethics of technology inspired by the ‘little ethics’ of Paul Ricoeur, and virtue ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre, most recently and promisingly built upon by Wessel Reijers and Mark Coeckelbergh. The objective of this paper is to examine the extent to which a narrative and virtue based ethics (or, VPD, i.e., virtuous practice design) might be a plausible candidate for the foundation of an ethics of AI, or rather ethical AI practice. This will be achieved by exploring the ways in which this approach can respond to some of the significant faults with or critiques of applied and principles and guidelines based ethical approaches to AI ethics.

The Reasonable Content of Conscience in Public Bioethics.

Bioethicists aim to provide moral guidance in policy, research, and clinical contexts using methods of moral analysis (e.g., principlism, casuistry, and narrative ethics) that aim to satisfy the constraints of public reason. Among other objections, some critics have argued that public reason lacks the moral content needed to resolve bioethical controversies because discursive reason simply cannot justify any substantive moral claims in a pluralistic society. In this paper, the authors defend public reason from this criticism by showing that it contains sufficient content to address one of the perennial controversies in bioethics-the permissibility and limits of clinician conscientious objection. They develop a "reasonability view" grounded in public reason and apply it to some recent examples of conscientious objection.

Reimagining the Discipleship of Marriage Through the Lens of Mark: A Theological Reflection for Bioethical Decision-Making on Contraception in Catholic Healthcare and Marital Life.

Mark 10:13-16, interpreted within the broader context of the Gospel of Mark, using a moral exegetical framework, provides a lens for what welcoming the children refers to in sacramental marital discipleship. Building upon the narrative ethics of Mark, the words and deeds of Jesus, magisterial teachings and writings allow these verses to be reimagined to unveil an interpretation and a praxis for marital and moral life. Accepting the gift of a child in the natural order paves the way for discipleship and ushers in the kingdom of God. Just as Jesus welcomed the children, parents are called to welcome them through unhindered conjugal love. These reflections form a Catholic theology of married life and sexuality and a theology of children that the couple shares with Christ's thoughts and actions.

Social Imaginary of the Just World: Narrative Ethics and Truth-Telling in Non-Fiction Stories of (In)Justice

The paper focuses on the issue of truth-telling in non-fictional narratives of (in)justice. Based on examples of rape narratives, domestic abuse narratives, human trafficking narratives and asylum seeker narratives, I examine the various difficulties in telling the truth in such stories, particularly those related to various culturally conditioned ideas of how the world works, which at the same time form the basis of, among other things, legal discourse and officials’ decision-making processes. I will also demonstrate that such culturally conditioned ideas, which are the basis of official discourse, can be considered within the category of both the social imaginary of the just world in the Taylorian sense of the term, and the social master narrative, which in the case of stories of (in)justice is often based on the just world hypothesis.

A Study of Narrative Ethics with Otherness

A Study of Narrative Ethics with Otherness

Exploring and Supporting Parents' Stories of Loss in the NICU: A Narrative Study.

Death is no stranger to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Extreme prematurity, congenital abnormalities, and other complexities can turn what was hoped to be a very exciting moment in a family's life into one of despair and grief. There are many infants that not only do not survive but also have a medicalized death necessitating complex decision-making, weighing quality versus duration of life. We can learn from the stories of parents who chose palliative care for their children. In this narrative inquiry study, we elicited bereaved parents' stories and reflections on the lives of their children and the care they received in the NICU. From a narrative ethics perspective, their stories speak to normative aspects of parenting, decision-making, and receiving medical care that affect their moral sense-making of their NICU experiences as well as their longer-term living with the loss of their children. Their stories express the importance of having had meaningful time with their children, maintaining direct and frequent communication, acknowledging uncertainty, and emphasizing compassion as methods of providing support to parents as they navigate their bereavement.

Political Campaign Ethics on Twitter Based on Local Ethnic in Indonesia

The purpose of the study is to examine opportunities in terms of the ethics of political campaigns based on the philosophy of local ethnic Bugis during the 2018 election of the Governor of South Sulawesi on Twitter. The study used a quantitative research design using a survey method. In the study, descriptive content analysis was applied to define the narrative of political campaign ethics based on Bugis's Philosophy on Twitter. The research subjects were Twitter users who discussed topics and issues surrounding the cultural and moral values of the Bugis philosophy. Data are extracted from the official accounts of the 2018 South Sulawesi Governor candidates for analysis using Nvivo 12 Plus. The findings of this study explained that the ethics of political campaigns based on Bugis philosophy are not only confined to discussion in public spheres but have also been under discussion in digital spaces such as Twitter.

Rethinking advanced motherhood: a new ethical narrative

The aim of the study is to rethink the ethics of advanced motherhood. In the literature, delayed childbearing is usually discussed in the context of reproductive justice, and in relationship to ethical issues associated with the use and risk of assisted reproductive technologies. We aim to go beyond these more “traditional” ways in which reproductive ethics is framed by revisiting ethics itself through the lens of the figure of the so-called “older” mother. For this purpose, we start by exploring some of the deep seated socio-cultural discourses in the context of procreation: ageism, ableism and the widespread bias towards geneticism and pronatalism. Afterwards, we provide a critical overview of the key arguments against or in support of advanced motherhood. We then briefly discuss how entrenchment by both sides has produced an impasse in the debate on the ethics of advanced motherhood and proceed by arguing that it is fundamental to bring about a change in this narrative. For this purpose, we will revisit the feminist usage of the concept of vulnerability which will allow us both to criticize culturally prescribed norms about motherhood and to address the painful reality of age-related fertility decline. In the last section, we argue that instead of defining “older” motherhood as an ethical problem, we should problematize the fact that female reproductive ageing is an understudied and ill-sourced topic. We believe that allocating resources to research to better understand female reproductive ageing is not only ethically permissible, but might even be ethically desirable.

A Rhetorical Reading of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games

This paper discusses Suzanne Collins’ novel The Hunger Games (2008) in light of James Phelan’s rhetorical model. It explores Phelan’s theory of the reading of narrative as an activity that simultaneously engages the readers’ intellects, emotions, ideologies, and ethics. The paper examines several issues central to rhetorical poetics: reliable/unreliable narrators, narrative ethics, narrative judgments, and narrative progression. It demonstrates how the rhetorical theory of narrative emphasizes the recursive relationships between authorial agency, textual phenomena, and reader response while remaining open to insights from a range of critical approaches such as feminism, formalism, and cultural studies. I argue that the narrator in this novel is largely reliable with only a few cases of slight deviation from the norms of the implied author due to unavoidable lack of cognition or to occasional cases of misinterpretation. The novel contains a powerful communication system that blends fictional and actual audiences into a network of recursive relations based on a multilayered narrative ethics. The paper also shows how the rhetorical model can illuminate and assist in our interpretation of literary texts especially when we view the reading experience as a vital engagement between the reader and the author controlled by an implied author affected by each of them. Keywords: Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, James Phelan, Rhetorical Model Scholars.

Hayden White, The Ethics of Narrative: Essays on History, Literature, and Theory, Volume 1, edited by Robert Doran

Hayden White, <i>The Ethics of Narrative: Essays on History, Literature, and Theory</i>, Volume 1, edited by Robert Doran

Narrative and Representational Ethics and Profit in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Narrative and Representational Ethics and Profit in the Marvel Cinematic Universe