Lectures: The Ethics of Discontent

For those visitors in the Southern California area, here are two ethics lectures on the 25th and 26th of March which may be of interest. ..Maurice.




The Ethics of Discontent

Two Lectures by
Arthur W. Frank, Ph.D., FRSC
Professor Sociology, University of Calgary

The lectures are complementary attempts to articulate discontent with the ethical frameworks that the 21st century has received. Although I will not dwell on it, the conditions that defined the professions in the last century are breaking down, however strong their half-life remains. In particular, the claim to esoteric expertise has been undone by Internet accessibility of information, and peer control over professional accreditation and discipline is being challenged if not usurped by other regulatory means. What remains is trust as a necessary condition for professional work. Both lectures are about sustaining trust as an ethical practice. The first lecture deals with specific medical professionalism, and the second lecture discusses generalized dilemmas of professional work.

Lecture 1: “Ethics for Recovering Caregivers: From Principles to Practices”
Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at Noon
Mayer Auditorium, USC Health Sciences Campus

The recovering caregiver is a healthcare professional who is ready to admit that his or her work is out of control, and that too many ideals of caring are being sacrificed. As extraordinary an achievement as the 1980s bioethics synthesis known as principlism remains, it offers little to the recovering caregiver. This lecture offers a 13-step program (thirteen because it’s one off from twelve, and an especially odd number) that focuses on practices, not principles, and integrates ethic into all aspects of healthcare.

Lecture 2: “Dilemmas of Dirt Work: Professionals, Artificial Persons, and Ethics”
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 4pm
Intellectual Commons, Room 240, USC Doheny Memorial Library

Dirt work is the recognition that even the best-intentioned action produces some kind of dirt. The ethics of professional work often neglects the inevitability of dirt; that neglect is especially evident when professionals claim to be artificial persons, acting on an authority outside of themselves. To imagine how professionals might do dirt work better, the lecture considers the figure of the trickster, who is the preeminent dirt worker of folklore and myth.


Arthur Frank is the author of The Renewal of Generosity: Illness, Medicine, and How to Live (University of Chicago, 2004), The Wounded Storyteller Body, Illness, and Ethics (University of Chicago, 1995), and At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness (Houghton Mifflin, 1991). His work begins with a theoretically informed belief in the essential role narrative plays in all facets of medicine in order to provide us with a practical and ethical means of incorporating this knowledge into our various relationships and encounters with the health-care system.

Sponsored by the
Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics
and The USC College
University of Southern California
for more information usclevan@usc.edu 213/740.5499