To discipline and to professionalize. The institutionalization of ethics in medicine in the Federal Republic of Germany since the 1970s

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Mathias Schütz
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 493400483

The goal of this research project is to historicize the process of instituting ethics within the medical community of the Federal German Republic. This process will be analyzed based on a multitude of protagonists who pursued or influenced the integration of ethical concepts and practices in medicine since the late 1970s. The hesitant institutional establishment of ethics in medicine is related to the diversity of interests and motives involved, which only slowly assimilated: The investigation will address protagonists from theology, philosophy, and medical history, the medical schools and professional associations of physicians, funding organizations and politics, and in addition to the direct development within the Federal Republic also potential as well as manifest influences from the GDR and the United States. To integrate all those protagonists, interests, motives, and influences, a pair of ideally diametrical analyzing categories is utilized, each of which stand for a progressive and a traditional view on ethics in medicine: the categories of disciplining and professionalizing. They represent understandings of and claims to ethics in medicine, one the one side as an instrument of disciplining medical knowledge and practice, which can only be consequently developed and applied by non-physicians, on the other side as an essential part of medical professionalism, which is rooted in the physician’s tradition and can only be consequently advanced out of the physician’s experience. Those conflicting understandings mark a space of debating and mediating ethics in medicine that finally led to the institutional integration of the discipline ethics into the professional context of medical schools, biomedical research institutions, and clinics. This process of debating, defining, and integrating will be investigated chronologically based on three phases of establishment: First, the constitutional phase in the 1970s, during which ethics in medicine emerged as a challenge and sphere of activity, was taken on by protagonists of different worldviews, disciplinary and professional backgrounds, and produced first initiatives. Second, the phase of consolidation in the 1980s, when a rising demand for discussion and action also increased the consideration for ethics in medicine and called upon new actors, not least in research funding. Third, the phase of focusing in the 1990s, during which ethics in medicine began to establish itself as an academic discipline, and positioned itself between bioethical discourse, the humanities and the physician’s ethos in a simultaneous move of demarcation and integration.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants