Ernst, Stephan (Redakcja Wydawnictw Wydziału Teologicznego Uniwersytetu Opolskiego, 2023)
The four principles of medical ethics (autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, justice), which are influential today and often received unquestioningly in practice, have repeatedly encountered critical inquiries in the ethical discourse, in which the return to a uniform basic ethical principle is demanded. In this article, an attempt is made to make the principle of proportionality, which has always been the basis of medical and nursing practice and which also results from the principle of non-maleficence itself, comprehensible as such a basic principle. The proportionality criterion proves to be an approach to systematically reconstruct the four principles in their context and to develop solutions for many of the difficulties associated with their application in practice.
