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Philosophical Medical Ethics. The unchanging virtues in the changing world: The fundamental qualities to be a “Good” Physician in the light of aristotle’s ethics

Gamze Nesipoglu

Abstract Medicine, in the modern world, is perpetually developing and changing in parallel with scientific advances, developing technology, new researches, explorations and inventions. While the methods, vehicles and also diseases are evolving, the essence and fundamental qualities for being a “good” physician in the context of virtues originated from Ancient moral philosophy keep still their worth. In this study, Aristotle’s books written on ethics- such as the Nicomachean Ethics, Magna Moralia, Eudemian Ethics and Ethics- were reviewed and the virtues that the physician ought to have syllogized from them. The virtues, which the physician ought to have in all processes of medical practice as well as patient-physician relationship, are wisdom, temperance, justice, good sense (gnome), understanding (synesis), intelligence (nous) and experience. The virtues could be assessed as the combination of theoretical reason/wisdom (sophia), practical reason (phronesis) and techne in sense of the art of medicine as the combination of basic moral and intellectual virtues as well as good trait. The virtues originated and continued from Ancient time to the present as universal and unchanging qualities could a physician make “excellence-oriented” and hence “good” in professional and moral sense. It is the main point that the maintenance of the unchanging values to be a “good” physician reaching the excellence in the changing world by means of advancements in science and technology.