Previous Page

The Hippocratic Oath: Poetic, Symbolic, and Moral Interpretation

June 18, 2016

Audio Recording

Video Recording

The Hippocratic Oath remains as one of the most loved—or hated—ethical texts in medical ethics and bioethics. The objective of this paper is to clarify the poetic and the symbolic interpretations of the old text, searching for the real and proper use of the Oath then and now; and to prove that it remains a useful tool for bioethics and medical ethics studies and teaching. Using the Aristotelian theory of the Four Discourses, I analyze the Oath alongside an interpretation of its direct, indirect, specific and general moral prescriptions. The use of these important cultural and philosophical tools help us to define the Oath as a poetic text that can be used—and was used—to cause a powerful impression upon the new physician, helping in his moral education and in his commitment with the moral community of medicine. To judge the Oath as a logic, a dialectical or a rhetoric text would be to misjudge it and to underestimate the real value of the Hippocratic Oath for the ancient Greek and for the actual physician.

Keywords:
History of medicine; Medical education