Principlism

Principlism is an applied ethics approach to the examination of moral dilemmas that is based upon the application of certain ethical principles. This approach to ethical decision-making has been adopted enthusiastically in many different professional fields, largely because it sidesteps complex debates in moral philosophy at the theoretical level. Rather than engaging in abstract debate about the best or most appropriate approach at the normative level (for example, virtue ethics, deontology or consequentialist ethics), principlism is purported to offer a practical method of dealing with real-world ethical dilemmas. Principlism is an applied ethics approach to the examination of moral dilemmas that is based upon the application of certain ethical principles. This approach to ethical decision-making has been adopted enthusiastically in many different professional fields, largely because it sidesteps complex debates in moral philosophy at the theoretical level. Rather than engaging in abstract debate about the best or most appropriate approach at the normative level (for example, virtue ethics, deontology or consequentialist ethics), principlism is purported to offer a practical method of dealing with real-world ethical dilemmas. The origins of principlism, as we know it today, are to be found in two influential publications from around the same time (late 1970s) in the United States. First, the approach was advocated by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research in a document called the Belmont Report. The Commission came into existence on July 12, 1974 when the National Research Act (Pub. L. 93-348) was signed into law. After four years of monthly deliberations, the Commission met in February 1976 for four days at the Smithsonian Institution's Belmont Conference Center which resulted in a statement of three basic ethical principles: autonomy, beneficence, and justice, for biomedical and behavioural research. Second, in the book entitled Principles of Biomedical Ethics (1979), Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, stated that the following four prima facie principles lie at the core of moral reasoning in health care: respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. In the opinion of Beauchamp and Childress, these four principles are part of a ‘common morality’; an approach that ‘takes its basic premises directly from the morality shared by the members of society – that is, unphilosophical common sense and tradition’.