L’etica del discorso nella relazione tra medico e paziente

According to Bernard Lown, despite the fact that many formerly fatal diseases are now curable, people are healthier and live longer than ever, still patients’ dissatisfaction with doctors has rarely been more acute, public is suspicious, distrustful o, or even antagonistic to, the profession. The object of the current analysis is this dissatisfaction with doctors. This topic is analyzed from the perspective of the Discourse Ethics, more specifically from the Aristotelian point of view stemming from his Rhetoric. I will draw a parallelism between the virtues a Rhetorician needs to result persuasive and those a Doctor needs to be trusted by his patients. Among the three characteristics Aristotle listed to explain persuasion, Ethos, Logos, and Pathemata, I will focus on the former, specifically on its elements: phronesis , arete , and eunoia , reading these features in the light of the doctor-patient relationship.