Abstract

Since the second half of the twentieth century, the principle of autonomy has come to be regarded as the cornerstone of medical ethics. Older principles of medical ethics, such as beneficence and non-maleficence, both of which can be subsumed under the concept of “care”, have correspondingly decreased in importance. Drawing on hermeneutic analyses of the constitutive interrelations between autonomous will-formation on the one hand, and well-being and social embeddedness on the other hand, it will be argued that a proper understanding of autonomy necessarily incorporates attention to well-being and care, and vice versa. The true ethical challenge is not to determine whether autonomy or care ought to take precedence, but to understand respecting autonomy and providing care as two aspects of one and the same ethical demand to attend to and help other individuals.