Abstract: The ethics of Emmanuel Levinas are frequently drawn on to frame narrative approaches to healthcare. This connection seems a natural one. Narrative medicine’s call to witness the patient’s singular story resonates with Levinas’ ethics of the face-to-face encounter. For Levinas, ethical concern and obligation originate from the interruption posed by individual others to our ontological systems. Given these parallels and the history of Levinas’ direct influence on narrative medicine, it is striking to learn that Levinas’ was incredulous about, if not openly critical of the ethical value of narrative. In several essays, he criticized narrative for reducing otherness to a set of defined roles and representations. More than a historical footnote, the striking congruence and incongruence of Levinas’ thought with narrative medicine suggests a productive ethical tension for the discipline.
This paper will use Levinas’ critiques of narrative to explore the tension between relying on stories told by or about patients, and the need to have our stories (medical and non-medical) interrupted by otherness. The presentation will address a common experience in healthcare and clinical bioethics—interactions with patients whose stories and lives discourage empathy, leading to moral distress and ethical conflicts. I will also explore how an ethics of the face-to-face encounter provides a useful addition to narrative approaches in a time when social polarization limits the usefulness of story to bridge divides between patients and providers.
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