Abstract

This article proposes a concept of narrative autonomy to supplement existing accounts in healthcare ethics. This is done by means of a comparison between three end-of-life scenarios: Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and two related contemporary stories by Lorrie Moore and Bernhard Schlink, which explore some problems arising when extremely individualistic notions of patient autonomy are put into practice. It is argued that the best model for palliative care is a cooperative one in which patient autonomy is understood as essentially social, and that involves decisional, executive, informational, and narrative dimensions