Holding the present and future accountable to the past: History and the maturation of clinical ethics as a field of the humanities

Clinical ethics, like bioethics more generally, until recently has tended t o focus on the present and future, with little attention to the history of moral thought about health care that preceded bioethics. As a consequence, clinical ethics and bioethics lack maturity as fields of the humanities. Th e papers in this year's clinical ethics issue of the Journal put contempora ry clinical ethics in critical dialogue with the past, making the former ac countable to the latter. The six papers in this issue of the Journal are br iefly described, with an emphasis on how they contribute to the maturation of clinical ethics as a field of the humanities.