Concept
Beneficence (ethics)
Overview
Beneficence in general means "active well-doing". Duties of beneficence form a part of various religious and secular ethical theories. As an applied ethical concept relating to research, beneficence means that researchers should have the welfare of the research participant as a goal of any clinical trial or other research study. The antonym of this term, maleficence, describes a practice that opposes the welfare of any research participant. According to the Belmont Report, researchers are required to follow two moral requirements in line with the principle of beneficence: do not harm, and maximize possible benefits for research while minimizing any potential harm on others.
The idea that medical professionals and researchers would always practice beneficence seems natural to most patients and research participants, but in fact, every health intervention or research intervention has potential to harm the recipient. There are many different precedents in medicine and research for conducting a cost–benefit analysis and judging whether a certain action would be a sufficient practice of beneficence, and the extent to which treatments are acceptable or unacceptable is under debate.
Despite differences in opinion, there are many concepts on which there is wide agreement. One is that there should be community consensus when determining best practices for dealing with ethical problems.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
His benefactor would dishonour himself if he attempted by violence to constrain him to gratitude, and it would be impertinent for any third person, who was not the superior of either, to intermeddle. But of all the duties of beneficence, those which gratitude recommends to us approach nearest to what is called a perfect and complete obligation. What friendship, what generosity, what charity, would prompt us to do…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
The chapter “SECT. II.--OF JUSTICE AND BENEFICENCE.” is titled for Beneficence; states what Beneficence is.
NOT TO IMBUE OUR NEIGHBOURS WITH OUR OWN DEMON.—Let us in our age continue to hold the belief that benevolence and beneficence are the characteristics of a good man; but let us not fail to add “provided that in the first place he exhibits his benevolence and beneficence towards himself.” For if he acts otherwise—that is to say, if he shuns, hates, or injures himself—he is certainly not a good man.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day
States what Beneficence is; names Beneficence twice.
If there is any society among robbers and murderers, they must at least, according to the trite observation, abstain from robbing and murdering one another. Beneficence, therefore, is less essential to the exigence of society than justice. Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence; but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it.
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
The chapter “SECTION II. Of justice and beneficence.” is titled for Beneficence; names Beneficence twice.
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Applied ethics.