at Antonio Panti
27 LUG –
Dear Director,
on QS Prof. Luigi Vero Tarca expresses, with grace and precision, his philosophical position on the obligation to vaccinate health personnel, letting the political implication shine through in filigree: why the obligation?
Prof. Tarca argues that the contrast on the vaccination obligation offers the opportunity for a public discussion on the legitimacy of this both on the legal and on the political level of the validity of the normative source and of the procedures adopted. How to impose rules for everyone in a democratic but multi-valued world?
I do not enter, for lack of competence, in the discussion that arises with the pre-Socratics and reaches our days. Anyone, even based on high school memories, could start from Plato and Aristotle to get to Rowls through Grotius, Hobbes, Rousseau, without forgetting the theories on law of Kelsen and Schmidt. The result is an important debate on which even the layman are entitled to their own ideas.
But this is not the point. Two considerations: there is no society if there are no rules of coexistence; the procedure for forming the rules distinguishes the political regime but does not affect its validity. This is because without rules there is no coexistence.
The protection of health is a topical case of the crisis that arises due to the criteria for forming the rules because a synthesis must be found between the rights of the individual and that of the community and it is not always possible. The justification for the choice, in such cases, is found in a norm, not only Kantian, on why to do good and not to harm others: neminem ledere.
It is therefore not in the emergency that we must find agreements that respect the different beliefs. In reality, very often it must be decided whether the choices are advantageous for the individual or for the community: when there is conflict, that limit to everyone’s right prevails, which is the damage of others.
In the medical profession you have to listen, empathize and propose solutions. This is also true in politics, understood as the science of coexistence. I draw some conclusions. It is certainly preferable to convince oneself to be vaccinated rather than oblige. But in the face of possible social damage, what do you do? The reason is not a consumer good and someone who is not convinced, despite the goodness of the arguments, will always be there. The problem arises from the limits of human rationality.
However, the discourse on individual freedom finds a limit for health professionals. Nobody can be forced to take a driving license but if he wants to drive a bus he must have it because the employer has no other way to guarantee the use. The vaccine for doctors is a duty of service: democracy and philosophical questions do not take place there. Those who are not vaccinated are not in contact with patients, it is a mere precaution that the person in charge of the service requires and which is part of the contractual obligations. Practice often solves dilemmas.
The doctor discourages the vaccine on the basis of considerations which, however suggestive, have nothing scientific at all. In this case the doctor harms the patient by removing him from a health protection; the opposite of deontology. Such a doctor is not tolerable. Medicine is a practice based on science: wizards, sorcerers and sorcerers can affirm any fantasy, doctors cannot.
Without prejudice to discussion and tolerance as principles of civil coexistence, this needs rules and these are spoken of when there is an obligation to protect everyone’s health: to this end, some claimed right must be contained. One wonders then, in the social vision of medicine, whether it is a limitation of individual right or the disregard of the fact that the rights of the person are inseparable from the rights of all.
Antonio Panti
July 27, 2022
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