Acting and refraining from acting in conflicted decision-making in medical clinics

To act and to refrain from actions comprises according to the logic of ethical consequentialism to be responsible in any case. This argument is particularly important in medical ethics: Setting actively limits to a life or permitting a long-term suffering of a patient is sometimes interpreted as equally important in the view of morals or ethics. The foundation of this argument is a one-sided theory of causation. The essay presented here tries to differentiate between the idea of causation in activities and the ascription of consequences on non-interference in certain cases. In former times nature presented reasons for non-intervention: God was at work. But when the idea of God is deficient in evidence in certain Western societies a qualified idea of life could replace the former basis of natural law or natural theology.