From Gift to Care: Jean-Luc Marion and the Ethical Foundations of Organ Donation in Philosophical Practice

Abstract

This article develops a philosophically grounded framework for understanding organ donation as an ethical, existential, and dialogical phenomenon. It argues that organ donation may be interpreted, in Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenological vocabulary, as a paradigmatic instance of the gift, that is, as an event marked by gratuity, asymmetry, and non-reciprocity. Yet the phenomenology of the gift, taken by itself, leaves unresolved important questions concerning vulnerability, relational dependence, psychological burden, and the normative limits of advising others in morally charged contexts. For this reason, Marion’s account is placed in dialogue with Martha Nussbaum’s theory of compassion and with care ethics, especially as developed by Carol Gilligan and Virginia Held. The article further situates this conceptual framework within philosophical counselling, drawing particularly on the work of Lou Marinoff and Vasile Hațegan in order to clarify the methodological and ethical limits of reflective guidance. Special attention is given to clients whose moral reasoning is shaped by religious commitments and by concerns about bodily integrity, death, and spiritual meaning. The article argues that philosophical counselling can ethically assist such clients in clarifying the meaning of organ donation without collapsing into persuasion or moral imposition. In this way, the paper contributes both to philosophical practice and to contemporary applied ethics by articulating a non-directive but conceptually rigorous model for addressing organ donation in dialogical settings.