How to E lucidate the N otion of M odesty in C are ? Discussion About this Feeling in the Hospital

Résumé

Modesty has never been a fashion. The modesty seems to be a solitary feeling. It is a veil being made in the difficulty of a being to appear and to appear. The individual struggles to imagine his otherness in the eyes of others. This state is quite commonly observed in the care relationship. In this context, the respect of the patient's modesty is a strict duty of the physician. In spite of this, neither the caregiver nor the cared-for person knows what is “modest” in the eyes of the other and what their common ground is. This naturally subjective vagueness can be detrimental to the therapeutic alliance, leading to unfortunate problems. How can we clarify the notion of modesty in care? In this article, we propose to clarify the concept of modesty in care with the help of the resources of philosophy. In order to do so, we will try to bring definitional and fictional boundaries to this feeling. These hypothetical definitions could be considered against the dominant intuition of our pluralistic societies regarding the vision of value concepts. However, this work is an attempt to join the deontological with the empirical of care. Thus, we could give a conceptual catalog of these feelings, in the hope of making some of the readers feel approving about their knowledge of medical relationships. To begin with, we will follow the thread from modesty to shame, then back to modesty with dignity and finally to the intimacy of pain.