The healing presence

The ethical dimension of Medicine in Paul Kalanithi

Abstract

This essay offers an ethical and humanistic reflection on the experience of life and death narrated by Paul Kalanithi in his autobiographical work When Breath Becomes Air. Through the analysis of the author’s transition from physician to cancer patient, it explores the complexity of the doctor-patient relationship, emphasizing empathy, attentive listening, and communication as core dimensions of care. The narrative is interpreted as an existential testimony that challenges medical practice to embrace responsibility, presence, and compassion in the face of human finitude. In this context, literature emerges as a symbolic space of mediation between science and humanity, enabling a renewed understanding of suffering and hope. The essay contributes to the field of Medical Humanities by demonstrating how personal narrative can illuminate ethical and existential dilemmas in clinical practice, fostering a more sensitive, reflective, and person-centered medicine. Through the analysis of selected excerpts, it proposes a revaluation of the physician’s role as a caregiver and interlocutor of human pain, and of literature as a tool for symbolic elaboration of illness and finitude.