對醫療人員而言，身體痛苦只是疾病的附帶表象，無法成為完備的知識對象，因為身體感受被視為個人的主觀經驗，無法確切地依據規範而被證成。因而「苦樂」在倫理思維中也得讓位予「善惡」，讓位予依賴人格與義務的理性推理。但施密茨認為身體倫理學與規範倫理學是截然不同的，前者基於「感受的權威」，後者則基於「道德規範的約束力」。考量「感受的權威」的身體倫理學，施密茨以「性情自由」取代了「意志自由」的概念。「性情自由」則屬於純然「主觀」的自由，是由自身所觸發的。身體的倫理學特別關心受到身體苦痛所折磨的人們，同時也關心到比「同情心」更為原初，並混雜了「表情」與「面容」，「現實」與「虛擬」的「倫理團塊」。

For medical practitioners, physical pain is only an incidental appearance of disease and cannot be a complete object of knowledge because bodily sensations are regarded as personal subjective experiences and cannot be justified exactly according to norms. Therefore, in ethical thinking, “suffering and happiness” must also give way to “good and evil” and rational reasoning that relies on personality and obligations. But Schmitz believes that body ethics and normative ethics are distinct. The former is based on the “authority of feeling”, and the latter is based on “the binding force of moral norms”. Considering the body ethics of “authority of feeling”, Schmitz replaced the concept of “freedom of will” with “freedom of conscience”. “Freedom of conscience” is purely subjective freedom triggered by oneself. The ethics of the body is mainly concerned with people afflicted by bodily pain, but also with the “ethical mass” that is more primitive than “sympathy” and which mixes “expressions” and “faces”, “reality” and “virtuality”.