Despite the much-discussed court cases in the 1970s that permitted some sibling-to-sibling kidney donations from minors,1 principles that can guide parental, medical, or judicial decisionmaking are neither clearly articulated nor uncontroversial.

al treatment of episodic substance intoxicated states with or without self-inflicted injuries. Patients later can develop comorbid medical illnesses associated with nonadherence of treatment or iatrogenic conditions, both of which result in complex end-of-life-care decisions. Institutional familiarity of repeat patients often leaves healthcare providers feeling responsible for the patient despite having little influence over the patients' ultimate behavioral outcomes. This article describes a patient with chronic alcohol abuse, treatment noncompliance, severe personality disorder, recurrent suicidal ideation, self-injurious behavior, alcoholic cirrhosis, and (...) suicide attempt resulting in multisystem injuries leading to an ethical conflict regarding end-of-life care.... (shrink)

Women wishing hospital admission for childbirth are asked to sign very general pre-admission consent forms. The use of such forms suggests that women in labor are considered incompetent to give informed consent. This paper explores some of the problems with advance directives and general consent, and argues that since women in labor are not generally incompetent, it is not appropriate to require this kind of consent of them.

Adults who give proxy consent for medical treatment for adolescents must decide how much weight to give to adolescents' own preferences. There is evidence that some adolescents choose treatments different from what adults see as most reasonable. It is argued that adolescents choose according to age-specific values, i.e. values they hold, as adolescents, and which fulfil important developmental needs. Because not fulfilling these needs may do serious psychological damage, it is urged that proxies give weight to these values, up to (...) the limit where it would endanger or profoundly limit future life. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 11, Page 29-30, November 2011.

Volume 19, Issue 12, December 2019, Page 73-74.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 4, Page 21-22, April 2012.

This paper examines economic arguments employers sometimes use to justify restricting or excluding from employment those workers who are Iikely to incur high costs in health care insurance. We argue that, although profit-making is a legitimate goal for businesses, hiring practices based on non-job-related criteria violate principles of self determination, autonomy, discrimination, justice, and privacy. We conclude that hiring practices based on Iiability-driven ethics are not morally justified, but that as long as health care insurance and employment are Iinked, businesses (...) will continue to have an incentive to use liability-driven arguments. (shrink)

Reviewing the literature on political participation and civic engagement, the article offers a critical examination of different conceptual frameworks. Drawing on previous definitions and operationalisations, a new typology for political participation and civic engagement is developed, highlighting the multidimensionality of both concepts. In particular, it makes a clear distinction between manifest “political participation” (including formal political behaviour as well as protest or extra-parliamentary political action) and less direct or “latent” forms of participation, conceptualized here as “civic engagement” and “social involvement”. (...) The article argues that the notion of “latent” forms of participation is crucial to understand new forms of political behaviour and the prospects for political participation in different countries. Due to these innovations it contributes to a much-needed theoretical development within the literature on political participation and citizen engagement. (shrink)

Philippa Foot is one of the most original and widely respected philosophers of our time; her work has exerted a lasting influence on the development of moral philosophy. In tribute to her, twelve leading philosophers from both sides of the Atlantic have contributed essays exploring the various topics in moral philosophy to which she has made a distinctive contribution--virtue ethics, naturalism, non-cognitivism, relativism, categorical requirements, and the role of rationality in morality.

This paper argues for a new understanding of Strawson’s distinction between personal, impersonal, and self-reactive attitudes. Many Strawsonians take these basic reactive attitude types to be distinguished by two factors. Is it the self or another who is treated with good- or ill-will? And is it the self or another who displays good- or ill-will? On this picture, when someone else wrongs me, my reactive attitude is personal; when someone else wrongs someone else, my reactive attitude is impersonal; and when (...) I wrong someone else, my attitude is self-reactive. Against this account, I argue that the basic reactive attitude types are better distinguished according to whether they express partial or impartial concern. This fits Strawson’s discussion in “Freedom and Resentment”, and it allows us to see an important point that the alternative approach obscures. Namely, while attitudes like resentment, gratitude, shame, and pride can arise as responses to our own treatment and behavior, they can also arise as third-party responses to the treatment and behavior of our family members, romantic partners, and close friends. Similarly, attitudes like moral indignation and disapprobation also have a wider scope than is often acknowledged; they can arise as responses to others’ treatment, but they can also arise as responses to our own treatment when we react impartially to circumstances involving ourselves. (shrink)

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's original essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" transformed the analysis of colonialism through an eloquent and uncompromising argument that affirmed the contemporary relevance of Marxism while using deconstructionist methods to explore the international division of labor and capitalism's "worlding" of the world. Spivak's essay hones in on the historical and ideological factors that obstruct the possibility of being heard for those who inhabit the periphery. It is a probing interrogation of what it means to have political subjectivity, to (...) be able to access the state, and to suffer the burden of difference in a capitalist system that promises equality yet withholds it at every turn. Since its publication, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" has been cited, invoked, imitated, and critiqued. In these phenomenal essays, eight scholars take stock of the effects and response to Spivak's work. They begin by contextualizing the piece within the development of subaltern and postcolonial studies and the quest for human rights. Then, through the lens of Spivak's essay, they rethink historical problems of subalternity, voicing, and death. A final section situates "Can the Subaltern Speak?" within contemporary issues, particularly new international divisions of labor and the politics of silence among indigenous women of Guatemala and Mexico. In an afterword, Spivak herself considers her essay's past interpretations and future incarnations and the questions and histories that remain secreted in the original and revised versions of "Can the Subaltern Speak?"—both of which are reprinted in this book. (shrink)

Written in a readable, accessible style, with plenty of up-to-date examples Psychoanalysis and Culture provides a brilliant introduction to key issues in the area of application of psychoanalytic theories to culture. The author argues that we cannot grasp the complexity of contemporary global issues without understanding some of the unconscious processes which underlie them. After introducing some major modern and postmodern psychoanalytic approaches, Minsky offers a broad-ranging critique of Lacan's theory of culture and the unconscious. She explores a range of (...) crucial and topical questions: how should we explain women's historical subordination and what is now often seen as a crisis in male identity? What constitutes 'masculinity' apart from power and control? How important is the father, actually and symbolically in children's development in the context of lone-parent families? Why is contemporary culture often still so violent and destructive? Why is consumer culture so attractive to so many and why is it so difficult to put limits on economic growth in the interests of preventing environmental disaster? This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, women's studies, cultural studies, psychology and history as well as psychoanalytic studies. It will also appeal to the general reader interested in the psychology of cultural change. (shrink)

From a clinical ethics perspective, I explore several traditional arguments that deem deception as morally unacceptable. For example, it is often argued that deception robs people of their autonomy. Deception also unfairly manipulates others and is a breach of important trust-relations. In these kinds of cases, I argue that the same reasons commonly used against deception can provide strong reasons why deception can be extremely beneficial for patients who lack mental capacity. For example, deception can enhance, rather than impair, autonomy (...) in certain cases. I argue that deception ought to only be used after considering several key morally relevant factors and provide a practical and morally justifiable framework for exploring these issues. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is perhaps the most important development within late twentieth-century moral philosophy. Rosalind Hursthouse, who has made notable contributions to this development, here presents a full exposition and defense of her neo-Aristotelian version of virtue ethics. She shows how virtue ethics can provide guidance for action, illuminate moral dilemmas, and bring out the moral significance of the emotions.

Emergent scholarship on the most radical technological invention of our time confirms what most of us know from first-hand experience - that the internet has fundamentally altered our perceptions and our knowledge, as well as our sense of subjectivity, community and agency (see for example Vries, 2002: 19). The American scholar of religion and communications, Stephen O'Leary, one of the first scholars to analyze the role of the new media for religious communities, claims that the advent of the internet has (...) been as revolutionary for religious growth and dissemination as was the invention of the printing press (O'Leary, 1996). (shrink)

Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach that emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism). Suppose it is obvious that someone in need should be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so will maximize well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, in doing (...) so the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping the person would be charitable or benevolent. (shrink)

This paper discusses some aspects of foreign language learning within the divided school system of Northern Ireland. It is argued that an improvement of foreign language learning must be seen in a socio‐cultural context whereby a change in attitudes to languages in general, including Irish, may lead not only to a balanced interest among girls and boys in the language classroom, but also to a more tolerant approach to the cultural differences among the Catholic and Protestant communities.

This paper challenges a common dogma of the literature on forgiveness: that only victims have the standing to forgive. Attacks on third-party forgiveness generally come in two forms. One form of attack suggests that it follows from the nature of forgiveness that third-party forgiveness is impossible. Another form of attack suggests that although third-party forgiveness is possible, it is always improper or morally inappropriate for third parties to forgive. I argue against both of these claims; third-party forgiveness is possible, and (...) in some cases it is morally appropriate for third parties to forgive (or refuse to forgive) wrongdoers for wrongs done to victims. I also propose an explanation of third parties’ standing to forgive: third parties have the standing to forgive when it is appropriate for them to take wrongs done to victims ‘personally’. While appropriately ‘taking a wrong personally’ does not require seeing oneself as a victim, it typically does require being in some form of personal relationship with victims. Thus, while the standing to forgive is not grounded exclusively in having been wronged, the prerogative to forgive is normally limited to victims and their loved ones. And once we recognize the importance of third-party forgiveness in our moral lives and the norms that govern it, we can more easily adjudicate between competing accounts of the nature of forgiveness.​. (shrink)

What is object-relations theory and what does it have to do with literary studies? How can Freud's phallocentric theories be applied by feminist critics? In Psychoanalysis and Gender: An Introductory Reader Rosalind Minsky answers these questions and more, offering students a clear, straightforward overview without ever losing them in jargon. In the first section Minsky outlines the fundamentals of the theory, introducing the key thinkers and providing clear commentary. In the second section, the theory is demonstratedn by an anthology (...) of seminal essays which include Femininity by Sigmund Freud; Envy and Gratitude by Melanie Klein; an extract from Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena by Donald Winnicot; The Meaning of the Phallus by Jacques Lacan; an extract from Women's Time by Julia Kristeva; and an extract from Speculum of the Other Woman by Luce Irigaray. Psychoanalysis and Gender:An introductory Reader is designed especiallyfor students and written with unpretentious prose and carefully selected material. It is an invaluable guide to this major field. (shrink)

Most interpreters hold that Kant rejects actually infinite tota synthetica as conceptually impossible. This view is attributed to Kant to relieve him of the charge that the first antinomy’s thesis argument presupposes transcendental idealism. I argue that important textual evidence speaks against this view, and Kant in fact affirms the conceptual possibility of actually infinite tota synthetica. While this means the first antinomy may not be decisive as an indirect argument for idealism, it gives us a better account of how (...) our ideas of the unconditioned generate the antinomies, and it allows us to see important and often overlooked elements in Kant’s account of the infinite. (shrink)