The article is a critical discussion of "contractualism" in moral and political philosophy as developed by john rawls and applied by w. G. Runciman. It attempts to clarify the sense in which contractualism is a moral theory and to assess its powers as a normative account of moral criticism. It argues that the structure of contractualism suggests an attractive way of formulating rival moral theories but not a way of arguing for any moral theory, That this reduces the force of (...) a contractualist critique of utilitarianism, And that contractualism is incomplete as a normative account of moral criticism. (shrink)

In Decent People, Norman Care explores how we may understand and be reconciled to the fragility of our moral nature. In his highly original vision of what it means to be a decent person, Care claims that our moral-emotional nature pressures us to seek relief from moralized pain - pain that comes from our awareness of our own wrongdoing, the suffering of current or future people, and our experience of indifference to moral imperatives. Care argues that (...) decent people are neither 'pure' nor self-righteous and that they are vulnerable to the need for forgiveness. Decent people may take morality seriously, but they are not guaranteed success at its challenges. (shrink)

A motivation problem may arise when morally principled public policy calls for serious sacrifice, relative to ways of life and levels of well-being, on the part of the members of a free society. Apart from legal or other forms of “external” coercion, what will, could, or should move people to make the sacrifices required by morality? I explore the motivation problem in the context of morally principled public policy concerning our legacy for future generations. In this context the problem raises (...) special moral-psychological difficulties. My inquiry suggests pessimism regarding our ability to solve the motivation problem relative to what morality requires on behalf of future generations. (shrink)

A motivation problem may arise when morally principled public policy calls for serious sacrifice, relative to ways of life and levels of well-being, on the part of the meInbers of a free society. Apart from legal or other forms of “external” coercion, what will, could, or should move people to make the sacrifices required by morality? I explore the motivation problem in the context of morally principled public policyconcerning our legacy for future generations. In this context the problem raises special (...) moral-psychological difficulties. My inquiry suggests pessimism regarding our ability to solve the motivation problem relative to what morality requires on behalf of future generations. (shrink)

Elaborating decolonial and intersectional methods, aesthetics has developed rich tools for tackling power differences. A philosophical question arises about the nature of gendered embodied experience and materiality: How to comprehend the cultural field if it is at once a site of heinous expropriation and violence and one of vital social and political possibility? This essay explores this question through a reading of Claudia Llosa's film The Milk of Sorrow ( La teta asustada ) (2009). The film, we show, reworks racial, (...) gendered, and colonial logics and supplants a model of transculturation, magical realism, and syncretism and its attendant figuration of resistance by a cultural vision of a web of multivalent, pluri-directional aesthetic promises and threats. Thus it presents a young Indigenous woman as a contemporary decolonial actor who, in encounter with popular culture and the global marketplace, renders memory livable and opens up unforeseen futures for her young town and country. We signal the implications for the positioning of the decolonial feminist spectator or culture maker and for a decolonial aesthetics. Aesthetic existence at the intersection of oppression and liberation, although impure and troubled, functions as a bountiful font of feminist energy and sustenance and a site of communal caring and imagination. (shrink)

The case of Ashley X involved a young girl with profound and permanent developmental disability who underwent growth attenuation using high-dose estrogen, a hysterectomy, and surgical removal of her breast buds. Many individuals and groups have been critical of the decisions made by Ashley's parents, physicians, and the hospital ethics committee that supported the decision. While some of the opposition has been grounded in distorted facts and misunderstandings, others have raised important concerns. The purpose of this paper is to provide (...) a brief review of the case and the issues it raised, then address 25 distinct substantive arguments that have been proposed as reasons that Ashley's treatment might be unethical. We conclude that while some important concerns have been raised, the weight of these concerns is not sufficient to consider the interventions used in Ashley's case to be contrary to her best interests, nor are they sufficient to preclude similar use of these interventions in the future for carefully selected patients who might also benefit from them. (shrink)

Wittgenstein was one of the most powerful influences on contemporary philosophy, yet he shunned publicity and was essentially a private man. This remarkable, vivid, personal memoir is written by one of his friends, the eminent philosopher Norman Malcolm. Reissued in paperback, this edition includes the complete text of fifty-seven letters which Wittgenstein wrote to Malcolm over a period of eleven years. Also included is a concise biographical sketch by another of Wittgenstein's philosopher friends, Georg Henrik von Wright. 'A reader (...) does not need to care about philosophy to be excited by Mr Malcolm's book; it is about Wittgenstein as a man, and its interest is human interest'. (shrink)

Healthcare (including public health) is special because it protects normal functioning, which in turn protects the range of opportunities open to individuals. I extend this account in two ways. First, since the distribution of goods other than healthcare affect population health and its distribution, I claim that Rawls's principles of justice describe a fair distribution of the social determinants of health, giving a partial account of when health inequalities are unjust. Second, I supplement a principled account of justice for health (...) and healthcare with an account of fair process for setting limits or rationing care. This account is provided by three conditions that comprise "accountability for reasonableness.". (shrink)

The rapidly increasing numbers of elderly people in our society have raised some important moral questions: How should we distribute social resources among different age groups? What does justice require from both the young and the old? In this book, Norman Daniels offers the first systematic philosophical discussion of these urgent questions, advocating what he calls a "lifespan" approach to the problem: Since, as they age, people pass through a variety of institutions, the challenge of caring for the elderly (...) becomes the prudent allocation of public resources among the various stages of people's lives. Using this philosophical approach, Daniels addresses specific public policy issues such as the allocation of medical funds, the adequacy of long-term care, current Medicare cost-containment measures, and the equitable distribution of income support over the lifespan and between generations. (shrink)

The federal government has a generally unquestioned obligation to provide health care to veterans for diseases or disabilities acquired during military service. Much argued, however, is the government's obligation to offer care for nonservice‐connected disorders. The Reagan administration has sharpened the debate recently by attempting to impose a means test on veterans over sixty‐five who are seeking such care. But the controversy focuses on the wrong issue. Society has a moral obligation to provide adequate health care (...) to all citizens but has no special obligation to care for nonservice‐connected health problems of veterans. (shrink)

Something is not working in ethics consultation: in certain situations, relationships within families and with careproviders and surrogates have become so emotionally charged and destabilized that attention is dominated by conflict and misunderstanding, foreshadowing a loss of dignity and hope. In a compelling, urgent article, informed by events in the Schiavo case, with examples from the literature on theory, practice, and outcomes, Caplan and Bergman address this situation: redirecting our attention to what they see as “a lack of effective mechanisms” (...) for dealing with a “painful class of disputes in which families disagree with one another, or with doctors, about the care of those who cannot communicate.”1 It is no small matter that many of these cases are situated in the immediate, intense environment of end-of-life decision making. -/- How might we understand these encounters, and their limits? What can we hope? Following the tack of Caplan and Bergman, I will extend the discussion of the complex relationships between patients, families, surrogates, and physicians, and “hope for consensual resolution,” offering a somewhat different account of what is lacking. While Caplan and Bergman foreground an apparent irreconcilability of appeals to competing biomedical principles as what is lacking, I will suggest that a “salient characteristic” among participants, what Caplan and Bergman identify as a common concern for the patient’s best interests, may be far less stable and more complex, and thereby less directive, than first imagined. When Caplan and Bergman sketch their expectations for mediation and for mediators, they are right in noting that abstract principles “articulated as dispositive by designated ‘experts’ fail to capture, and arguably respect, the unique and complex nature of each such individual decision-making process,” and that “patients and families are at the extreme end of a power imbalance.” It is less clear that their descriptions — or their hope for mediation — capture this enormous challenge. (shrink)

In An Education in Judgment, philosopher D. N. Rodowick makes his definitive case for a philosophical humanistic education as the development of a life guided by both self-reflection and interpersonal exchange. Such a life is an education in judgment, the moral capacity to draw conclusions alone and with others, and to let one's own judgments be answerable to the potentially contrasting judgments of others. Thinking, for Rodowick, is an art we practice with and learn from each other all the time. (...) In taking this approach, Rodowick follows the lead of Hannah Arendt, who made judgment the cornerstone of her conception of community. Arendt was famously wary of mass culture, and so community (in an authentic sense) must be safeguarded from its many false guises. What is important for Rodowick, as for Arendt, is the cultivation of "free relations," in which we allow our judgments to be affected and transformed by those of others, creating "an ever-widening fabric of intersubjective moral consideration." This is a fragile fabric, to be sure, but one well worth pursuing, caring for, and preserving. This is an original work in which the author thinks with Arendt about the importance of the humanities and what "the humanities" amounts to beyond the university. (shrink)

In this essay, the author follows the dramaturgical-anthropological analysis established by G. E. Lessing in his Hamburgische Dramaturgie. The careful observation and analysis of the performance onstage combined with the cultural context can provide an important moment of critical analysis. By examining the 2001 production of Death of a Salesman on the German stage, new insights into the play and its distillation of the American Dream can be explored.

The Ethics Working Group of Clinton's Health Care Task Force developed a list of principles and values that should govern health care reform. These principles and values are compatible with central moral and political traditions, as well as with more rigorous theoretical accounts of justice and health care, but they are "freestanding" points of agreement, not presupposing any particular theoretical background. Though imprecise and not ranked by priorities, the principles guide thinking about the fairness of alternative reform (...) proposals. Their use is illustrated by comparing alternatives on universality of access, phase-in period, the creation of unequal tiers, and the provision for wise allocation and rationing. Keywords: principles, health care reform, rationing, universal access CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Ford, Norman M Doctors and nurses understand the personal dignity of their patients and their natural desire to be healthy and happy. The aged with failing memories or mental impairments are persons whose dignity and moral worth remain intact. They also know patients differ in their personal circumstances, their faith, their stages of life's journey and their attitude to sickness and approach of death. This awareness enables them to adequately perform their valuable professional services from a subject centred perspective (...) as well as from an objective approach based on our shared rational human nature. All this needs to be re-affirmed for patients, especially the aged, those living with post coma unresponsiveness, Alzheimer's disease and any other unconscious state. (shrink)

This book celebrates the work of Patricia Werhane, an iconic figure in business ethics. This festschrift is a collection of articles that build on Werhane’s contributions to business ethics in such areas as Employee Rights, the Legacy of Adam Smith, Moral Imagination, Women in Business, the development of the field of business ethics, and her contributions to such fields as Health Care, Education, Teaching, and Philosophy. All papers are new contributions to the management literature written by well-known business ethicists, (...) such as Norman Bowie, Richard De George, Ronald Duska, Edwin Hartman, Michael Hoffman, Mollie Painter-Morland, Mark Schwartz, Andrew Wicks, and others. The volume is comprised of articles that reflect on Werhane’s work as well as build on it as a way to advance further research. At the end of the festschrift, Pat Werhane provides responses to each chapter. The first chapter of the book also includes the overview of Patricia Werhane’s work and her academic career. The book is written to appeal to management scholars and graduate students interested in the areas of Business Ethics, Modern Capitalism, and Human Rights. Patricia Werhane is one of the most distinguished figures in the field of business ethics. She was a founder of the field, she is one of its leading scholars, and she has had a profound impact on the world of business practice. Among her many accomplishments, Pat is known for her original work on moral imagination, she is an acclaimed authority on employee rights in the workplace, and she is one of the leading scholars on Adam Smith. Having been active in Academia for over 50 years, Werhane is a prolific author of over a hundred articles and book chapters, and the author or editor of twenty-seven books, including Adam Smith and his Legacy for Modern Capitalism, Moral Imagination and Management Decision-Making, and co-authored books Organization Ethics in Health Care, Alleviating Poverty Through Profitable Partnerships, Obstacles to Ethical Decision-Making, Corporate Responsibility: The American Experience, and Research Approaches to Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility. (shrink)

George Santayana was one of the leading philosophers of his era. His range of interests was wide; in addition to books and essays on philosophical subjects, he wrote literary criticism of the first rank, cultural criticism that remained fresh and valid up to the time of this book's publication in 1968, and autobiographical works which reveal a man of great charm with a deep interest and affection for his acquaintances. This two-volume selection of Santayana's writing is exceptionally comprehensive; the editor (...) has been careful to provide passages which adequately illustrate Santayana's views on a wide variety of subjects and his selection includes essays and excerpts from books that had long been unavailable. Volume 1 contains essays on literature and the theory of art, and character studies of Santayana's family and some of his most famous acquaintances, and a substantial introduction by Norman Henfrey. (shrink)

Commentators on Uwe Reinhardt's Tanner Lecture. The Tanner Lectures are a collection of educational and scientific discussions relating to human values. Conducted by leaders in their fields, the lectures are presented at prestigious educational facilities around the world.

The central thesis of this paper is that cost-containment challenges to an Ideal Advocate model of the physician-patient relationship can be met under proper circumstances. More specifically, it is possible for physicians to constrain costs while still making clinical decisions that are free from considerations of the physician's own interests and are uninfluenced by judgements about the patient's worth. But what is required is a closed distributive system, in which savings of resources at one point are applied to others' (...) class='Hi'>care of higher priority and a just system, that is, a system whose distributive priorities are consistent with relevant principles of justice under moderate scarcity. The historical context of the argument and a stopgap, palliative, step are also developed. (shrink)

Ford, Norman Details of a speech given during a conference called 'Health Care Towards the End of Life, Ethics and Spirituality', organised by the Caroline Chisholm Centre for Health Ethics and held at St Vincent's Hospital on May 23, 2006 are presented. The topic of the conference was the impact of spirituality on making healthcare decisions. Special consideration to the relationship of patients' conscience and autonomy to their spirituality, religious beliefs or lack thereof was recommended considering some beliefs (...) of many Christians, which could consciously or subconsciously influence their healthcare decisions. (shrink)

Both Aristotle and Kierkegaard show that virtues result, in part, from training which produces distinctive patterns of salience. The "frame problem" in AI shows that rationality requires salience. Salience is a function of cares and desires (passions) and thus governs choice in much the way Aristotle supposes when he describes choice as deliberative desire. Since rationality requires salience it follows that rationality requires passion. Thus Kierkegaard is no more an irrationalist in ethics than is Aristotle, though he continues to be (...) charged with irrationalism. The compatibility of an Aristotelian reading of Kierkegaard with the "suspension of the ethical" and general problems with aretaic ethical theories are treated briefly. The author argues that it is possible to preserve a realist ethics in the face of the "tradition relativism" which threatens the version of virtue ethics here attributed to Kierkegaard. (shrink)