St. Augustine's just war theory involves eight principal elements: a) a punitive conception of war, b) assessment of the evil of war in terms of the moral evil of attitudes and desires, c) a search for authorization for the use of violence, d) a dualistic epistemology which gives priority to spiritual goods, e) interpretation of evangelical norms in terms of inner attitudes,f) passive attitude to authority and social change, g) use of Biblical texts to legitimate participation in war, and h) (...) an analogical conception of peace. It does not include non-combatant immunity or conscientious objection. A contemporary assessment of the elements is offered. (shrink)

The author interprets the ethical theory of St. Thomas Aquinas as a kind of deontological intuitionism. Although the concept of the supreme good or beatitude does not serve as the criterion of right action, it is shown that it does play an important role as a guiding and unifying thread in the life of the human agent.

Comprehensive mutual respect is an unassailable ideal but does little to reveal what is actually going on--or even what ought to go on--as we negotiate the conflicts of values implicit in social controversies and policy challenges. Rather than imagining that we can or should, by an exercise of religious self-restraint, avoid creating situations of suspicion, anxiety, and conflict, we would do better to allow what is latent, operative, and inevitable to become explicit. Only by this means can we effectively bring (...) the distinctive resources of our religious traditions to bear on the problems of our common life in a democratic polity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Catholic Social Teaching and the Allocation of Scarce ResourcesJohn Langan S.J. (bio)I shall approach the issue of justice in the allocation of scarce resources from the viewpoint of Catholic social teaching, as developed over the last century. This teaching is found primarily in the social encyclicals issued by popes from Leo XIII (1878–1903) to John Paul II (1978- ), but also in the pastoral letters of the (...) various bishops’ conferences, especially in the United States and in Latin America. These documents, which enjoy a high standing in Catholic teaching but which are not taken as binding in all their particulars, form part of a tradition of moral and social theorizing that a contemporary American would regard as “communitarian.” On social questions, this tradition also has shown itself to be historicist in that it is capable of modifying itself in significant ways in response to changing political and economic situations. It normally approaches issues from a universalist perspective, though it has shifted from a preoccupation with the concerns of the industrial societies of Europe to an advocacy of much of the reform agenda of the Third World.Rooted in classical and biblical sources and modified in the course of the last [End Page 401] century to include a principled acceptance of religious freedom, of human rights, and of democratic political institutions, the Catholic social tradition proposes a number of ideas that can serve as the basis for significant criticism of currently dominant liberal modes of organizing and interpreting advanced industrial societies. These ideas do not form a countertheory to liberalism so much as they indicate ways in which a religious organization that includes both hierarchical and egalitarian elements in its structure and that has both moral commitments and practical responsibilities with regard to health care can draw on its intellectual resources to develop alternative strategies for the reform of health care.I shall survey six ideas that figure prominently in Catholic social teaching and that are relevant to the allocation of scare resources in American health care. Space constraints require that I present them in a very condensed fashion, without tracing the complex development they have undergone in the internal Catholic debate or subjecting them to much criticism.First, Catholic social teaching, especially the great encyclical of John XXIII, Pacem In Terris (PT 1963), affirms the full range of human rights recognized in such modern documents as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1949). In addition to the civil and political rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights added to the original U.S. Constitution (1791), the Universal Declaration includes rights “to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means which are suitable for the proper development of life; these are primarily food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, and finally the necessary social services” (PT 11). Catholic social teaching has not committed itself to one particular way of institutionalizing these rights, but it effectively endorses the comprehensive West European welfare states that the Christian Democratic political parties helped to construct in the period after 1945.Second, Catholic social teaching has accorded a central organizing role to the notion of the common good, the realization of which “is the whole reason for the existence of civil authorities” (PT 54). The common good, however, is not to be understood as identical with the interest or the power of the state; rather, it “embraces the sum total of those conditions of social living whereby men are enabled to achieve their own integral perfection more fully and more easily” (PT 58; quoting Mater et Magistra). John XXIII is particularly anxious to affirm that the common good cannot be construed so as to exclude some groups or to violate the rights of individuals and that it must include both physical and spiritual goods (PT 55–61). The notion of the common good has both an inherent attractiveness and a vagueness that cries out for specification and clarification. But in the contemporary situation it serves to remind us that “individual citizens and intermediate groups are obliged to make their specific contributions to the common welfare” (PT 53).Third, while an insistence on the primacy of the common good and on the [End Page 402... (shrink)

Engaging the argument that human rights discourse and activities stand in opposition to (or at least in tension with) the beliefs and activities of religious communities, the author identifies twelve different models of possible relationships between the moral commitments of human rights advocates and the moral and religious commitments of religious (particularly Christian) communities. On the basis of this map of the range of relationships, the author suggests that the two modes of discourse will inevitably be both competitive and cooperative. (...) Holding that both normative universes are necessary, he interprets the dissonance in a mood of modesty and hope, focusing attention on the possibility of complementarity. (shrink)

Aquinas holds that human actions are directed to a last end which is the supreme good and the complete satisfaction of the agent’s desires. He confronts serious difficulties in explaining how morally wrong or sinful choices and renunciatory acts are possible and in avoiding psychological egoism. The distinction that he makes between the concept of the last end as the fulfillment of desire and the object (God) in which that ful fillment is found enables him to alleviate these difficulties but (...) still leaves him with a predominantly instrumental view of morality. (shrink)

Aquinas holds that human actions are directed to a last end which is the supreme good and the complete satisfaction of the agent’s desires. He confronts serious difficulties in explaining how morally wrong or sinful choices and renunciatory acts are possible and in avoiding psychological egoism. The distinction that he makes between the concept of the last end as the fulfillment of desire and the object (God) in which that ful fillment is found enables him to alleviate these difficulties but (...) still leaves him with a predominantly instrumental view of morality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aquinas on the Beginning and End of Human Life by Fabrizio AmeriniJohn LanganReview: Fabrizio Amerini, Aquinas on the Beginning and End of Human Life, trans. Mark Henninger, Harvard University Press, 2013The ongoing and apparently interminable debate over the moral and legal status of abortion has come over the years to resemble the Western front in World War I, with two contending armies facing each other with limited maneuvering (...) room, familiar and overused weapons, periodic artillery barrages, increasing casualties, not much new to report, and a deadly ‘no man’s land’ between them in which virtually nothing survives. Against the gloomy monotony of the abortion wars, in which reductivist accounts of the opponents’ views and repetitious restatements of familiar and cherished views predominate, this book by Fabrizio Amerini, a professor of philosophy at the University of Parma, appears as a refreshing surprise. It is surprising for a number of reasons, which I shall present later. But its refreshing character comes primarily from its moderate tone and the care with which its arguments are presented. Amerini is clearly familiar with the Catholic tradition on abortion and euthanasia; he is respectful of this tradition, which he does not directly challenge, but his sense of scholarly integrity prevents him from simply presenting Aquinas as a defender and synthesizer of all the positions championed in that tradition or by its papal custodians. He has an impressive command of the relevant texts in Aquinas and the Fathers of the Church, which he joins with a scrupulous style of [End Page E-103] philosophical argument which has an affinity with the clarifying labors of G. E. Moore in the early days of analytic moral philosophy. The result is not easy reading, but the reader can be confident that the desire to score rhetorical points and political victories will not distort the philosophical and historical analysis. The book is intended primarily for those who can benefit from careful scholarship, but it should be instructive for all who regard the questions of abortion and euthanasia as genuinely difficult and as deserving our best intellectual efforts.The most important surprise is Amerini’s focus on the issue of delayed versus immediate hominization in the development from embryo to complete human being. Since Pius IX in 1867, the Vatican has insisted that from the moment of conception the embryo becomes a human person whose life is sacred and deserves full protection. This view is ordinarily discussed as ‘immediate hominization’. In Amerini’s view, the embryo lacks the development and differentiation of organs which would enable it to have a sustainable potentiality to perform the acts which are proper to a human person, particularly reasoning and choosing. In the Vatican’s view, the soul is immediately infused by God, though it obviously requires many years of development before it is able to function as a complete and distinct human person. Amerini regards this position as untenable within Aquinas’s metaphysical system and finds in Aquinas’s own texts evidence that he teaches a discontinuous process in fetal life. Amerini regards the insistence on immediate hominization as an arbitrary effort to maintain an absolute uniformity of moral status in all the stages of embryonic and fetal life. He sees the Vatican’s position as leading to an equation of abortion and homicide which he regards as unjustified. He does, however, affirm that there is an identity of subject running from the embryo to the developed person and also that this grounds an ethic of respect for life in all of its stages. The practical conclusions in bioethics he would draw from this position “could allow space for a judicious and discriminating ethical evaluation of individual cases,” as he puts the matter in the concluding sentence of the book.Other surprises are the author’s discovering from a careful reading of Aquinas’s texts that he taught a progressive plurality of substantial forms in the development of the embryo. For Aquinas, it is the substantial form which answers the question about what sort of being the object of our inquiry is. In the case of human persons, the substantial form is the soul, which includes the intellectual properties of... (shrink)

IN A CONTEXT IN WHICH THE COUNTRY IS SHARPLY POLARIZED AND ISSUES of public policy are deeply divisive, reflecting on the theological virtue of hope is instructive. The language of hope helps us see that ultimately our hope must be in God, not in a political entity. Nevertheless, we can have hope for the United States that is both generous and critical in spirit. Such hope allows us to chart a course between presumption and despair, and embracing such a hope (...) would go a long way to healing the divisions that currently exist in the country. (shrink)

Revolutions and aborted revolutions and bitter civil and "local" wars in the 1980s and since have raised new questions about national security, its definition, and its implementation. Nevertheless, a number of basic philosophical and political issues remain constant at a level deeper than tactical considerations. These are what eight accomplished philosophers, political scientists, Christian ethicists, and policymakers came together to discuss. They ask the fundamental and perduring questions of pacifism, war, intervention, and political negotiation. They focus on such problems as (...) ascertaining the role of the churches in the quest for peace, defining "national interest" and "national purpose," and construing intervention in other that strictly unilateral terms. (shrink)

Though the social teachings of the U.S. Catholic bishops differ in several respects from both the Protestant social gospel and Latin American liberation theology, there is a common theological logic grounding these kindred conceptions of the role of the church in social reconstruction. Christian social concern begins with a "contrast experience" of the failure of present actuality to satisfy the felt requirements of conscience. This experience compels attention to the resources of Scripture which are brought to bear by means of (...) hermeneutical strategies that assume a social anthropology and are necessarily welded to penetrating social analysis. Universal moral principles are subsequently employed to permit expression of the values of faith in common public language. (shrink)

CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVES AND CONTEMPORARY MEDICAL MORALS A Catholic perspective on medical morals antedates the current world wide interest in medical and biomedical ethics by many centuries[5]. Discussions about the moral status of the fetus, abortion, contraception, and sterilization can be found in the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Teachings on various aspects of medical morals were scattered throughout the penitential books of the early medieval church and later in more formal treatises when moral theology became recog (...) nized as a distinct discipline. Still later, medical morality was incorpor ated into the many pastoral works on medicine. Finally, in the contemporary period, works that strictly focus on medical ethics are produced by Catholic moral theologians who have special interests in matters medical. Moreover, this long tradition of teaching has been put into practice in the medical moral directives governing the operation of hospitals under Catholic sponsorship. Catholic hospitals were monitored by Ethics Committees long before such committees were recommended by the New Jersey Court in the Karen Ann Quinlan case or by the President's Commission in 1983 ([8, 9]). Underlying the Catholic moral tradition was the use of the casuistic method, which since the 17th and 18th centuries was employed by Catholic moralists to study and resolve concrete clinical ethical dilem mas. The history of casuistry is of renewed interest today when the case method has become so widely used in the current revival of interest in medical ethics[ll]. (shrink)

This treatise, written by a scholar who is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Reading, is probably the finest presentation of the moral problems of warfare currently available. The second and longer part of the book provides a thoughtful exposition of the principles of just war theory which is rich in examples and perceptive comments; but the more creative and valuable part of the book is the first section which goes under the general heading, “Images of War.” Here Coates, (...) building on the work of Martin Ceadel, discusses four different positions on the relationship of morality and warfare: realism, which “resists the application of morality to war” ; militarism, which “establishes... a moral bias in favor of war” ; pacifism, which is “the moral renunciation of war” and which, like realism, denies that “war can ever be subject to moral limitation” ; just war theory, which “is the only one to uphold the moral limitation of war clearly and consistently”. (shrink)

This is the first book to offer the best essays, articles, and speeches on ethics and intelligence that demonstrate the complex moral dilemmas in intelligence collection, analysis, and operations. Some are recently declassified and never before published, and all are written by authors whose backgrounds are as varied as their insights, including Robert M. Gates, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; John P. Langan, the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the Kennedy Institute of (...) Ethics, Georgetown University; and Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia and recipient of the Owens Award for contributions to the understanding of U.S. intelligence activities. Creating the foundation for the study of ethics and intelligence by filling in the gap between warfare and philosophy, this is a valuable collection of literature for building an ethical code that is not dependent on any specific agency, department, or country. (shrink)

For intellectuals, and probably others, one form of escapism is a kind of constricted and shallow hyper-realism—the hyper-realism of having a dead-end job, even though one has a PhD or an IQ of 170. And that sort of hyper-realism is pseudo-realism, because realism is not about having a bad life; it is having the courage to have a good life, which the intellectual with the dead end job does not have.

A letter from Martin Heidegger.--On the way to being; reflecting on conversations with Martin Heidegger, by Z. Adamczewski.--Heidegger's view and evaluation of nature and natural science, by E. G. Ballard.--Truth as art: an interpretation of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (sec. 44) and Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, by C. D. Keyes.--The language of the event: the event of language, by T. Kisiel.--Heidegger: the problem of the thing, by T. Langan.--The late Heidegger's omission of the ontic-ontological structure of Dasein, by R. (...) Powell.--Towards the movement of reversal: science, technology, and the language of homecoming, by J. Sallis.--Prolegomena to "Time and being": truth and time, by A. Schuwer.--Cosmos, nature, and man and the foundations of psychiatry, by A.-T. Tymieniecka.--Heidegger and the existential a priori, by J. Wild. (shrink)

Modern Philosophy, the third volume in the history of philosophy series edited by Etienne Gilson, is a comprehensive critical study of philosophical thought from Descartes to Kant. Containing detailed discussions of individual figures, both major and minor, it treats not only their metaphysical and epistemological views but also their philosophies of art, religion, morals, and politics. It presents the historical settings in which they wrote and shows the dialectical interplay among their views. As Gilson and Langan point out, there (...) inevitably is some arbitrariness in deciding what to include or emphasize in a volume such as this, but, in my opinion, it would be difficult to give a more balanced and complete survey than theirs. (shrink)

Liberal political theorists are often accused of "privatizing" religion; the work of philosopher John Rawls has been especially subject to this criticism. I begin by examining what is meant by "privatization." I then consider the criticisms of Rawls advanced by Timothy Jackson, David Hollenbach, and John Langan. I argue (1) that Rawls does not privatize religion to the extent that his critics believe and (2) that criticisms of what privatization of religion Rawls does defend cannot be sustained.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CHARITY LOST: TBE SECtJLA'.RIZATfON OF THE PRINCIPLE OF DOUBLE EFFECT IN THE JUST-WAR TRADITION TIMOTHY M. RENICK Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia 0 N AUGUST 12, 1945, the city of Hiroshima still smoldered, and President Harry Truman addressed the American people : We have used [the atomic bomb] against those who have attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American (...) prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war.1 Truman and his military advisers had made a calculation. Japan was preparing for a last-ditch defense of the Japanese Islands. The prospect was ominous, to say the least. The United States had suffered eighty thousand casualties in the taking of the smaller and less protected Okinawa just two months earlier; 120,000 Japanese soldiers had been killed (and only ten-thousand taken prisoner). Strategists estimated that losses, both military and civilian, from a full scale battle for Japan itself would exceed one million. Surely the tens of thousands killed by exploding a bomb over Hiroshima was the lesser evil. Surely this was a proportionate act : fifty thousand lives traded for a million. As Winston Churchill wrote in support of Truman's decision: "To avert a vast, indefinite butchery... at the cost of a few explosions seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance." 2 1 Michael Walzer, lust and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p.164. 2 Ibid., pp. 266-267. 441 442 TIMOTHY M. RENICK From an ethical perspective, however, the act was anything but a deliverance. I am not alone in this assessment. Advocates of the just-war tradition including Elizabeth Anscombe, Paul Ramsey, George Kennan, John Langan, and Michael Walzer have condemned the bombing of Hiroshima by means of a shared just-war argument.8 The argument goes as follows, and it is a good one. In times of war, many actions are likely to have both good and evil effects. One destroys an enemy's munitions factory (good effect) but kills an innocent child in the process (evil effect). The jus in bello of the just-war tradition, however, stipulates that an action which has a " double effect " is permissible if and only if: ( 1) it is discriminate (i.e., the actor aims only at the good effect and does not intend the evil effect, nor is the evil effect a means to the end, however good); and (2) it is proportionate (i.e., the good created by the act outweighs the bad).4 Now, the argument continues, Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima failed the first criterion. It was not a discriminate act because the evil effect (the killing of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians) was not unintended. In fact, the evil was the very means to the good end. Although Truman himself claimed to have selected Hiroshima as a target because it was "a war s See, for example, G. E. M. Anscombe, "Mr. Truman's Decision," in Ethics, Religion and Politics (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota, 1981); M. Walzer "Supreme Emergency," in Just and Unjust Wars; and John Langan, "The American Hierarchy and Nuclear Weapons," Theological Studies 43 (1982) : 447-467. ' I utilize here a helpful shorthand version of the principle of double effect introduced by Paul Ramsey in War and the Christian Conscience (Durham, North Carolina: Duke, 1961). More frequently, the principle is rendered by means of four criteria: It is permissible to perform an act likely to have evil consequences if and only if (I) the act is good in itself or at least indifferent; (2) the direct effect is morally justified; (3) the actor aims only at the acceptable effect and does not intend the evil effect, nor is the evil effect a means to the end, however good ; and (4) there is in the good effect a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect. The shortened version of the theory captures all components essential to my discussion and enhances clarity. I thus will make use of it throughout this essay. CHARITY AND... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ARE THERE ECONOMIC RIGHTS? I 1]HE ISSUE OF whether there are any so-called " soia ~-~cono~ic r~~~ts," in addition to the so-called " civilpohtical nghts, · is not a new one. In 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations app11oved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affirms that both those two types of claims are human rights. Since then some philosophers have been debating the issue of (...) whether claims to basic social-economic goods are rights at all. American Christians and theologians in general have not paid much attention to this until only recently, when the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued,a pastoral letter on Catholic social teaching and the U.S. economy (entitled Economic Justice for All), which gained much attention from the media. In this pastoral letter the U.S. Catholic bishops also affirm that every human being in every society has economic rights against all members of society, all private-sector institutions and government.1 As a Christian philosopher, in this paper I want to probe into the issues of whether there are economic rights from a Christian and philosophical perspective. This paper is intended to he both critical and constructive-on the one hand I shall criticize some positions which I find unconvincing, and on the other I shall attempt to articulate my own thought on this issue. Some clarification of terminology is necessary before I embark on my project. Ever since Wesley Hohfeld's monumental 1 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for AU: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1986), see sections 79-84. 703 704 PING-CHEUNG LO work in 1919 (Fundamental Legal Conceptions) it is a general practice among philosophers to distinguish claim-rights from liberty-rights. Throughout this paper, unless otherwise specified, the word "right" is used to designate claim-rights. Moreover, I am concerned only with moral rights rather than with legal rights, and largely with in rem rights (i.e., rights against individuals in,society or the world at large) rather than with in personam rights (i.e., rights against determinate individuals ). Therefore by "a right to x" I mean a morally valid or justified claim to x against individuals in society or the world at large as my entitlement or my due. Furthermore, the term " human right " is used to denote those moral rights that a person, simply as a human being, can have. They are usually supposed to include both civil-political rights (e.g., right to life, liberty, security) ·and social-economic rights (e.g., the right to food, clothing, shelter, health care, education, work, social security). As far as I know, there have been two major philosophical moves in criticizing the ideas of social-economic rights. The first one is set forth by Maurice Cmnston in the sixties.2 Besides giving a "political objection," he raises a three-fold "philosophical objection": social-economic rights do not possess the characteristics of (i) practicability, (ii) universality, and (iii) paramount importance, which he deems are the si,ne qua non of human rights. Though his criticisms are rather crude, most recent advocates of social-economic rights take them seriously and attempt to rebut his views.3 I do not have 2 Maurice Cranston, "Pope John XXIII on Peace and the Rights of Man," Political Quarterly 34 (Oct.-Dec. 1963), 380-90; "Human Rights, Real and Supposed," in Politioal Theory and the Rights of Man, ed. D. D. Raphael (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), pp. 43-53; "Human Rights: A Reply to Professor Raphael," in ibid., pp. 95-100. s D. D. Raphael, "Human Rights, Old and New," in ibid., pp. 54-67; David Hollenbach, Olaims in Oonftict: Retrieving and Renewing the Oatholic Human Rights Tradition (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), pp. 31-33; John Langan, "Defining Human Rights: A Revision of the Liberal Tradition," in Human Rights in the Americas: The Struggle for Consensus, ed., Alfred Hennelly and John Langan (Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Press, 1982), ARE THERE ECONOMIC RIGHTS? 705 the time to go into these arguments here. I just want to,say that I find... (shrink)

John Sallis of Duquesne University has edited this fine collection of essays on Heidegger as a tribute to the latter on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. Some of the contributions are papers that were read at a Heidegger Symposium at Duquesne in October, 1966. There is a brief letter by Heidegger addressed to Arthur Schrynemakers, chairman of the Symposium, in which Heidegger submits a set of questions for the consideration of the Symposium participants. Sallis contributes an article which (...) responds to these questions. Zygmunt Adamczewski's contribution is a commentary and elaboration of some issues, e.g., the translation of Wesen, which he discussed personally with Heidegger in 1968. Edward Ballard gives a very clear-headed account of Heidegger's critique of science. There is an excellent account of the "Ereignis" by Theodore Kisiel and of "Time and Being" by André Schuwer. Other contributors include C. D. Keyes, Thomas Langan, Ralph Powell, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and John Wild. The volume is lacking in two respects. Except for a brief piece by Langan and for certain implications of Powell's study, there is no really sustained and well-developed critique of Heidegger either internal or external, sympathetic or unsympathetic, a failure not uncommon among Heideggerians. Moreover, there is no index of any kind--of topics, of names, or of texts of Heidegger--which impairs the book's usefulness. --J. D. C. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was a British philosopher, political economist, civil servant, and Member of Parliament.

We will next speak of Liberality. Now this is thought to be the mean state, having for its object-matter Wealth: I mean, the Liberal man is praised not in the circumstances of war, nor in those which constitute the character of perfected self-mastery, nor again in judicial decisions, but in respect of giving and receiving Wealth, chiefly the former. By the term Wealth I mean all those things whose worth is measured by money.

Loneliness in medicine is a serious problem not just for patients, for whom illness is intrinsically isolating, but also for physicians in the contemporary condition of medicine. We explore this problem by investigating the ideal physician-patient relationship, whose analogy with friendship has held enduring normative appeal. Drawing from Talbot Brewer and Nir Ben-Moshe, we argue that this appeal lies in a dynamic form of companionship incompatible with static models of friendship-like physician-patient relationships: a mutual refinement of embodied virtue that draws (...) both persons together. The ideal physician-patient relationship has a dialectical character that fosters each member's improvement of phenomenologically recognizing and embodying moral virtues. A key component of this dynamic is a commitment to the common goal of the patient's health, realized through joint interactivities and conversations over time. The physician's presence to the patient's suffering—understood best as an alienating phenomenological condition for the patient—orients and discloses possibilities for virtuous caregiving by structuring the meanings of the goals, conversations, and joint narrative constitutive of their relationship. Presence to suffering, paradoxically, is perhaps an important prerequisite for this dynamic partnership. These activities dialectically build an interpretive horizon of understanding through which moral goods and character refinement—in and for the other—may become revealed for both persons in their shared being-in-the-world. This analysis of suffering, mood, and revealing of (possible) moral goods has implications for addressing the modern problem of loneliness for patients and physicians, who are increasingly inhibited from building flourishing relationships with each other. (shrink)

Many real-world agents recognise that they impose harms by choosing to emit carbon, e.g., by flying. Yet many do so anyway, and then attempt to make things right by offsetting those harms. Such offsetters typically believe that, by offsetting, they change the deontic status of their behaviour, making an otherwise impermissible action permissible. Do they succeed in practice? Some philosophers have argued that they do, since their offsets appear to reverse the adverse effects of their emissions. But we show that (...) they do not. In practice, standard carbon offsetting does not reverse the harms of the original action, nor does it even benefit the same group as was harmed. Standard moral theories hence deny that such offsetting succeeds. Indeed, we show that any moral theory that allows offsetting in this setting faces a dilemma between allowing any wrong to be offset, no matter how grievous, and recognising an implausibly sharp discontinuity between offsettable actions and non-offsettable actions. The most plausible response is to accept that carbon offsetting fails to right our climate wrongs. (shrink)

My critics in this symposium illustrate one principle and three fallacies of disability studies. The principle, which we all share, is that all persons are equal and none are less equal than others. No disability, however slight, nor however severe, implies lesser moral, political or ethical status, worth or value. This is a version of the principle of equality. The three fallacies exhibited by some or all of my critics are the following: Choosing to repair damage or dysfunction or to (...) enhance function, implies either that the previous state is intolerable or that the person in that state is of lesser value or indicates that the individual in that state has a life that is not worthwhile or not thoroughly worth living. None of these implications hold. Exercising choice in reproduction with the aim of producing children who will be either less damaged or diseased, or more healthy, or who will have enhanced capacities, violates the principle or equality. It does not. Disability or impairment must be defined relative either to normalcy, “normal species functioning”, or “species typical functioning”. It is not necessarily so defined. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of consent in decision making generally and its role in end of life decisions in particular. It outlines a conception of autonomy which explains and justifies the role of consent in decision making and criticises some misapplications of the idea of consent, particular the role of fictitious or “proxy” consents.Where the inevitable outcome of a decision must be that a human individual will die and where that individual is a person who can consent, then that (...) decision is ethical if and only if the individual consents. In very rare and extreme cases such a decision will be ethical in the absence of consent where it would be massively cruel not to end life in order to prevent suffering which is in no other way preventable.Where, however, the human individual is not a person, as is the case with abortion, the death of infants like Mary , or in the very rare and extreme cases of those who have ceased to be persons like Tony Bland, such decisions are governed by the ethics of ending the lives of non-persons. (shrink)

This is the first book to offer the best essays, articles, and speeches on ethics and intelligence that demonstrate the complex moral dilemmas in intelligence collection, analysis, and operations. Some are recently declassified and never before published, and all are written by authors whose backgrounds are as varied as their insights, including Robert M. Gates, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; John P. Langan, the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the Kennedy Institute of (...) Ethics, Georgetown University; and Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia and recipient of the Owens Award for contributions to the understanding of U.S. intelligence activities. Creating the foundation for the study of ethics and intelligence by filling in the gap between warfare and philosophy, this is a valuable collection of literature for building an ethical code that is not dependent on any specific agency, department, or country. (shrink)

There are already many excellent books on existentialism. Some of them deal with particular problem or particular existentialist writers. Most of those that deal with existentialism as a whole divide their subject-matter according to authors, presenting chapters on Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, and the rest. Thus I think that there is room for the present book, which attempts a comprehensive examination and evaluation of existentialism, but does so by thematic treatment. That is to say, each chapter deals with a major theme (...) of existentialist philosophy, and these themes are arranged in the order of the existential dialect. Of course, each chapter is illustrated with material from the writings of existentialists, from Kierkegaard to Camus. (shrink)

Cadaver organs should be automatically availableThe shortage of donor organs and tissue for transplantation constitutes an acute emergency which demands radical rethinking of our policies and radical measures. While estimates vary and are difficult to arrive at there is no doubt that the donor organ shortage costs literally hundreds of thousands of lives every year. “In the world as a whole there are an estimated 700 000 patients on dialysis . . .. In India alone 100 000 new patients present (...) with kidney failure each year” . Almost “three million Americans suffer from congestive heart failure . . . deaths related to this condition are estimated at 250 000 each year . . . 27 000 patients die annually from liver disease . . .. In Western Europe as a whole 40 000 patients await a kidney but only . . . 10 000 kidneys”1 become available. Nobody knows how many people fail to make it onto the waiting lists and fail to register in the statistics. “As of 24th November 2002 in the United Kingdom 667 people have donated organs, 2055 people have received transplants, and 5615 people are still awaiting transplants.”2Conscious of the terrible and unnecessary tragedy that figures like these represent I have been advocating for more than 20 years now some radical measures to stem this appalling waste of human life. The measure which is the subject of Hamer and Rivlin’s paper 3 concerns the automatic availability of all cadaver organs—a measure, which I first advocated publicly in 1983.4THE AUTOMATIC AVAILABILITY OF DONOR ORGANSWe need to begin by being clear about just what it is I propose and why. At the moment in the United Kingdom we …. (shrink)

Moderate scientism is the view that empirical science can help answer questions in nonscientific disciplines. In this paper, we evaluate moderate scientism in philosophy. We review several ways that science has contributed to research in epistemology, action theory, ethics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. We also review several ways that science has contributed to our understanding of how philosophers make judgments and decisions. Based on this research, we conclude that the case for moderate philosophical scientism is strong: scientific (...) practice has promoted significant progress in philosophy and its further development should be welcomed and encouraged. (shrink)

Analysing film. Distinguishing the filmic contribution to meaning -- Examples of filmic "textual organisation" -- Redrawing boundaries -- Organisation of the book -- Semiotics and documents. Semiotics and its relations to film -- The nature of discourse semantics -- The film as cinematographic document -- A combined view: filmic documents for filmic discourse -- Constructing the semiotic mode of film. Semiotic multimodality -- The internal organisation of semiotic strata -- Composing and combining semiotic modes -- Materiality and "epistemological commitment" -- (...) Christian Metz and the grande syntagmatique of the image track. The original model -- Two examples of analysis with the grande syntagmatique -- Revisions and rebuttals -- Foundations for analysis: filmic units. The basic units of film: preliminaries -- Audiovisual iconic representations -- Perception, perceptual realism and reliable measurement -- Multiplicity: from perception to discourse -- Filmic units revisited: discourse-motivated definitions -- The paradigmatic organisation of film. Beyond Metz: towards a grande paradigmatique -- Capturing discourse dependency structures in film -- The paradigmatic dimensions of projection, taxis and plane -- Two examples of paradigmatic analysis -- Summary and conclusions. (shrink)

The reviews of this book which greeted its appearance in America, where it won a Catholic Press Association Religious Book Award, speak for themselves. 'The real core of the book is the question that is raised - the demanding bone-crushing question we all face - alone - at one time - the question of death/life and immortality. In these few pages we set out on a journey - one that winds its way among ancient stories and myths ... one's constant (...) disturbing companion is death - a reality that keeps breaking in upon our imes, our friends, our dreams and hopes and even our changing and becoming. The richness of the book lies in the questioning and some of the answers other men's times have given in attempt to live with this probing. We meet Kazantzakis, Homer, Melville, Hegel, Dante in their humanness in the face of death and in their timeless answers' (National Catholic Reporter). From the Protestant side, Martin Marty commented how John Dunne, 'perhaps the most intuitive and natively talented Catholic around, has cast a new spell', and The Critic remarked: 'As a meditation ought to be, it is simple and profound at once. And it is beautifully done, in some ways the richest of John Dunne's works.' All of which amounts to an invitation to join the author as he poses the timeless dilemma of the human condition and seeks to resolve it through stories of adventures, journeys and voyages inspired by man's encounter with death; stories of childhood, youth, manhood and age; and finally stories of God and of man wrestling with God and the unknown. (shrink)

This paper considers the applicability of standard accounts of causation to living systems. In particular it examines critically the increasing tendency to equate causal explanation with the identification of a mechanism. A range of differences between living systems and paradigm mechanisms are identified and discussed. While in principle it might be possible to accommodate an account of mechanism to these features, the attempt to do so risks reducing the idea of a mechanism to vacuity. It is proposed that the solution (...) to this problem requires the development of a philosophical account of process adequate to apply to living systems. (shrink)