Abstract
At its core, nonideal theory is an attempt not only to address issues of justice, but it also provides us a lens through which we can articulate our limitations as knowers and reasoners, the ways in which we are relational in our autonomy needs, and the ways in which we are deeply dependent upon institutions and social supports for our agency and identities. Bringing this lens into bioethics means shifting our orientation in our scholarship and our practice. This shift will have implications in how bioethical evaluations are taken up and played out in policies, institutional structures that inform the clinical encounter, and avenues for protection and redress for marginalized and vulnerable populations. It will also allow theorists and researchers to interrogate the status quo, revealing how many standard policies and practices are embedded in social and institutional arrangements that privilege the few or are built on exclusionary norms. The path forward, and the aim of this volume, is to extend the scholarship of nonideal approaches to bioethics. The volume is divided into two main parts. The first is focused on philosophically unpacking nonideal theory as an approach in bioethics. The second offers applications of nonideal theory in environmental ethics, healthcare ethics, public heath ethics, and genetic ethics. Our collective aim is to expand what has been considered nonideal bioethics. The history of nonideal theory has as its point of reference a turn away from Rawlsian justice, but the future of nonideal theory is ripe with possibilities.
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Notes
- 1.
While Mills’s critique specifically targets the theories of John Rawls and Robert Nozick, it can easily be expanded to apply to Kant’s moral and political philosophy, the utilitarian premises put forward by John Stuart Mill and more contemporarily by Peter Singer.
- 2.
See Chap. 5 in this volume by Joel Michael Reynolds “On the problem of ableism and bioethical theory” for an extended analysis of this point.
- 3.
The importance of nonideal theory is especially salient in light of the Summer 2020 protests for racial justice in the wake of George Floyd’s death. The contributions by Asha Bhandary (Chap. 10 of this volume) and Keisha Ray (Chap. 11 of this volume) speak to the need for more sustained attention on this topic.
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Acknowledgements
The editors and authors are grateful to Nancy Berlinger, Autumn Fiester, Micah Hester, and Jamie Carlin Watson for their valuable perspectives as expert reviewers. We must also extend our thanks to Lisa Rasmussen, Floor Oosting, Nagaraj Paramasivam, and Christopher Wilby for their continual support from this volume’s early inception through the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and then finally to publication. The editors would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on a draft of the volume. Finally, this research was supported (in part) by a Summer Stipend from the Research Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences at William Paterson University.
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Victor, E., Guidry-Grimes, L.K. (2021). Introduction to Nonideal Theory and Its Contribution to Bioethics. In: Victor, E., Guidry-Grimes, L.K. (eds) Applying Nonideal Theory to Bioethics. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 139. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72503-7_1
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