Contemplating Suicide : The Language and Ethics of Self-Harm

ISBN-13: 9780415106054 / Angielski / Twarda / 1995 / 209 str.

Gavin Fairbairn

Opis

Suicide is devastating. It is an assault on our ideas of what living is about. In Contemplating Suicide Gavin Fairbairn takes a fresh look at suicidal self-harm. His view is distinctive in not emphasising external facts: the presence or absence of a corpse, along with evidence that the person who has become a corpse, intended to do so. It emphasises the intentions that the person had in acting, rather than the consequences that follow from those actions. Much of the book is devoted to an attempt to construct a natural history of suicidal self-harm and to examine some of the ethical issues that it raises. Fairbairn sets his philosophical reflections against a background of practical experience in the caring professions and uses a storytelling approach in offering a critique of the current language of self-harm along with some new ways of thinking. Among other things he offers cogent reasons for abandoning the mindless use of terms such as attempted suicide and parasuicide, and introduces a number of new terms including cosmic roulette, which he uses to describe a family of human acts in which people gamble with their lives.

Spis treści

1 SUICIDE, LANGUAGE AND ETHICS: AN INTRODUCTION 2 MORALS AND MEANS 3 WHERE DO OUR VIEWS OF SUICIDE COME FROM? 4 OUR IMPOVERISHED LANGUAGE OF SUICIDE AND SELF HARM 5 SUICIDE AND INTENTION 6 DEFINING SUICIDE 7 EXTENDING THE TAXONOMY OF SUICIDAL SELF HARM 8 LIVING DANGEROUSLY, HEROISM AND EUTHANASIA 9 VARIETIES OF SUICIDE 10 DIGGING UP THE PAST: EXPLORATIONS IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF SUICIDE 11 THE LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE POSITIONS ON SUICIDE 12 AUTONOMY, PATERNALISM AND INTERVENTION IN SUICIDAL ACTS 13 JUSTIFYING INTERVENTION 1: ARGUMENTS FROM AUTONOMY 14 JUSTIFYING INTERVENTION 2: SELF DEFENCE AND THE DEFENCE OF OTHERS

O autorze

Gavin Fairbairn worked in psychiatric social work and special education before taking up his present post at the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education, where he teaches education. He has published widely on the ethics of the caring professions, including medicine, nursing, social work and special education.