Essay on Bioethics

ISBN-13: 9780198236788 / Angielski / Miękka / 1996 / 264 str.

R. M. Hare

Opis

R.M. Hare is well known both for his fundamental work in ethical theory and for his applications of it to practical issues. For this volume he has selected the best of his writings on medical ethics and related topics. The book's chief theoretical interest lies in its synthesis between utilitarian and Kantian ethics, which are shown to have the same practical consequences. The main practical thesis in the book is that we can harm possible people by preventing them from becoming actual people. This thesis, if understood and accepted, would radically alter the terms of the public debate about embryo experimentation and population policy, and (perhaps surprisingly) support a fairly liberal view on abortion. There are also general introductions to medical and psychiatric ethics, and essays on the concept of health, on the morality of experimentation on children, on health care policy, on free will, and on vegetarianism.

Recenzje

Contemporary bioethics owes a great deal to Professor Hare. Not only has Hare developed a highly sophisticated ethical theory, but he has from the beginning applied it to many different practical issues, including issues on bioethics ... Hare has provided some powerful prudential arguments in favour of being moral ... Hare's book has much to offer its readers ... Hare's work, like that of all great philosophers, provides both enlightenment and plenty to disagree with ... I said that contemporary bioethics owes much to Hare. With the publication of this volume, the debt is even greater.

O autorze

R. M. Hare, FBA, is one of the most influential moral philosophers of the twentieth century. He was White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford from 1966 to 1983, and Graduate Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Florida, Gainesville, thereafter. His many publications include The Language of Morals (1952), Freedom and Reason (1963), Moral Thinking (1981), Plato (1982), Essays in Ethical Theory (1989), Essays on Political Morality (1989), and Essays on Religion and Education (1992), all published by Oxford University Press