The subject of personal and moral identity is at the centre of interest, not only of academic research within disciplines such as philosophy and psychology, but also of everyday thinking. This is why the Neth erlands School for Research in Practical Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam took the initiative to bring together scholars from various disciplines, interested in the subject. The expert-seminar on 'Personal and Moral Identity' took place from 12-14 January 1999. Financial contributions from the Vrije Universiteit, the Dutch Scientific...
The subject of personal and moral identity is at the centre of interest, not only of academic research within disciplines such as philosophy and psych...
Patient autonomy is a much discussed and debated subject in medical ethics, as well as in healthcare practice, medical law, and healthcare policy. This book provides a detailed and nuanced analysis of both the concept of autonomy and the principle of respect for autonomy, in an accessible style. The unique feature of this book is that it combines empirical research into hospital practice with thorough philosophical analyses. As such, it is an example of a new movement in applied ethics, that of 'empirical ethics'.
The key themes are informed consent and medical decision making,...
Patient autonomy is a much discussed and debated subject in medical ethics, as well as in healthcare practice, medical law, and healthcare policy. ...
Ethics seeks answers to questions about the moral status of human actions and human lives. Actions and lives are temporal things. Thus, one would think that answers to ethical questions should take some account of their temporal features. And yet, while a number of authors have drawn attention to the relation between time and ethics (Derek Parfit and Thomas Nagel in particular), there has never been a systematic study of the impact of temporal considerations on ethical issues. There is a pressing need for an investigation into how time and ethics impact on each other. This book leads the way...
Ethics seeks answers to questions about the moral status of human actions and human lives. Actions and lives are temporal things. Thus, one would thin...
Most people (including moral philosophers), when faced with the fact that some of their cherished moral views lead up to the Repugnant Conclusion, feel that they have to revise their moral outlook. However, it is a moot question as to how this should be done. It is not an easy thing to say how one should avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, without having to face even more serious implications from one's basic moral outlook. Several such attempts are presented in this volume. This is the first volume devoted entirely to the cardinal problem of modern population ethics, known as 'The Repugnant...
Most people (including moral philosophers), when faced with the fact that some of their cherished moral views lead up to the Repugnant Conclusion, ...
The philosophical discussion of state punishment is well on in years. In contrast with a large number of ethical problems which are concerned with right and wrong in relation to a narrowly specified area of human life and practice and which hav- at least since the early 70 s - been regarded as a legitimate part of philosophical thinking constituting the area of applied ethics, reflections on punishment can be traced much further back in the history of western philosophy. This is not surprising. That the stately mandated infliction of death, suffering, or deprivation on citizens should be met...
The philosophical discussion of state punishment is well on in years. In contrast with a large number of ethical problems which are concerned with rig...
The view that persons are entitled to respect because of their moral agency is commonplace in contemporary moral theory. What exactly this respect entails, however, is far less uncontroversial. In this book, Van der Rijt argues powerfully that this respect for persons moral agency must also encompass respect for their subjective moral judgments even when these judgments can be shown to be fundamentally flawed.
Van der Rijt scrutinises the role persons subjective moral judgments play within the context of coercion and domination. His fresh, original analysis of Kant 's third formulation...
The view that persons are entitled to respect because of their moral agency is commonplace in contemporary moral theory. What exactly this respect ...
Even though several branches of philosophy meet in the notion of trust, it has nevertheless been largely neglected by mainstream philosophy. Arguably, most existing analyses fail to give a just account of the reality of human experience. The author believes that this is not a coincidence but symptomatic of the irrelevance of received ideas of rationality for crucial areas of human agency. Individualist' approaches, he argues, can be accused precisely of ignoring fundamental questions about the nature of the individual. Expanding on the works of Wittgenstein, Winch, and others, in...
Even though several branches of philosophy meet in the notion of trust, it has nevertheless been largely neglected by mainstream philosophy. Arguably,...
Recent Work on Intrinsic Value brings together for the first time many of the most important and influential writings on the topic of intrinsic value to have appeared in the last half-century. During this period, inquiry into the nature of intrinsic value has intensified to such an extent that at the moment it is one of the hottest topics in the field of theoretical ethics. The contributions to this volume have been selected in such a way that all of the fundamental questions concerning the nature of intrinsic value are treated in depth and from a variety of viewpoints....
Recent Work on Intrinsic Value brings together for the first time many of the most important and influential writings on the topic...
Levinas's ethical metaphysics is essentially a meditation on what makes ethical agency possible - that which enables us to act in the interest of another, to put the well-being of another before our own. This line of questioning found its inception in and drew its inspiration from the mass atrocities that occurred during the Second World War. The Holocaust, like the Cambodian genocide, or those in Rwanda and Srebrenica, exemplifies what have come to be known as the 'never again' situations. After these events, we looked back each time, with varying degrees of incomprehension, horror, anger...
Levinas's ethical metaphysics is essentially a meditation on what makes ethical agency possible - that which enables us to act in the interest of anot...
This book explores the theoretical basis of our ethical obligations to others as self-knowing beings - this task being envisaged as an essential supplement to a traditional ethic of respect for persons. Authoritative knowledge of others brings with it certain obligations, which are reflected in (inter alia) the moral and legal safeguards designed to ensure that certain information is 'put out of play' for job selection purposes etc. However, the theoretical basis for such obligations has never been fully clarified. This book begins by identifying a distinctive class of 'interpretive' moral...
This book explores the theoretical basis of our ethical obligations to others as self-knowing beings - this task being envisaged as an essential suppl...