Life, Death, and Subjectivity: Moral Sources in BioethicsThis book presents an exploration of concepts central to health care practice. In exploring such concepts as Subjectivity, Life, Personhood, and Death in deep philosophical terms, the book aims to draw out the ethical demands that arise when we encounter these phenomena, and also the moral resources of health care workers for meeting those demands. The series Values in Bioethics makes available original philosophical books in all areas of bioethics, including medical and nursing ethics, health care ethics, research ethics, environmental ethics, and global bioethics. |
Contents
| 14 | |
| 26 | |
| 34 | |
| 40 | |
A New Question | 50 |
Conclusion | 57 |
Respect for Life | 83 |
The Science of Life | 89 |
SIX Living Subjectivity | 121 |
SEVEN What Is Death? | 143 |
EIGHT Accepting Death | 173 |
Notes | 201 |
Bibliography | 213 |
About the Author | 225 |
66 | 227 |
89 | 233 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
acceptance Alasdair MacIntyre alive animals appear argued argument aware basis Bernat bioethical biological Blackwell body brain brain death brain-stem ceased cessation chapter concept of death concern consciousness context corpse cultural dead decision define dualism dying Emmanuel Levinas entity environment essentialist ethical aim Ethics of Care evil existence existential experience expression fetus Heidegger human important intentional system intentionality intersubjective intuition justice kind Levinas living things Martin Heidegger means metaphysical mode moral source moral status moral theory mosquito motivations narrative nature negentropic neocortex Nietzsche norms notion Nursing Nursing Ethics object organism ourselves Oxford patient pea soup person personhood Peter Singer Philosophy position possible principles processes question rational reality responsibility Ricoeur Schweitzer seek self-conscious self-project senescence sense simply social society Stan van Hooft structure struggle subjectivity suffering suggest thought tradition understand virtue Virtue Ethics virtuous vital functions will-to-live York
Popular passages
Page 2 - practice" I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.
Page 45 - Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.
Page 3 - A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods.
Page 45 - Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law...
Page 19 - Nothing determines me from outside, not because nothing acts upon me, but, on the contrary, because I am from the start outside myself and open to the world. We are true through and through, and have with us, by the mere fact of belonging to the world, and not merely being in the world in the way that things are, all that we need to transcend ourselves. We need...
Page 102 - Exploitation" does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life.
Page 175 - So that the man speaks but idly who says that he fears death not because it will be painful when it comes, but because it is painful in anticipation. For that which gives no trouble when it comes, is but an empty pain in anticipation.
Page 175 - Accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us...
Page 102 - Nietzsche evokes as a sign of true justice, exists as such by marking itself off from an 'outside' to which it is hostile: Even that body within which, as it was previously assumed, individuals treat one another as equals - this happens in every healthy aristocracy - must, if it is a living and not a decaying body, itself do all that to other bodies which the individuals within it refrain from doing to one another: it will have to be...
Page 183 - Anxiety is the result of the perception of the truth of one's condition. What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and selfexpression — and with all this yet to die.