This book both consummates and demonstrates the basic thrust of Jonas's thought: the inseparability of ethics and metaphysics, the reality of values at the ...

Mortality as a Philosophical-Anthropological Issue: Thanatology, Normativity, and "Human Nature" This paper examines mortality—the fact that we humans are all going to die—as an issue in philosophical anthropology, by applying a fourfold typology of some key forms of philosophical anthropology to the topic of death and mortality. First, this typology, originally suggested by Heikki Kannisto, is outlined; the mortality issue is, then, viewed from the perspective it opens. Finally, the challenges to our understanding of death and mortality that this perspective (...) may help us meet are discussed. The treatment of mortality from the perspective of philosophical anthropology may make it more understandable in a manner that will highlight the importance of the concept of normativity in the philosophical examination of any such humanly relevant issue. (shrink)

Morality, Mortality as a whole deals with certain aspects of ethical theory and with moral problems that arise primarily in contexts involving life‐and‐death decisions. The importance of the theoretical issues is not limited to their relevance to these decisions; however, they are, rather, issues at the heart of basic moral and political theory. This first volume comprises three parts. Part I, Death: From Bad to Worse, has with four chapters, and an appendix, discussing death and why it is bad for (...) the person who dies. Part II, Saving Lives: General Issues, has six chapters, and explores a cluster of moral problems that arise in saving lives. The general question raised is whether we should always, in aiding life, act so as to save the greater number of lives or to produce the greatest amount of good. Part III, Scarce Resources: Theoretical Issues, Specific Recommendations, and Organ Transplants, has five chapters, and deals with the problem of the acquisition and distribution of organs for transplantation. It allows us to apply the theoretical discussion of saving lives and relevant/irrelevant utilities presented in the previous parts. However, the discussion can be understood independently of the first two parts, and the conceptual issues and procedures on which it focuses are relevant to dealing with any scarce resource, including money and time, which are needed to use other plentiful resources. Although the book contains much theoretical and methodological argument, it is firmly grounded in practical ethical issues, and is illustrated throughout by examples. (shrink)

Death.--The absurd.--Moral luck.--Sexual perversion.--War and massacre.--Ruthlessness in public life.--The policy of preference.--Equality.--The fragmentation of value.--Ethics without biology.--Brain bisection and the unity of consciousness.--What is it like to be a bat?--Panpsychism.--Subjective and objective.

There is a fear of death that persistently eludes adequate explanation by contemporary philosophers of death. The reason for this is their focus on mortal harm issues, such as why death is bad for the person who dies. Claims regarding the fear of death are assumed to be contingent on the resolution of questions about the badness of death. In practice, however, consensus on some mortal harm issues has not resulted in comparable clarity on mortal fear. I contend we cannot (...) do justice to fear of death unless we detach it from theories about the badness of death, including the overwhelmingly-popular deprivation theory. The case for this involves disambiguation of certain aspects of mortal harm, a broad conception of what is involved in accounting for an emotion, and close attention to the nature of the fear in question. The source of fear of death is our departure from a context in which self-directed emotions have coherent application; our attitudes become ‘unmoored,’ in Samuel Scheffler’s phrase. While this does not result in a fear that is sui generis, it does demand that we remove the object of fear from the realm of well-being in order to make sense of it. (shrink)

This volume continues the examination of issues of life and death which F.M. Kamm began in Morality, Mortality, Volume I. Kamm continues her development of a non-consequentialist ethical theory and its application to practical ethical problems. She looks at the distinction between killing and letting die, and between intending and foreseeing, and also at the concepts of rights, prerogatives, and supererogation. She shows that a sophisticated non-consequentialist theory can be modelled which copes convincingly with practical ethical issues, and throws considerable (...) light on some of the key distinctions and concepts of ethical discourse. (shrink)

Across two studies, a wide age range of participants was interviewed about the nature of death. All participants were living in rural Madagascar in a community where ancestral beliefs and practices are widespread. In Study 1, children (8–17 years) and adults (19–71 years) were asked whether bodily and mental processes continue after death. The death in question was presented in the context of a narrative that focused either on the corpse or on the ancestral practices associated with the afterlife. Participants (...) aged 8 years and older claimed that death brings an end to most bodily and mental processes. Nevertheless, particularly in the context of the religious narrative, they claimed that certain mental processes continue even after death. This assertion of an afterlife was more evident among adults than children, especially with respect to cognitive processes, such as knowing and remembering. In Study 2, 5‐ and 7‐year‐olds were asked similar questions in connection with the death of a bird and a person. Seven‐year‐olds consistently claimed that bodily and mental processes cease at death, whereas 5‐year‐olds were unsystematic in their replies. Together, the two studies replicate and extend findings obtained with Western children showing that, in the course of development, different conceptions of death are elaborated—a biological conception in which death terminates living processes and a religious conception in which death marks the beginning of a new form of spiritual existence. (shrink)

This paper examines mortality by cause of death in a rural area of Machakos district in Kenya. The cause-of-death data collected between 1975 and 1978 were likely to be of fairly good quality. The number of deaths was higher among infants and children. Infectious diseases and diseases of the respiratory system were the leading causes of death among children below 5 years of age. Next in prominence were the causes ascribed to congenital anomalies and perinatal conditions.Among adolescents and young adults, (...) injury and poisoning, together with tuberculosis and other infectious and parasitic diseases, were the leading causes of death. Degenerative diseases, especially diseases of the circulatory system and neoplasms and respiratory illness, were responsible for the majority of deaths among the older population. (shrink)

In Mortal Imitations of Divine Life, Diamond offers an interpretation of De Anima, which explains how and why Aristotle places souls in a hierarchy of value. Aristotle’s central intention in De Anima is to discover the nature and essence of soul—the prin­ciple of living beings. He does so by identifying the common structures underlying every living activity, whether it be eating, perceiving, thinking, or moving through space. As Diamond demonstrates through close readings of De Anima, the nature of the soul (...) is most clearly seen in its divine life, while the embodied soul’s other activi­ties are progressively clearer approximations of this principle. This interpretation shows how Aristotle’s psychology and biology cannot be properly understood apart from his theological conception of God as life, and offers a new explanation of De Anima’s unity of purpose and structure. (shrink)

How might we change ourselves without ending our existence? What could we become, if we had access to an advanced form of bioengineering that allowed us dramatically to alter our genome? Could we remain in existence after ceasing to be alive? What is it to be human? Might we still exist after changing ourselves into something that is not human? What is the significance of human extinction? Steven Luper addresses these questions and more in this thought-provoking study. He defends an (...) animalist account, which says that we are organisms, but claims that we are also material objects. His book goes to the heart of the most complex questions about what we are and what we might become. Using case studies from the life sciences as well as thought experiments, Luper develops a new way of thinking about the nature of life and death, and whether and how human extinction matters. (shrink)

This volume continues the examination of issues of life and death which F.M. Kamm began in 'Morality, Mortality, ' Volume I (1993). Kamm continues her development of a non-consequentialist ethical theory and its application to practical ethical problems.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Existential Analytic: Terminable or Interminable? Death's Representatives: Some Dead Ends The Existential Approach: Death in/from/as Life The Modalities of Mortal Existence Getting Ahead of Ourselves: Heidegger's Analysis between Angst and Conscience.

Extrinsic mortality is a key influence on organisms’ life history strategies, especially on age at maturity. This historical longitudinal study of 125 women in rural Domenica examines effects of extrinsic mortality on human age at maturity and pace of reproduction. Extrinsic mortality is indicated by local population infant mortality rates during infancy and at maturity between the years 1925 and 2000. Extrinsic mortality shows effects on age at first birth and pace of reproduction among these women. Parish death records show (...) huge historical variation in age-specific mortality rates. The infant mortality rate (IMR) in the early 1920s was low, increased dramatically beginning in 1929, and reached a maximum in the 1950s, at which point IMR declined steadily to its present low rate. The mortality rate early in life showed a quadratic association with age at first birth. Women who experienced conditions of low IMR early in life reproduced relatively late in life. Those born into moderately high levels of infant mortality tended to reproduce earlier than those born at low levels. At very high infant mortality levels early in life, women went on to delay reproduction until relatively late, possibly as a result of somatic depletion and energetic stress associated with the conditions that lead to high IMR. Population mortality rates at age of maturity also showed a quadratic association with age at first birth. The pace of reproduction, estimated as number of surviving offspring controlled for maternal age, showed a similar quadratic effect. There were complex interactions between population mortality rates in infancy and at maturity. When extrinsic mortality was high during infancy, extrinsic mortality later in life had little effect on timing of first birth. When extrinsic mortality was low to moderate in infancy, extrinsic mortality later in life had significant effects on adult reproduction. I speculate that these effects are mediated through development of personality facets associated with reproduction. (shrink)

Why is death bad for us, even on the assumption that it involves the absence of experience? Is it worse for us than prenatal nonexistence? In this first volume of the two-volume Morality, Mortality, Kamm begins by considering these questions, critically examining some answers other philosophers have given. The book examines specifically what differences between persons are relevant to the distribution of any scarce resource, discussing for example, the distribution of bodily organs for transplantation.

Historical demographic research shows that the factors influencing mortality risk are labile across time and space. This is particularly true for datasets that span societal transitions. Here, we seek to understand how marriage, migration, and the local economy influenced mortality dynamics in a rapidly changing environment characterized by high in-migration and male-biased sex ratios. Mortality records were extracted from a compendium of historical vital records for the Baja California peninsula (Mexico). Our sample consists of 1,201 mortality records spanning AD 1835–1900. (...) Findings from Cox proportional hazard models indicate that (1) marriage was associated with a protective effect for both sexes; (2) residing in a mining town was associated with higher mortality for men, but not women; (3) migration was associated with decreased mortality risk for women, but not men; and (4) the risk of mortality increased in the face of infectious disease, but decreased over time. Despite the early initiation of reproduction for women, marriage had a protective effect, likely because marriage linked women to resources. Although mining boomtowns were associated with elevated risk factors generally, only men experienced greater mortality risk, likely due to dangerous working conditions that women did not experience. Last, female, but not male, migrants experienced greater longevity, possibly because exposure to harsh labor conditions eroded the protective effect of selection bias for men. Together, these results shed light on an understudied historical population and broaden our understanding of demographic dynamics in preindustrial settings. (shrink)

Narrative views of agency and identity arise in opposition to reductionism in both domains. While reductionists understand both identity and agency in terms of their components, narrativists respond that life and action are both constituted by narratives, and since the components of a narrative gain their meaning from the whole, life and action not only incorporate their constituent parts but also shape them. I first lay out the difficulties with treating narrative as constitutive of metaphysical identity and turn to its (...) function in practical identity. I then explore the ways narrative shapes our agency—by tapping into our motivational structures, providing an understanding of the social background within which our agency operates, guiding our agency through an understanding of our histories and aspirations, providing the links that structure actions internally, and allowing us to change the meaning of our pasts. I suggest that putting these functions of narrative together may allow us to genuinely shape our past motivational structures through our actions. Finally, if life has the form of a narrative, it may seem as if mortality is necessary for our lives and their contents to be meaningful: a narrative, it might seem, relies on the ending for its meaning. If so, an immortal life would be meaningless. I examine the possibility that even an immortal life may draw meaning from local narratives that constitute projects within such a life, while arguing that, to the contrary, narrative may be a tool exclusively adapted to mortal lives. (shrink)

In this provocative study, Bedau demonstrates the usefulness of "casuistry," or "the method of cases" in arriving at moral decisions. He examines well-known cases, including the aftermath of the sinking of the William Brown in 1841, that compel us to consider questions about who ought to survive when not all can. By doing so, we learn something about how we actually reason concerning such life and death situations, as well as about how we ought to reason if we wish both (...) to be consistent and to properly respect human life. Bedau's elegant book will be a valuable resource for students, philosophers, and general readers. (shrink)

In his recent book, Death, Posthumous Harm, and Bioethics (Routeledge 2012), James Stacey Taylor challenges two ideas whose provenance may be traced all the way back to Aristotle. The first of these is the thought that death (typically) harms the one who dies (mortal harm thesis). The second is the idea that one can be harmed (and wronged) by events that occur after one’s death (posthumous harm thesis). Taylor devotes two-thirds of the book to arguing against both theses and the (...) remainder to working out the implications of their falsity for various bioethical concerns, including euthanasia, suicide, organ procurement, etc. In this brief article, I concentrate on Taylor’s case against the mortal harm thesis and suggest that his main argument against this claim begs the question. (shrink)

Prior to the productive encounters that can be staged between Emmanuel Levinas’sthought and cinema at the level of reception, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne introducehis philosophy to their filmmaking at its moment of inception.1Luc Dardenne’s diary Audos de nos images documents their filmmaking from 1991 to 2005, and isinterspersed with brief but erudite references to Levinas’s work. While Levinasianthinking is one among many cited influences in this text, which also features quotationsfrom the writings of novelists, poets, and other philosophers, along with (...) detailedreferences to other filmmakers, his work is a signal point of inspiration and ethicalaspiration for their filmmaking. The Dardenne brothers seek permanently to unsettlereceived ideas of what cinema is. In this, their approach is bound up explicitly, but notexclusively, with the ethical underpinnings of Levinas’s thought. Levinas’s reformulationof ethics as first philosophy creates a fissure at the root of the philosophy of being. TheDardennes’ films, in turn, perform a Levinasian-inspired challenge to the being ofcinema. At its most extreme moments, to kill or not to kill is the key question that theircinema raises. This tacit rewriting of the interrogative opening to Hamlet’s infamous soliloquy, shifts attention away from a self-centered concern with being or non-being,and towards the survival of the other. The passage from being to non-being, whichwould involve the death of the subject, is displaced here by a preoccupation with killing,or failing to kill, someone else. This particular move from dying to killing lies at the heartof the Dardennes’ mortal ethics. (shrink)

Nature and Mortality is a challenging look at some of the major public issues of our time through the eyes of one of our most influential and probing liberal humanists. It is a frank account on where we stand today on such controversial matters as human embryology, genetic engineering, euthanasia and abortion. Warnock's views may seem like a red rag to a bull to some, but her contribution to the debate is always stimulating. Enlivened by autobiographical anecdote and some delicious (...) side-swipes, Nature and Mortality is Mary Warnock at her most perceptive, wise and entertaining. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Morality, Mortality: Death and Whom to Save from It. By Frances Kamm.

Kierkegaard verwendet den Salto mortale als Metapher für den Glauben. Aber was für eine Bewegung ist der Salto mortale genau? Diese Frage wird im ersten Teil anhand der Beschreibungen, die Arcangelo Tuccaro – selbst ein Akrobat, aber auch erster Akrobattheoretiker Europas – von dieser Bewegung gibt, beantwortet. Im zweiten und dritten Teil wird aufgezeigt, inwiefern die Metapher des Salto mortale und die konkurrierende Metapher des Augenblicks in den Texten Kierkegaards Sprachbilder für den Glauben sind, also: Welche Auffassung des Glaubens kann (...) diesen Bildern entnommen werden? Und wie verhalten sich die beiden Metaphern zueinander? Im vierten Teil wird der jacobischen Provenienz der Metapher des Salto mortale nachgegangen: Bereits Jacobi verwendet in einer sehr ähnlichen Weise wie Kierkegaard diese akrobatische Bewegung als Bild für den Glauben. Trotz dieser Nähe verspottet Kierkegaard Jacobi in seiner Nachschrift, indem er die jacobische Vorlage wiederverwendet und ironisch verzerrt. Der letzte Teil ist der Auseinandersetzung mit der Sekundärliteratur gewidmet und bettet diese Arbeit in die philosophische und theologische Kierkegaard-Forschung ein. (shrink)

Inside this complete guide you will find: A guide to facilitate conversation with your family; How to create peace when war has been declared on your body; How to alleviate pain and suffering; How to choose your own end; How to use the dying process as a mechanism for personal and family growth. Filled with inspirational and helpful stories, Mortal Dilemmas... is a book that not only will prepare you for the inevitable, but will also give you a sense of (...) satisfaction and control."--P. [4] of cover. (shrink)

This book demonstrates that we need not choose between seeing so-called Presocratic thinkers as rational philosophers or as religious sages. In particular, it rethinks fundamentally the emergence of systematic epistemology and reflection on speculative inquiry in Hesiod, Xenophanes and Parmenides. Shaul Tor argues that different forms of reasoning, and different models of divine disclosure, play equally integral, harmonious and mutually illuminating roles in early Greek epistemology. Throughout, the book relates these thinkers to their religious, literary and historical surroundings. It is (...) thus also, and inseparably, a study of poetic inspiration, divination, mystery initiation, metempsychosis and other early Greek attitudes to the relations and interactions between mortal and divine. The engagements of early philosophers with such religious attitudes present us with complex combinations of criticisms and creative appropriations. Indeed, the early milestones of philosophical epistemology studied here themselves reflect an essentially theological enterprise and, as such, one aspect of Greek religion. (shrink)

Standing at the edge of life's abyss, we seek meaningful order. We commonly find this 'symbolic immortality' in religion, civilization, state and nation. What happens, however, when the nation itself appears mortal? The Mortality and Morality of Nations seeks to answer this question, theoretically and empirically. It argues that mortality makes morality, and right makes might; the nation's sense of a looming abyss informs its quest for a higher moral ground, which, if reached, can bolster its vitality. The book investigates (...) nationalism's promise of moral immortality and its limitations via three case studies: French Canadians, Israeli Jews, and Afrikaners. All three have been insecure about the validity of their identity or the viability of their polity, or both. They have sought partial redress in existential self-legitimation: by the nation, of the nation and for the nation's very existence. (shrink)

Over thirty years ago, Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature declared the demise of epistemology and the arrival of a new post-Philosophical era. Rorty envisaged the intellectual activity of this predominantly literary culture as an unconstrained large-scale conversation that would flourish in an “ecstasy of spiritual freedom.” Having abandoned all systematic pretensions, edifying philosophers would add their voice to the conversation of mankind, fully aware of the radical incommensurability of the mortal vocabularies they employ. In an attempt to (...) evaluate this radical proposal, the first part of this essay argues that some of Rorty’s most memorable utopian statements are far-fetched, rhetorical and often exaggerated to the point that they damage his broad humanistic vision. Building on this, the second part discusses the “missed potential” of Rorty’s excessively broad notion of a conversation of mankind and of the uncompromisingly anti-essentialist and anti-foundationalist reorientation that he proposes. (shrink)

Many religiously minded materialist philosophers have attempted to understand the doctrine of the survival of death from within a physicalist approach. Their goal is not to show the doctrine false, but to explain how it can be true. One such approach has been developed by Peter van Inwagen. After explaining what I call the duplication objection, I present van Inwagen’s proposal and show how a proponent might attempt to solve the problem of duplication. I argue that the very features of (...) the view that aid the proponent in responding to the duplication objection entails the possibility of an impossible state of affairs—that two distinct persons can at the same time be identical with the same bundle of material simples. The religiously minded materialist is caught between the horns of a dilemma. One’s view regarding human persons must be robust enough to account for personal identity over time, and so not fall to the duplication objection. At the same time, the view must not entail the possibility of two persons temporarily having complete coincident existence. (shrink)

Many religiously minded materialist philosophers have attempted to understand the doctrine of the survival of death from within a physicalist approach. Their goal is not to show the doctrine false, but to explain how it can be true. One such approach has been developed by Peter van Inwagen. After explaining what I call the duplication objection, I present van Inwagen’s proposal and show how a proponent might attempt to solve the problem of duplication. I argue that the very features of (...) the view that aid the proponent in responding to the duplication objection entails the possibility of an impossible state of affairs—that two distinct persons can at the same time be identical with the same bundle of material simples. The religiously minded materialist is caught between the horns of a dilemma. One’s view regarding human persons must be robust enough to account for personal identity over time, and so not fall to the duplication objection. At the same time, the view must not entail the possibility of two persons temporarily having complete coincident existence. (shrink)

This book contributes to current bioethical debates by providing a critical analysis of the philosophy of human death. Bernard N. Schumacher discusses contemporary philosophical perspectives on death, creating a dialogue between phenomenology, existentialism, and analytic philosophy. He also examines the ancient philosophies that have shaped our current ideas about death. His analysis focuses on three fundamental problems: (1) the definition of human death, (2) the knowledge of mortality and of human death as such, and (3) the question of whether death (...) is nothing to us or, on the contrary, whether it can be regarded as an absolute or relative evil. Drawing on scholarship published in four languages and from three distinct currents of thought, this volume represents a comprehensive and systematic study of the philosophy of death, one that provides a provocative basis for discussions of the bioethics of human mortality. (shrink)

This wide ranging and challenging book explores the relationship between subjectivity and mortality as it is understood by a number of twentieth-century French philosophers including Sartre, Lacan, Levinas and Derrida. Making intricate and sometimes unexpected connections, Christina Howells draws together the work of prominent thinkers from the fields of phenomenology and existentialism, religious thought, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction, focussing in particular on the relations between body and soul, love and death, desire and passion. From Aristotle through to contemporary analytic philosophy and (...) neuroscience the relationship between mind and body has been persistently recalcitrant to analysis, and emotion is the locus where the explanatory gap is most keenly identified. This problematic forms the broad backdrop to the work’s primary focus on contemporary French philosophy and its attempts to understand the intimate relationship between subjectivity and mortality, in the light not only of the ‘death’ of the classical subject but also of the very real frailty of the subject as it lives on, finite, desiring, embodied, open to alterity and always incomplete. Ultimately Howells identifies this vulnerability and finitude as the paradoxical strength of the mortal subject and as what permits its transcendence. Subtle, beautifully written, and cogently argued, this book will be invaluable for students and scholars interested in contemporary theories of subjectivity, as well as for readers intrigued by the perennial connections between love and death. (shrink)

The model of atonement presented in Anselm of Canterbury's Cur Deus Homo has aroused a host of worries from theologians. The gist of their criticism is that Anselm inscribes redemptive violence into theology and thus encourages passive acquiescence to abusive power structures or even licenses the violence of abusers. Some suggest that the way forward would be to jettison Anselm's account and develop alternatives that are not liable to the same abuses. This paper argues that while alternatives may be desirable, (...) Cur Deus Homo looms so large in theological imaginations as to defy jettisoning. We should instead try to perform better readings. This paper presents a close reading of this text as a monastic meditation on mortality oriented less toward resolving a problem of systematic theology than drawing readers into a renewed experience of devotion to God. To do that, Anselm works to rewrite the meaning of human mortality, making it less about the necessity of losing one's life and more about the possibility of a gift of death. The ethical paradigm that emerges is far from a complete moral vision, but is still more alluring than the one about which Anselm's contemporary critics worry. (shrink)

Successive UK governments have adopted failure as a strategy in the reform of public education in England: first, to construct crises in order to blame professionals/parents/children for a failing system; and second, to provide rescue solutions that are designed to fail in order to sustain the change imperative. We describe this as policy mortality, or the integration of systemic and organisational ‘death’ within reform design. Our research demonstrates the interplay between the blame for the ‘wrong’ type of school, leader, teacher, (...) pupil, parent, and the claimed ‘solutions’ in the form of new schools (e.g., between 70 and 90 different types in England), organisations (e.g., MATs), professionals (e.g., CEOs), pupils (e.g., branded access to a school place), and parents (e.g., consumer choice). Our research contribution is conceptual through the development of new thinking about policy mortality, whereby the claim is for ‘success’ but the reality is that some professionals, schools, children and parents are required to fail. (shrink)

This short and shapely book amply delivers its main promise, to discuss and offer views on a handful of central issues concerning the nature and importance of death. It does this with dry humour, unyielding attention to clarity and conciseness, and simple but highly effective structuring throughout.An introductory chapter sets out what you will and what you will not get. It aims to defend the more or less pervasive preoccupation with metaphysics, and outlines the chapters to follow. Ch. 2 contrasts (...) animalism with the psychological view, comes down overall in favour of the former, but incorporates into it some of the teeth of the latter. In ch. 3 Johansson defends the termination thesis, or the view that with death we cease to exist. Ch. 4 considers Epicureanism about death. It gives the Epicurean a number of shots at defending the view that death is not bad, but concludes that even the best of these falls short. This is followed in ch. 5 by a discussion of Lucretius' symmetry argument – we do not regret not having been born earlier, so why regret that we shall not die later? The view put forward here is that our not being born earlier is bad, but, unlike death, bad in an ‘innocent’ way. In the final chapter Johansson asks whether we should be especially concerned about our own deaths, explores the links with reductionist/non‐reductionist debates, and concludes that whatever your stance here, special concern is irrational. For reasons of space I shall say no more about this last chapter, but I shall offer something on the others. (shrink)

The Apology is often read as showing a conflict between democracy and philosophy. I argue here that Socrates’s defense critically engages deeply political Athenian conventions of death, showing a mutual entanglement between Socratic philosophy and democratic practice. I suggest that Socrates’s aporetic insistence within the Apology that we “do not know if death is a good or a bad thing” structures a critical space of inquiry that I term “mortal ignorance;” a space from which Socrates reapproaches settled questions of death’s (...) appropriate place in political life, ultimately prompting a partial transformation of Athenian democracy. I argue here that Socratic mortal ignorance supports a self-reflective politics of death, one which produces many potential responses and accepts the impossibility of closing off death’s meaning in any final sense—an aporia suitable for the unending, precarious work of democratic politics. (shrink)

Kamm applies her non-consequentialist theory to practical ethical problems involving life and death, including the distinction between killing and letting die, and the permissibility of harming some to save others.

Mortal and immortal DNA : Craig Venter and the lure of "lamia" -- Homeopathy : Holmes, hogwarts, and the Prince of Wales -- Citizen Pinel and the madman at Bellevue -- The experimental pathology of stress : Hans Selye to Paris Hilton -- Gore's fever and Dante's Inferno : Chikungunya reaches Ravenna -- Giving things their proper names : Carl Linnaeus and W.H. Auden -- Spinal irritation and fibromyalgia : Lincoln's surgeon general and the three graces -- Tithonus and the (...) fruit fly : new science and old myths -- Swiftboating "America the beautiful" : Katharine Lee Bates and a Boston marriage -- Nothing makes sense in medicine except in the light of biology -- Apply directly to the forehead : Holmes, Zola, and Hennapecia -- Elizabeth Blackwell breaks the bonds -- Chronic lyme disease and medically unexplained syndromes -- Eugenics and the immigrant : Rosalyn Yalow and Rita Levi-Montalcini -- Science in the Middle East : Robert Koch and the cholera war -- How to win a Nobel prize : thinking inside and outside the box -- Homer Smith and the lungfish : the last gasp of intelligent design -- DDT is back : let us spray! -- Academic boycotts and the Royal Society -- Teach evolution, learn science : John William Draper and the "bone bill" -- Diderot and the yeti crab : the encyclopedias of life -- Dengue fever in Rio : Macumba versus Voltaire. (shrink)

Hans Jonas was a German Jew, pupil of Heidegger and Bultmann, lifelong friend and colleague of Hannah Arendt at the New School for Social Research, and one of the most prominent thinkers of his generation. The range of his topics never obscures their unifying thread: that our mortality is at the root of our moral responsibility to safeguard humanity's future. _Mortality and Morality_ both consummates and demonstrates the basic thrust of Jonas's thought: the inseparability of ethics and metaphysics, the reality (...) of values at the center of being. (shrink)

This article addresses the embodied nature of laboratory human—animal practices in order to understand the notions of care that take place within an institution of domination — the apparatus of animal experimentation. How is it possible to both love and harm in this context? Building on animal studies and feminist ethics, the theme of emotionality is explored in the section ‘loving animals’. Here it is demonstrated that empathy and affection for individual animals, as well as species, are strong components of (...) an experimental ethos expressed by the informants. The second empirical section deals with the issue of ‘killing well’. The good kill is supposed to be done with care: quickly and compassionately. This is performed by way of bodily measures of care, technological refinement and personal skills and, sometimes, with the help of a division of labour. In the concluding section, the empirical findings are read through the framework, where the feminist theoretical analysis of love, dependency and care from an embodiment perspective understands the dialectics of instrumentalisation and exploitation of — and care for — animals, not as something that goes on above or outside of relations, but rather as something that can be understood from within. ‘Mortal love’ is the attempt to capture and theorise this dialectic, arguing that emotions of love and friendship are not mere justifications for the harm and killing performed, but rather intrinsic dimensions of the embodied animaling of experimental human—animal relations. (shrink)

Why does world hunger hold an inferior place on the contemporary moral agenda? Proposed answer: because it is a political, not a moral problem. It is not a moral problem, because morality needs two conditions fulfilled: that those be in some way close to the agent unto whom that agent is doing something that is to be morally assessed; and that the relevant good or bad states or events can be clearly credited to some particular agent or agents. Neither condition (...) is fulfilled in the case of world hunger. This explains morality's failure to come to grips with it. Yet, while lacking morality's endorsement, the abolition of world hunger may still be a political goal. (shrink)

Why is death bad for us, even on the assumption that it involves the absence of experience? Is it worse for us than prenatal nonexistence? In this first volume of the two-volume Morality, Mortality, Kamm begins by considering these questions, critically examining some answers other philosophers have given. The book examines specifically what differences between persons are relevant to the distribution of any scarce resource, discussing for example, the distribution of bodily organs for transplantation.

The goddess’s speech in Parmenides’s fragments is framed by the opinions of mortals in at least two ways. First, the journey of the proem starts in the world described by mortals’ opinions, and the second part of the goddess’s speech explores those opinions. Second, throughout her speech, the goddess invokes features of the world according to mortals’ opinions—negation, coming-to-be, destruction—even when she is arguing for a road of inquiry that excludes those features. Further, we study the fragments by means of (...) the definitions and claims regarding what-is that we use to function and communicate in our mortal lives. This paper proposes to approach the fragments with an awareness of this framing. A result is that the logical conclusion of accepting mortals’ opinions is that mortals’ opinions are flawed; and that result is based on flawed opinions. The goddess’s account thus presents something like a Liar Paradox. (shrink)

The story of the body. Fay Bound Alberti takes the human body apart in order to put it back anew, telling the cultural history of our key organs and systems from the inside out, from blood to guts, brains to sex organs.