Abstract

I show that Engelhardtian content-free theory, principle-based theory, and casuistry all fail to successfully resolve bioethical conflict in a pluralistic society, in part because they all attempt to provide resolutions satisfactory to all members of society, which the extent of rational pluralism in modern society makes very unlikely. However, I show that this does not prevent us from finding morally justified solutions to problematic moral cases in modern society. By a justified expansion of the notion of moral community to include very narrow understandings of moral friendship, including an adaptation of the concept of moral acquaintances as developed by Loewy and Wildes, I argue that resolutions grounded in even very narrowly shared moral values can be fully morally justified. Since principle-based approaches can discover or even create moral agreement between persons through careful examination and specification of principles, they can define or create moral acquaintanceships. Since these approaches can justify moral claims within the context of moral agreement, I argue that even quite narrow moral acquaintanceships can provide sufficient moral agreement to allow persons employing such theories to resolve moral conflicts within those acquaintanceships, even if no resolution could be justified to the pluralistic society as a whole