Since difficult ideas are best understood when they wear a human face, in these six stories the main characters personify several 'isms' the author has written and taught about during his academic career. These 'isms' include German-Americanism, idealism, positivism or realism, and experimentalism. Several 'special relationships' in the stories are based on the author's experiences over many years in the United Kingdom and in teaching the liberal arts."--Back cover.

One of the most significant challenges facing global egalitarian theorists is the motivational gap: there is a noted gap between the duties imposed by a global commitment to the equal moral worth of all people and the willingness of the wealthy to carry out these duties. For Pablo Gilabert, the apparent absence of motivation to act justly on a global scale presses us to consider the importance of feasibility in developing a persuasive account of global justice, part of which requires (...) being attentive to what motivates us to act in support of global egalitarianism. In this article, I am critical of Gilabert’s account of the role that relationships between individuals play in conceiving our global justice duties. I begin with an account of some confusion in Gilabert’s account of the actual costs likely to be imposed on citizens of wealthy states as a result of the duties he demands of us and why it is important to resolve that confusion. I will then consider, and critique, Gilabert’s account of special responsibilities. I shall argue that, fundamentally, there is an ineliminable tension between the special responsibilities individuals legitimately possess and the duties they have to eradicate global poverty. (shrink)

There is an increasing interest in the relationship between imagery and emotion . The present research examined whether unconscious emotions affect visual imagery. In particular, participants were invited to perform a mental rotation test following subliminal presentation of happy, sad and neutral expressions. This study revealed an increase in mental rotation abilities after unconscious visual processing of emotional expressions. Altogether, these findings support the hypothesis of a bidirectional relationship between imagery and emotions.

On May 14, 1940, Otto Neurath and Marie Reidemeister fled from the harbour of Scheveningen in The Hague to England. It was the last boat that could escape from Holland before the German occupiers took the city. Years earlier, in 1934, they had fled the same danger from Vienna to Holland. Otto Neurath can be seen as the godfather of today's infographics. In the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum (Social & Economic Museum) that he founded in Vienna, developments in various areas of (...) society were shown by means of pictorial statistics to a broad audience - rich and poor, literate and illiterate. At the Museum, Otto Neurath acted as the scientific director and inspirer, Marie Reidemeister as the 'Transformer' of data into sketches, and Gerd Arntz as the head of the graphics department which designed pictograms and layouts. These three continued that work in Holland under the acronym Isotype (International System Of TYpographic Picture Education). After internment as 'enemy aliens' on the Isle of Man, Neurath & Reidemeister were able to continue their work in the UK. Through Wolfgang Foges and his book packaging firm Adprint, they were commissioned to design Isotype charts for books supported by the Ministry of Information during the war - what might be called 'soft propaganda'. From 1942, Isotypes were supplied for information about the embryonic welfare state (Beveridge Plan), for illustrated books about Britain's allies (USA and USSR), and on what British democracy should look like after the war. This book illustrates around 250 Isotypes from these publications and provides information about the producers, authors, editors, and designers, and not least about the working relationship between the Isotype Institute and Adprint. The examples presented show the remarkable quality of the graphics, produced under less than ideal circumstances during wartime. (shrink)

The relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States seems to embody most fully the type of the ‘special relationship’ today. It is a relationship founded ultimately on biological kinship, structured by mutual economic and strategic interests and cemented by a sense of political and ‘spiritual’ affinity. At least the broad contours of such contemporary ‘special relationships’ are sufficiently clear. This is far from being the case with those of the Archaic and Classical Greek world, for (...) two main reasons. First, and more decisively, our sources for the history of that world – literary, epigraphical, archaeological – are normally scrappy, discontinuous and variously slanted. Second, and only in part because of the nature of the evidence, the workings of all ancient Greek interstate relationships, whether ‘special’ or not, are in principle controversial. For in the absence of governments and parties in the modern sense it is frequently impossible to explain confidently a particular foreign policy decision taken by a Greek state. A fortiori it is in principle even more difficult to describe and account for ‘special’ relationships between states that apparently transcended purely immediate, local and narrowly self-interested considerations. (shrink)

A defense of the modern family, in historical perspective, this book reconstructs political theory with the family in an important and honorable place. By reviewing critically both traditional and contemporary thought on the most special relationships—as well as current public policy issues relating to them—the author addresses concerns shared by professional and lay constituencies. Noting Tocqueville's observation of the American obsession with reevaluating and remodeling the family, Professor Abbott pleads for a balanced view. The development of liberal ambivalence (...) toward the family, along with radical hostility toward it, is clearly traced. For the most part the family was safely incorporated into political theory from Aristotle to Cicero and onward to Augustine and Aquinas until modern times. Then came the challenges of the rational individualists and the romantic individualists, followed by the attacks of social and psychological radicals. Some traditional criticisms of the family are shown to be soundly based, albeit less devastating than the critics supposed. As expanded in contemporary life, however, the great critics' revisionist models take on a fantastic quality. Here we are introduced to pleas for the "eroticization of children" and for freedom from "tyranny of reproductive biology." Proposals for new bureaucratic support structures appear with great frequency: professional guardians, children's camps, cloning hospitals. And people try to act out the roles prescribed for them by theorists who attempted "to set the solitary in new and different units." Liberals and radicals, the author argues, are infatuated with a "rights model," which "takes as its basis self-sufficient rational human beings"—at the expense of "solidarity among human beings." A tradition exists, Professor Abbott holds, that facilitates reconciliation between the modern family and the political order: pluralism. Pluralism is an attempt to balance individual autonomy and mutuality, decentralization and stratification, reform and tradition, reason and sentiment. Public policy in respect to schools, housing, health care, working conditions, and recreation should be designed to foster a pluralistic family-centered society. In line with this thesis the author offers a fresh perspective on such burning issues as abortion, sexual preference, alternative lifestyles, child abuse, and children's rights. _The Family on Trial _therefore is relevant to the concerns of social and behavioral scientists, the helping professions and the clergy, teachers and parents. (shrink)

What is the basis of our obligations to our animal companions? This is an important question for practical reasons, as the relationship that many individuals have with their animal companion is amongst the most intimate of relationships they share with a non-human animal. It is also important for theoretical reasons. One of those reasons is that our commitments to animal companions may appear to present a kind of puzzle. If we think that we have moral commitments to animal companions (...) that we do not have to other animals, such as livestock or free-roaming animals, what could explain this? I argue that the explanation for this difference in moral commitments is the result of the special relationship we have with our animal companions. More specifically, the basis of our moral commitments to animal companions are like those incurred by parents. Further, it is argued that causing the existence of or voluntarily taking on commitments of care for especially vulnerable and dependent sentient organisms implies robust responsibilities aimed at nurturing and promoting individual flourishing. This conclusion has implications regarding several related moral issues, such as whether animal companions require a moral education, what end-of-life commitments animal companion caregivers have, and whether it is justified to feed our animal companions other animals or let them engage in predation. Further, these issues are of practical interest to animal companion caregivers, law makers, and veterinarians, as well as being of theoretical interest to legal scholars and ethicists. (shrink)

This paper investigates the scope and limits of parents' and physicians' obligations to anencephalic newborns. Special attention is paid to the permissibility of harvesting anencephalic organs for transplant. My starting point is to identify the general justification for treating patients in order to benefit third parties. This analysis reveals that the presence of a close relationship between patients and beneficiaries is often crucial to justifying treating in these cases. In particular, the proper interpretation of the Kantian injunction against treating (...) persons as means only takes on a different light in the context of special relationships. The implications of this analysis for our responsibilities to anencephalic infants is clarified. (shrink)

Romantic partnerships are typically among the most important goods in our lives. But love sometime ends, and so too do relationships. Divorcing partners are particularly vulnerable to being wronged and harmed. The aim of this paper is to develop an ethics of divorce, by establishing that divorce is a condition for the possibility of the distinct value of romantic partnerships. Different sets of rights are specified here: the divorcee's right to explanation, the right to participation and the right to (...) transitional goods; and the divorcer's right to relational freedom. Violations of these rights indicate the distinct wrongs and harms of divorce. The paper then explains the corresponding duties in divorce that might avoid these wrongs and mitigate these harms, and highlights the distinct status of these duties: while they continue to be special, they are residual duties grounded in the fact that the partners once committed to their partnership. (shrink)

A central theme of the volume is whether impartiality and partiality are really opposed dimensions or if they can be harmoniously reconciled in one picture of ...

Mark Murphy has argued that the relationship between a creator and their creatures is not a special relationship that generates new moral obligations for the creator. Murphy’s position is grounded, in part, on his claim that there are no good arguments to the contrary and that the creator-creature relationship is not a relationship between equals. I argue that there are good reasons to think that a creator and creature being equals is not required for such an obligation. I offer (...) an argument for such an obligation based on the moral significance of thrusting upon sentient or rational beings significant, unsought, and wholly new circumstances. More specifically, I argue that it is reasonable to conclude that a creator enters into a duty-generating special relationship with their creatures to promote their creatures’ well-being, when the creator is the voluntary source of the creatures’ wholly new and unconsented to circumstances from which to flourish or languish and it would cost the creator virtually nothing to promote the creatures’ welfare. (shrink)

In his major work on love, Works of Love, Kierkegaard clearly and robustly affirms the moral superiority of neighbourly love, and approves preferential love on one condition: that it serve as an instance of neighbourly love. But can an essentially preferential love be an instance of the essentially non-preferential neighbourly love? John Lippitt seems to think it can. In his paper “Kierkegaard and the problem of special relationships: Ferreira, Krishek, and the ‘God filter”’ he defends Kierkegaard’s position in (...) Works of Love against my criticism (as presented in my book Kierkegaard on Faith and Love); specifically, against my claim that in using Kierkegaard’s view of neighbourly love as a framework for understanding preferential love, one fails to account for the latter’s distinctive character. Lippitt claims that I misinterpret Kierkegaard’s position and, using what he calls ‘the God filter’, he attempts to show how adhering to Kierkegaard’s view of neighbourly love allows one to sustain the distinctiveness (and value) of preferential love. In what follows I will defend my interpretation of Kierkegaard’s position and explain why I take the view he presents in Works of Love to be problematic. Furthermore, in my aforementioned book I offer a Kierkegaardian model of love that does precisely what Lippitt seeks his ‘God filter’ model to do: namely, preserve the distinctiveness of preferential love while allowing its possible coexistence with neighbourly love. Thus, against the background of Lippitt’s criticism I will demonstrate this model again, in hope of clarifying the advantages this view offers. (shrink)

Kierkegaard’s Works of Love has often been accused of being unable to deal adequately with ‘special relationships’. This debate has re-emerged in a fresh form in a recent disagreement in the secondary literature between M. Jamie Ferreira and Sharon Krishek. Krishek charges Ferreira with failing to acknowledge some important conflicts in Kierkegaard’s account of preferential love. In this article, I argue that some key passages are indeed insufficiently addressed in Ferreira’s account. Yet ultimately, I argue, Krishek ends up (...) condemning the Kierkegaard of Works of Love unfairly. As a solution to Krishek’s concerns, I present a defence of Kierkegaard’s position centred round the image of God as a ‘filter’ through which our loves must pass. Also, while acknowledging that Krishek raises some important questions for Ferreira’s account, I outline a possible response, based in part on Kierkegaard’s idea that neighbour love is only a ‘sketch’ until brought to fruition in any given manifestation of concrete love. Ultimately, I claim, Kierkegaard’s position in Works of Love can indeed be defended from Krishek’s critique. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the complex relations between aesthetics and phenomenology as they show themselves within the core locus of their interplay—the realm of the visible and the invisible. To do so, the paper examines a specific case study, a Rembrandt painting—A Woman Bathing in a Stream (1654)—through which the discussion illuminates the interconnected and inseparable relationship between aesthetics and phenomenology in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the visible and the invisible. The reading addresses both dimensions of the visible: the (...) essential intersubjective aspect of life and its complex visual representation in art. To achieve this, the paper first explores Merleau-Ponty’s late aesthetic ontology—a phenomenology that perceives the aesthetic realm, particularly the visible domain, as originating from human corporeal existence, thereby redefining the act of seeing and the concepts of the visible and the invisible; I show the manner in which invisible elements permeate our visual experience in the Rembrandt painting and in seeing as such. The paper also reveals the unique ontological role of painting and the painter in unveiling the aesthetic world, and in guiding the philosopher toward a vision that true philosophy—phenomenology—must embrace. The paper concludes by rethinking the significance of aesthetics, and especially, the arts, to phenomenological thought, and the necessity of phenomenology to aesthetic thought. (shrink)

(2018). An Easy Alliance: The Relationship Between Phenomenology and Psychobiography. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology: Vol. 18, Special Edition on Psychobiography and Phenomenology, pp. iii-vi.

As the author has previously argued, a statement of form “Y is X” can often be taken as hyperbolic for a notably high degree of likeness between Y and X, or, instead, as hyperbolically stating how important Y is as a part of X. The present article goes further and argues that these types of hyperbole, as well as various others, are just special cases of reflexive hyperbole, a style that appears not previously to have been explored in its (...) own right. The article therefore serves to introduce this style and to unify under it various more specific, disparate-seeming types of hyperbole, revealing their deep similarity. They all rest in a uniform way on a special property that some relationships have, namely of being reflexive in a broadened sense. The relationship of likeness is reflexive in the standard sense that any entity bears the relationship to itself with maximum possible strength. But some other relationships of interest in this article are only reflexive in a broader way that relaxes these universality and maximality requirements to an extent. The article also explains how reflexive hyperbole about likeness is a novel addition to the theory of metaphor, involving a distinctive interpretative process with special effects, and how reflexive hyperbole about part importance is not reducible to whole-for-part metonymy, because the latter does not systematically access sufficiently important parts. In addition, the article briefly considers the defaultness or otherwise of reflexive hyperbolic interpretations. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: The subject of patient self-determination in health care has gained broad interest because of the increasing number of incompetent patients. In an attempt to solve the problems related to doctors' decision making in such circumstances, advance directives have been developed. The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between public attitudes towards patient autonomy and advance directives. SUBJECTS AND MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: A stratified random sample of 600 adults in northern Sweden was surveyed by a questionnaire with (...) a response rate of 78.2%. The subjects were asked about their wish for control of their health care, their concerns about health care, their treatment preferences in a life-threatening situation (both reversible and irreversible), and their attitudes towards the application of advance directives. RESULTS: Numerous relationships between various aspects of self-determination in health care (desire for control, fears of over-treatment, and choice of treatment level) in general and advance directives, in particular, were found. Those who wanted to have a say in their health care (about 94%) also mainly supported the use of an advance directive. CONCLUSIONS: The fact that almost 30% of the respondents were undecided concerning their personal use of advance directives points to a lack of knowledge and to the necessity of education of the public on these issues. (shrink)

The primacy of physics generates a philosophical problem that the naturalist must solve in order to be entitled to an egalitarian acceptance of the ontological commitments he or she inherits from the special sciences and fundamental physics. The problem is the generalized causal exclusion argument. If there is no genuine causation in the domains of the special sciences but only in fundamental physics then there are grounds for doubting the existence of macroscopic objects and properties, or at least (...) the concreteness of them. The aim of this paper is to show that the causal exclusion problem derives its force from a false dichotomy between Humeanism about causation and a notion of productive or generative causation based on a defunct model of the physical world. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Rd., Bristol BS8 1TB, UK. (shrink)

The present study focuses on the association between peer integration and the development of depressive symptoms in secondary school students. A sample of 393 7th grade students (194 boys, 199 girl...

Special obligations toward compatriots are more controversial than other forms of partiality, because compatriot relationships are relatively “impersonal.” Even so, a variety of justifications for special duties among compatriots have been defended. This entry outlines three such accounts, drawing on categories identified in previous literature (Tan 2003, 2004; Beaton et al. 2021). The first two approaches – the instrumental approach and the institutional approach – derive special obligations to compatriots from general duties of justice. By contrast, (...) the third approach is relational in nature and grounds the justification for compatriot partiality directly in the special relationship compatriots share. (shrink)

The power to promise is morally fundamental and does not, at its foundation, derive from moral principles that govern our use of conventions. Of course, many features of promising have conventional components—including which words, gestures, or conditions of silence create commitments. What is really at issue between conventionalists and nonconventionalists is whether the basic moral relation of promissory commitment derives from the moral principles that govern our use of social conventions. Other nonconventionalist accounts make problematic concessions to the conventionalist's core (...) instincts, including embracing: the view that binding promises must involve the promisee's belief that performance will occur; the view that through the promise, the promisee and promisor create a shared end; and the tendency to take promises between strangers, rather than intimates, as the prototypes to which a satisfactory account must answer. I argue against these positions and then pursue an account that finds its motivation in their rejection. My main claim is: the power to make promises, and other related forms of commitment, is an integral part of the ability to engage in special relationships in a morally good way. The argument proceeds by examining what would be missing, morally, from intimate relationships if we lacked this power. (shrink)

Existing discussions of partiality have primarily examined special personal relationships between family, friends, or co-nationals. The negative analogue of such relationships – for example, the relationship of enmity – has, by contrast, been largely neglected. This chapter explores this adverse relation in more detail and considers the special reasons generated by it. We suggest that enmity can involve justified negative partiality, allowing members to give less consideration to each other’s interests. We then consider whether the negative (...) partiality of enmity can be justified through projects or the value inherent in the relationship, following two influential views about the justification of positive partiality. We argue that both accounts of partiality can be conceptually extended to the negative analogue, but doing so brings into focus the problems with such accounts of the grounds of partiality. (shrink)

The paper discusses the second-personal account of moral obligation as put forward by Stephen Darwall. It argues that on such an account, an important part of our moral practice cannot be explained, namely special obligations that are grounded in special relationships between persons. After highlighting the problem, the paper discusses several strategies to accommodate such special obligations that are implicit in some of Darwall’s texts, most importantly a disentanglement strategy and a reductionist strategy. It argues that (...) neither one of these strategies is entirely convincing. The last part of the papers sketches a novel account of how to accommodate special obligations in a second-personal framework: According to this suggestion, special obligations might be due to the fact that relationships change the normative authority that persons have over each other. (shrink)

IntroductionThe various special concerns and commitments that individuals ordinarily have, for example towards family members, friends, and possibly compatriots, present an interesting challenge for justice. Justice, after all, is said to be blind and imposes demands on persons that ought to be impartial, at least in some respects, to personal ties and relationships. Yet individual special concerns are obviously of moral importance and are deeply valued by participants in these relationships. Thus any conception of justice to (...) be plausible has to be able to accommodate to some extent the various types of valuable and valued special concern characteristic of ordinary social life. In particular, it is important to see how the impartial demands of justice can be maintained while accommodating special concern. (shrink)

Includes complete text in Sanskrit with English translation.

This paper debates the new theories of philosophical and aesthetical discourse by applying them to Nietzsche’s thinking on art. The article consists of four general subjects, each of them focusing on an essential part of Nietzsche’s special relationship to art: 1) Art generated by the philosophical text itself, through the form of the fragment; 2) The artistic relationship as an interdisciplinary ground for philosophical knowledge of the world (especially as applied in Nietzsche’s and Schopenhauer’s work); 3) A critical debate (...) on Wolfgang Welsch’s theory about the interdisciplinary aspects of the philosophical and aesthetic discourse; 4) The backgrounds of Nietzsche’s aesthetics project explained in Claus Zittel’s theory on Nietzsche’s “aesthetic turn.” Thus, Nietzsche’s thinking is defined as a relationist project, emphasizing the “self-destruction dy- namic” of his aesthetical perspectivism. (shrink)

Callender and Cohen argue that there is no need for a special account of the constitution of scientific representation. I argue that scientific representation is communal and therefore deeply tied to the practice in which it is embedded. The communal nature is accounted for by licensing, the activities of scientific practice by which scientists establish a representation. A case study of the Lotka-Volterra model reveals how licensure is a constitutive element of the representational relationship. Thus, any account of the (...) constitution of scientific representation must account for licensing, meaning that there is a special problem of scientific representation. (shrink)

Recently, there has been much discussion of two challenging arguments that suggest that if we were to lack free will of the sort required for moral responsibility we would lose one of the most important things that give our lives meaning, namely, valuable human relationships such as friendship. One line of argument, defended by Robert Kane, suggests that freely chosen relationships have an irreplaceable value, and the other, defended by Peter Strawson and recently taken up in a new (...) form by Seth Shabo and others, suggests that the most valuable relationships are ones that require susceptibility to the emotions of resentment and indignation that presuppose freedom and responsibility. These arguments have been ably challenged (see, for example, Pereboom 2014). But even if these arguments are unsound, their conclusion might still be true. In this paper, I aim to defend a distinctive third kind of approach. It appeals to the nature of friendship as requiring a special kind of obligations, and in this way draws a closer connection between the aspects of friendship that require free will and moral responsibility itself. The reasoning rests on two main premises. The first is that genuine friendship entails special obligations. Two people are not friends unless they have obligations toward one another that are partially defining of friendship. The second premise is that one has obligations only if one has the freedom to meet them. This idea is closely related to a principle taken to be axiomatic in various ethical and even deontic logical systems: Ought Implies Can. Putting these premises together, we can conclude that friendship (as well as other special relationships) require freedom. Defending these two premises takes us into two entirely separate debates, one in ethical theory and one in free will and responsibility, and a secondary aim of the paper is to bring these two vibrant discussions together. (shrink)

Samuel Scheffler has recently argued that some relationships are non-instrumentally valuable; that such relationships give rise to “underived” special responsibilities; that there is a genuine tension between cosmopolitan egalitarianism and special responsibilities; and that we must consequently strike a balance between the two. We argue that there is no such tension and propose an alternative approach to the relation between cosmopolitan egalitarianism and special responsibilities. First, while some relationships are non-instrumentally valuable, no relationship is (...) unconditionally valuable. Second, whether such relationships give rise to special responsibilities is conditional on those relationships not violating certain moral constraints. Third, these moral constraints arise from within cosmopolitan egalitarianism itself. Thus the value of relationships and the special responsibilities to which they give rise arise within the parameters of cosmopolitan egalitarianism itself. The real tension is not between cosmopolitan equality and special responsibilities, but between special responsibilities and the various general duties that arise from the recognition, demanded by cosmopolitan egalitarianism, of a multiplicity of other basic goods. Indeed, even the recognition of special relationships itself gives rise to general duties that may condition and/or weigh against putative special responsibilities. (shrink)

This special issue on network ethics offers 15 scholarly articles from a variety of disciplines and fields of study, all aimed at exploring some important aspect of how networks develop, enact, and enforce ethical norms. The articles are ordered according to the levels of analysis each deals with, ranging from the cognitive/intra-personal to the systemic/societal. Taken together, these articles provide a fresh look at how networks are changing the way business is done and the way we think about ethics.

Our article has two aims: first, to track the ethos of learning and the importance of the guru–disciple relationship in the Amma movement, and secondly, to explore the ways in which one Finnish disciple frames her life though this special relationship. The narrative of the disciple becomes especially interesting in that she is a long-term devotee from Finland who has a background in formal academic learning and works in a socially highly valued and demanding profession – and yet has (...) chosen to invest a considerable amount of time and energy to spirituality and committed herself to a close and intimate guru–disciple relationship that guides her personal and work life as well as her overall understanding of learning. Our case study, drawing especially on such materials as Amma’s public discourse and one extensive individual narrative, complemented by ethnographical observations in the ashram in India, shows how pervasive the language and ethos of learning can be in a spiritual context, and what the intimacy of the teacher–student relationship may provide to highly educated individuals in contemporary largely secular Western society. (shrink)

In the established space-time coordinate-transformation (STCT) interpretation of special relativity theory, relativistic changes are consequent upon the Lorentz transformation of coordinate clocks and rods between relatively moving systems. In the proposed alternative interpretation, relativistic changes occur only in association with physical interactions, and are direct alterations in the variables of the observed system. Since space-time and momentum-energy are conjugate four-vectors, transformation of a space or time variable of a system is to be expected only if there is a concomitant (...) transformation of the corresponding momentum or energy variable. The Lorentz invariance of the scalar entropy functionS supports the interaction interpretation; timet=f(S) of a macroscopic, entropy clock should give a Lorentz-invariant time measure, and an illustrative entropy clock is discussed. Noninteracting physical processes may be called Clausius processes, in contrast to Lorentz processes for which there is interaction and associated Lorentz transformation. Changes of energy and frequency, withE=hv, are instances of the parallel relativistic transformations. Likewise, the variation with velocity in decay time of mesons follows directly from the relativistic energy transformation of decay products; this relationship is shown for muons by a simple calculation with β-decay theory. (shrink)

Health care has increasingly come to be understood as a commodity. The ethical implications of such an understanding are significant. The author argues that health care is not a commodity because health care (1) is non-proprietary, (2) serves the needs of persons who, as patients, are uniquely vulnerable, (3) essentially involves a special human relationship which ought not be bought or sold, (4) helps to define what is meant by necessity and cannot be considered a commodity when subjected to (...) rigorous conceptual analysis. The Oslerian conception that medicine is a calling and not a business ought to be reaffirmed by both the profession and the public. Such a conception would have significant ramifications for patient care and health care policy. (shrink)