Different analyses of two-wrongs reasoning are presented and provide relief for the Groarke, Tindale, and Fisher analysis which is suggestive of the origin of this type of reasoning in Bentham and Mill. Aquinas's doctrine of double effect is entertained as a possible counterexample (which it is not). Two-wrongs reasoning can be either acceptable (reasonable) or unacceptable, and there are conditions that can be laid down for both situations in discourse. A negative version of the utilitarian (...) principle assists us in understanding two-wrongs reasoning in moral contexts. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to present some of the differences and similari- ties in various versions of the double effect principle. The following formulations will be analyzed: that of Thomas Aquinas and two contemporary ap- proaches, namely those of Mangan and Boyle. It will be shown that the presented modern versions vary significantly and the distinction between their intended and only predicted effects is far from clear. As a result, the different contemporary for- mulations of (...) DDE lead to contradictory conclusions, with some justifying what the others condemn. Moreover, it will be demonstrated that, unlike Aquinas, contem- porary authors mostly concentrate on unintentionality condition while neglecting the proportionality requirement. So, unlike Aquinas, they only take into account a narrow scope of cases, where the evil effect occurs with certainty, which leads to a complicated and intricate hypothetical intention test like Donagan’s. It will be shown that, besides its theoretical indistinctness, DDE lead to serious pragmatic risks. It can be quite easily misused as a kind of psychological mechanism to protect self-esteem from a sense of guilt since wrong-doing is treated as merely a predicted unintended effect. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider three arguments for the irrelevance of the doctrine of double effect in end-of-life decision making. The third argument is our own and, to that extent, we seek to defend it. The first argument is that end-of-life decisions do not in fact shorten lives and that therefore there is no need for the doctrine in justification of these decisions. We reject this argument; some end-of-life decisions clearly shorten lives. The second is (...) that the doctrine of double effect is not recognized in UK law ; therefore, clinicians cannot use it as the basis for justification of their decisions. Against this we suggest that while the doctrine might have dubious legal grounds, it could be of relevance in some ways, e.g. in marking the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable practice in relation to the clinician's duty to relieve pain and suffering. The third is that the doctrine is irrelevant because it requires there to be a bad effect that needs justification. This is not the case in end-of-life care for patients diagnosed as dying. Here, bringing about a satisfactory dying process for a patient is a good effect, not a bad one. What matters is that patients die without pain and suffering. This marks a crucial departure from the double-effect doctrine; if the patient's death is not a bad effect then the doctrine is clearly irrelevant. A diagnosis of dying allows clinicians to focus on good dying and not to worry about whether their intervention affects the time of death. For a patient diagnosed as dying, time of death is rarely important. In our conclusion we suggest that acceptance of our argument might be problematic for opponents of physician-assisted death. We suggest one way in which these opponents might argue for a distinction between such practice and palliative care; this relies on the double-effect doctrine's distinction between foresight and intention. (shrink)

American criminal law is committed to some version of the doctrine of double effect. In this paper, I defend a new variant of the agent-centered rationale for a version of DDE that is of particular relevance to the criminal law. In particular, I argue for a non-absolute version of DDE that concerns the relative culpability of intending a bad or wrongful state of affairs as opposed to bringing it about merely knowingly. My aim is to identify a (...) particular feature of the former in virtue of which it is pro tanto more culpable than the latter. Providing an agent-centered argument of this kind for a culpability version of DDE, I argue, is an especially attractive route to take for those who are interested in vindicating the way the criminal law actually encodes DDE. (shrink)

I focus on the question as to what rationale could possibly underlie the doctrine of double effect or related principles. I first briefly review the correct critiques of the claim that people who intend some evil as a means to a good must be “guided by evil,” and that this is allegedly always wrong. I then argue that Quinn’s claim that violations of the DDE express certain negative attitudes of the agent and that agents violating the DDE (...) must make an additional morally problematic presumption regarding their victims is mistaken. Tadros claims that an agent violating the means principle must force his victims to adopt his goals. I demonstrate that the difference Tadros tries to construe between an agent inflicting intended harm and an agent inflicting merely foreseen harm is non-existent. Sarch’s official rationale for the DDE also fails to distinguish harming as a means from side-effect harming, and reformulations of his rationale that suggest themselves run into severe problems. Walen’s defense of the means principle in terms of the “restricting claims principle” and Øverland’s appeal to “moral obstacles” are susceptible to counter-examples and appear to be question-begging. Recently, Walen has offered a revised formulation of his Restricting Claims Principle, claiming that it overcomes counter-examples and explains the means principle. I will argue that it contradicts the means principle and does not overcome the counter-examples. Thus I conclude that so far we are still left without a reasonable rationale for the DDE or related principles. (shrink)

Scanlon (2008) has argued that his theory of permissibility (STP) has more explanatory power than the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE). I believe this claim is wrong. Borrowing Michael Walzer’s method of inquiry, I will evaluate the explanatory virtue of these accounts by their understanding of actual moral intuitions originated in historical cases. Practically, I will evaluate these accounts as they explain cases of hostage crises. The main question in this context is: is it permissible that nation-states (...) act with military force in order to liberate hostages, even if those actions put the lives of the hostages at risk? The first part of this paper has an operative reconstruction of the relevant theories. In the second section, two cases of hostage crises will be considered: the Moscow theater hostage crisis of 2002, and the Jaque Operation, which occurred in Colombia in 2008. Additionally, it will be shown that DDE explains these cases better than STP. Finally, this paper offers a critical analysis of Scanlon’s account of the explanatory power of both STP and DDE. (shrink)

The Doctrine of Double Effect has been defended not only as a test of character but also as a criterion of wrongness for action. This paper criticises one attempt to justify the doctrine in the latter capacity. The justification, first proposed by Warren Quinn, traces the wrongness of intending harm as a means to the objectionable features of certain reasons for making this our intention. As I argue, however, some of the actions which seem to (...) us to be permissible, and whose permissibility the DDE is supposed to explain, can be performed for these objectionable reasons. Since the proposed justification implies that any action is wrong when performed for these reasons, it renders the DDE incapable of accommodating the very intuitions about action which its proponents would have it explain. (shrink)

It is commonly believed that the Doctrine of Double Effect is identical with, or presupposes, the Intention Principle according to which an act can be impermissible if done with a wrongful intention. A main line of objections to the DDE, then, stems from the worry that the Intention Principle implausibly interiorizes the wrongness of an action. I will argue, first, that the DDE does not presuppose the Intention Principle, and, second, that intuitions brought against (...) the Intention Principle do not warrant us to reject the DDE. Therefore, a main line of objections to the DDE is misguided. (shrink)

The doctrine of double effect is an ethical principle that can account for human judgment in moral dilemmas: situations in which all available options have large good and bad consequences. We have previously formalized \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal {{DDE}}$$\end{document} in a computational logic that can be implemented in robots. \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal {{DDE}}$$\end{document}, as an ethical principle for robots, is attractive for a (...) number of reasons: Empirical studies have found that \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal {{DDE}}$$\end{document} is used by untrained humans; many legal systems use \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal {{DDE}}$$\end{document}; and finally, the doctrine is a hybrid of the two major opposing families of ethical theories. In spite of all its attractive features, we have found that \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal {{DDE}}$$\end{document} does not fully account for human behavior in many ethically challenging situations. Specifically, standard \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal {{DDE}}$$\end{document} fails in situations wherein humans have the option of self-sacrifice. Accordingly, we present an enhancement of our \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal {{DDE}}$$\end{document}-formalism to handle self-sacrifice; we end by looking ahead to future work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Intention and Wrongdoing: A Defense of the Principle of Double Effect by Joshua StuchlikMichael J. DegnanSTUCHLIK, Joshua. Intention and Wrongdoing: A Defense of the Principle of Double Effect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. xvi + 220 pp. Cloth, $99.99In this book Joshua Stuchlik vigorously defends the principle of double effect (PDE), which states, "There is a strict moral constraint (...) against bringing about serious evil (harm) to an innocent person intentionally, but it is permissible in a wider range of circumstances to act in a way that brings about serious evil incidentally, as a foreseen but non-intended side effect." After defining the terms of the principle and considering an intuitive case-based defense, he supports its truth based on a standard of solidarity. Since the PDE requires the distinction between intended consequences and nonintended side effects, he explains Elizabeth Anscombe's theory of intention, which supports the distinction's moral significance. He uses her theory to treat the closeness problem, the irrelevance of intention critique, and a challenge from Joshua Greene's empirical moral psychology that purports to undermine deontological constraints on causing harm.I present Stuchlik's grounding for the PDE followed by an uncontroversial example of its application. After this I consider two important objections to the PDE that Stuchlik critiques: the closeness problem and James Rachels's argument that intentions are irrelevant to judging the moral permissibility of actions. I conclude by examining Stuchlik's treatment of these challenges.Stuchlik interprets the PDE's very strict constraint against intentional killing or seriously harming the innocent as a near absolute prohibition, for he believes innocent persons are not suitable recipients of intentional harm. He grounds this constraint on the principle of solidarity. Being in solidarity with another is possessing concern for that other's sake. The ground for this concern is a shared human nature that enables members to think of themselves as making a "we." Human nature consists in the structured potentialities for knowing and freely choosing. Evidence of these rational potentialities is the human orientation toward the transcendent values of truth and goodness. Such embodied potentialities have inviolable worth.The scenarios of the precision bomber and the terror bomber illustrate the moral significance of the intended harm versus the nonintended but foreseen harm that Stuchlik adopts from Elizabeth Anscombe's action theory. Each bombers' goal is to help his country win a just war. The precision bomber pursues that goal by targeting a munitions factory. Though he foresees that many noncombatants will be killed or seriously [End Page 367] injured from the bomb, he does not necessarily intend these harms. By contrast, the terror bomber targets a civilian center necessarily intending harm for noncombatants. The PDE rules out his conduct.Anscombe's account of intention can lead to the problem of closeness in which the content of an intention is sufficiently fine-grained that an agent need not intend harm in almost any situation. Stuchlik illustrates the problem with Alexander Pruss's zookeeper scenario.An eccentric literalistic but always truthful magnate tells Sam he will donate to famine relief saving a hundred lives if and only if Sam follows his directions to the iota. Sam is to purchase a gun, sneak at night into a zoo owned by the magnate and kill the first mammal he sees. Sam sneaks into the zoo, sees a mammal in the distance, and forms the intention to shoot it. Then he notices that the mammal is human but shoots nonetheless on utilitarian grounds.In this case applying the PDE shows that Sam is simply intending that a mammal be killed. The fact that the mammal is a human is irrelevant, according to Anscombe's action theory.Stuchlik's response clarifies the scope of intention in the PDE. As stated above, the intention's content includes seriously harming an innocent human. However, if the intention ranges only over an intention to bring about an effect, E, and it turns out that E is a serious harm for an innocent human being, then applying the principle shows that Sam's action is wrong. The intended effect of killing the mammal is, as a matter of fact, an... (shrink)

The doctrine of double effect is a principle of crucial importance in law and medicine. In medicine, the principle is generally accepted to apply in cases where the treatment necessary to relieve pain and physical suffering runs the risk of hastening the patient’s death. More controversially, it has also been used as a justification for withdrawal of treatment from living individuals and physician-assisted suicide. In this paper, I will critique the findings of the controversial (...) Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal hearing Syme vs the Medical Board of Australia. In that hearing, Dr Rodney Syme, a urologist and euthanasia advocate, was defending his practice of prescribing barbiturates to terminally ill patients. Syme claimed that he prescribed the drugs with the intention of relieving their existential suffering and not to assist in suicide; he argued that the DDE could be applied. Pace VCAT, I argue that this is an illegitimate application of DDE. I argue that a close scrutiny of Syme’s actions reveals that, at the very least, he intended to give patients the option of suicide. He furthermore used what on a traditional definition of DDE would be considered a ‘bad’ means—the prescription of Nembutal—to achieve a ‘good’ end—the relief of suffering. The case demonstrates the crucial importance of analysing an agent’s ‘intention’ and the ‘effects’ of their actions when applying DDE. Ethicists and, indeed, the judiciary need to attend to the ethical complexities of DDE when they assess the applicability of DDE to end of life care. If they fail to do this, the doctrine risks losing its legitimacy as an ethical principle. (shrink)

One of the most commonly referenced ethical principles when it comes to the management of dying patients is the doctrine of double effect (DDE). The DDE affirms that it is acceptable to cause side effects (e.g. respiratory depression) as a consequence of symptom‐focused treatment. Much discussion of the ethics of end of life care focuses on the question of whether actions (or omissions) would hasten (or cause) death, and whether that is permissible. However, there is a separate (...) question about the permissibility of hastening or causing unconsciousness in dying patients. Some authors have argued that the DDE would not permit end of life care that directly aims to render the patient unconscious. The claim is that consciousness is an objective human good and therefore doctors should not intentionally (and permanently) suppress it. Three types of end of life care (EOLC) practices will be explored in this article. The first is symptom‐based management (e.g. analgesia); the second is proportional terminal sedation as a means of relieving suffering (also referred to as palliative sedation or continuous deep sedation); and finally, deliberate and rapid sedation to unconsciousness until death (a practice we call terminal anaesthesia in this paper). After examining the common arguments for the various types of symptom‐based management and sedation, we apply the DDE to the latter two types of EOLC practices. We argue that aiming at unconsciousness, contrary to some claims, can be morally good or at least morally neutral in some dying patients. (shrink)

The doctrine (or principle) of double effect is often invoked to explain the permissibility of an action that causes a serious harm, such as the death of a human being, as a side effect of promoting some good end. According to the principle of double effect, sometimes it is permissible to cause a harm as a side effect (or “double effect”) of bringing about a good result even though it (...) would not be permissible to cause such a harm as a means to bringing about the same good end. Does the principle of double effect play the important explanatory role that has been claimed for it? To consider this question, one must be careful to clarify just what the principle is supposed to explain. Three misinterpretations of the principle’s force or range of application are common. 1. To ensure that Double Effect is not misunderstood as principle issuing a blanket permission on causing any unintended harm that yields a benefit, applications must require that the agent seek to minimize the harm involved. 2. Since it is widely accepted that it is wrong to aim to produce harm to someone as an end, to rule this out is not part of double effect’s distinctive content. 3. Harms that were produced regretfully and only for the sake of producing a good end may be prohibited by double effect because they were brought about as part of the agent’s means to realizing the good end. (shrink)

Under the standard formulation of the Doctrine of Double Effect, an act is permissible only if it is the result of an intention to do good and not the result of an intention to do bad. Many find that this absurdly ties the act’s permissibility to the agent’s character and not to features of the act itself. In light of such criticism, some philosophers have reformulated the doctrine so that it holds that an act is permissible (...) given that it results from an intention to do good by some agent. I argue that this appeal to possible intentions to do good fails. There is no modal or moral reason to privilege intentions to do good over those to do bad, and without privileging them, this version of the Doctrine of Double Effect leads to contradiction. In many scenarios, if a possible intention to do good is considered to be sufficient for permissibility, then in that same scenario a possible intention to do bad should be sufficient for impermissibility. However, one and the same act can have both possible intentions to do good and possible intentions to do bad. Thus, the principle leads to the contradictory ruling that one and the same act is both permissible and impermissible. (shrink)

Paul Ramsey has argued that the rule of double effect is morally significant because of the existence of indeterminate choices between incommensurable values. I interpret his argument as the following disjunctive syllogism. There are two sorts of principles we can appeal to in dealing with indeterminate choices: the rule of double effect and a commensurate reason principle. The second does not work, so we are left with the first. I respond, first, that this argument commits (...) the fallacy of bifurcation and second, that for all Ramsey has shown, and surprisingly, a commensurate reason principle can deal with indeterminate choices. (shrink)

Continuous deep sedation (CDS) has the effect of making the patient unconscious until death, and that it has this effect is clearly an undesirable aspect of CDS. However, some authors have recently maintained that many physicians do not intend this effect when practicing CDS. According to these authors, CDS is differentiated into two types; in what is called “gradual” CDS (or CDS as a result of proportionate palliative sedation), physicians start with low doses of sedatives and increase (...) them only gradually, whereas in “rapid” CDS (or palliative sedation to unconsciousness), physicians rapidly administer a heavy dose that clearly induces unconsciousness from the beginning. The claim is that the physicians intend permanent unconsciousness only if they rapidly administer a heavy dose, but they do not intend it when the unconsciousness is the result of a gradual increase of sedatives. This paper attempts to refute these claims based on a close examination of the protocol of gradual CDS. If my argument is valid, the doctrine of double effect would not be useful in justifying most, if not all, cases of CDS. (shrink)

This paper discusses physician-assisted suicide and voluntary active euthanasia, supplies a short history and argues in favour of permitting both once rigid criteria have been set and the cases retro-reviewed. I suggest that among these criteria should be that VAE should only be permitted with one more necessary criterion: that VAE should only be allowed when physician assisted suicide is not a possible option. If the patient is able to ingest and absorb the medication there is no reason why VAE (...) should be permitted. A brief history of VAE and PAS is given and some of the arguments which have been given are analyzed. The Principle of the Double Effect is briefly discussed and why, in my opinion, it is not a valid principle is briefly discussed. (shrink)

Recent developments in biogerontology—the study of the biology of ageing—suggest that it may eventually be possible to intervene in the human ageing process. This, in turn, offers the prospect of significantly postponing the onset of age-related diseases. The biogerontological project, however, has met with strong resistance, especially by deontologists. They consider the act of intervening in the ageing process impermissible on the grounds that it would (most probably) bring about an extended maximum lifespan—a state of affairs that they deem intrinsically (...) bad. In a bid to convince their deontological opponents of the permissibility of this act, proponents of biogerontology invoke an argument which is grounded in the doctrine of double effect. Surprisingly, their argument, which we refer to as the ‘double effect argument’, has gone unnoticed. This article exposes and critically evaluates this ‘double effect argument’. To this end, we first review a series of excerpts from the ethical debate on biogerontology in order to substantiate the presence of double effect reasoning. Next, we attempt to determine the role that the ‘double effect argument’ is meant to fulfil within this debate. Finally, we assess whether the act of intervening in ageing actually can be justified using double effect reasoning. (shrink)

BackgroundPalliative sedation and analgesia are employed in patients with refractory and intractable symptoms at the end of life to reduce their suffering by lowering their level of consciousness. The doctrine of double effect, a philosophical principle that justifies doing a “good action” with a potentially “bad effect,” is frequently employed to provide an ethical justification for this practice. Main textWe argue that palliative sedation and analgesia do not fulfill the conditions required to apply the (...) doctrine of double effect, and therefore its use in this domain is inappropriate. Furthermore, we argue that the frequent application of the doctrine of double effect to palliative sedation and analgesia reflects physicians’ discomfort with the complex moral, intentional, and causal aspects of end-of-life care. ConclusionsWe are concerned that this misapplication of the doctrine of double effect can consequently impair physicians’ ethical reasoning and relationships with patients at the end of life. (shrink)

In a recent edition of the journal Philosophy, Sophie Botros asserts that modern ethical theorists have badly misunderstood the role of the Doctrine of Double Effect, turning it into a device by which to prohibit actions which are deemed impermissible; whereas the true function of the Doctrine is rather one of justifying actions. In my reply, I argue that Dr Botros has misunderstood the Doctrine: that its ‘prohibitive’ and its ‘justificatory’ roles are merely two sides (...) of the same coin, since its function is to decide for a given action whether it is permissible or impermissible. Furthermore, Dr Botros has misconstrued the essential contribution of the DDE is not the balancing of good results against bad ones, but the quite different position that the crucial moral distinction is between intended and merely foreseen results. (shrink)

The rule of double effect is regularly invoked in ethical discussions about palliative sedation, terminal extubation and other clinical acts that may be viewed as hastening death for imminently dying patients. Unfortunately, the literature tends to employ this useful principle in a fashion suggesting that it offers the final word on the moral acceptability of such medical procedures. In fact, the rule cannot be applied appropriately without invoking moral theories that are not explicit in the rule itself. (...) Four tenets of the rule each require their own ethical justification. A variety of moral theories are relevant to making judgements in a pluralistic society. Much of the rich moral conversation germane to the rule has been reflected in arguments about physician-asssisted suicide and voluntary active euthanasia, but the rule itself has limited relevance to these debates, and requires its own moral justifications when applied to other practices that might hasten death. (shrink)

We typically assume that there is a difference between foreseeing an effect of one's voluntary action and intending the effect. Call the view that there is such a difference 'the Ordinary View'. My dissertation is a defense of the Ordinary View against two recent challenges. ;The first challenge to the Ordinary View I call "Holism". The upshot of the holist's position is that we intend all the foreseen effects of our voluntary actions. I begin by considering and arguing (...) against a couple of different versions of holism. ;The second challenge to the Ordinary View is made by Jonathan Bennett. Bennett argues that there is no unproblematic way to mark off effects of action which are intended as a means from effects which are merely foreseen. His conclusion is that the notion 'indended as a means' is incoherent. ;These challenges to the Ordinary View are of interest because they threaten to undermine the Doctrine of Double Effect which claims that whether an agent intends or merely foresees a harmful effect of action sometimes matters to the moral permissibility of performing the action. In response to Bennett, I first examine a view put forth by Warren Quinn. Quinn concedes to Bennett that the distinction between intended versus merely foreseen effects faces serious problems, but attempts to limit the ethical implications of Bennett's challenge by offering a replacement principle for DDE which he believes is not subject to Bennett's objection. I defend Quinn's replacement principle against certain recent attacks in the literature, but point out that Quinn's replacement principle really doesn't escape Bennett's objection. I then return to Bennett's objection and argue that it rests upon two false assumptions. I conclude that the Ordinary View withstands the two challenges. (shrink)

Ex interiore ipso exeas. Preface. This book reconstructs the history of a still open dialectics between several ethoi, that is, shared codes of unwritten rules, moral traditions, or self-aware attempts at reforming such codes, and ethical theories discussing the nature and justification of such codes and doctrines. Its main claim is that this history neither amounts to a triumphal march of reason dispelling the mist of myth and bigotry nor to some other one-way process heading to some pre-established goal, (...) but instead to a chain of controversies where the partners’ will to win unintentionally yields a wealth of insights on human existence that has still something to teach us. -/- 1. The Hellenic moral tradition. -/- Two different traditions of morality in vi-v century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. -/- 2. Plato and the Good. -/- Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates rejoinder to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 3. Aristotle and practical philosophy. -/- Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistency in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater families, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics, is illustrated. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexes, or ‘dispositions’. Prudence, or better, practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with boùleusis or deliberation is discussed, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 4. Cynics and Stoics: ethics as therapy. -/- The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place that was given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of the science of well-being aiming, more than pleasure understood as in the popular view, the reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Roman and Imperial Moralists. -/- The chapter is dedicated to the reconstruction of a particular kind of literature, whose specific features have long been under-stressed, namely the Roman and Imperial moral literature. Cicero is treated at some length, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is given pride of place, stressing the novelty of his approach to ethics as cognitive therapy, in this case just following an already existing new wave of interest after nineteenth-century oblivion justified by alleged lack of authentic ‘philosophical’ character. -/- 6. The Hebrew moral tradition. -/- A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torah (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Levitic is stressed as the turning point when the stress on mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, starts being combined with legal tradition yielding the change in the sensibility of the Second Temple time. -/- 7. Second Temple Judaism. -/- This chapter describes the Long March leading from the post-exile Zadokite restoration to the first-century aevi vulgaris. The first topic reconstructed is the Zadokite theology of the double retribution. The second is the alternative Enochic tradition consistently rejecting the central role of the Temple, the Priesthood and worship as atonement for sins and offering as an alternative God’s unlimited mercy and preaching mercy, not sacrifice as the way of behaving requested by God. Wisdom literature, the third subject discusses, is a kind of third way, on the one hand increasingly critical towards the double retribution and ruling theology’s optimism facing the world as it is and on the other mocking at the Enochic current as a band of dreamers and visionaries. The third way consists in disenchantment facing the word as it is combined with a refusal of vain and childish hope of prizes for the righteous, suggesting instead the leading idea of right deeds for righteousness’s sake. Rabbi Hillel, Rabbi Yeshua and Philo of Alexandria are described as the three leading figures at the culminating point of such process of emergence of a new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This starting point consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, whose meaning is, arguably, more consistent than a long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine made us believe. And Christian morality, vis-à-vis allegedly legalist ‘Ancient Testament’ teachings, is less of a novelty than most early Christian writers announced. -/- 8. Talmudic moral doctrines and proto-Christian paraenesis. -/- The first three sections examine the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirke Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deot, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexes and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was "the tool by which the world was built"; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous, but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The last two sections examine first the various Christian currents and then Gnostic para-Christian or non-Christian currents as well as Manicheism. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure, purest Judaism. The last section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manicheism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. -/- 9. Christianity as “philosophy”. -/- The chapter reconstructs the stormy story of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and several rhetorical topics from the Stoic and Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua himself had been influenced by cynical preachers, is a proof of the necessity to translate the original Christian message in a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 10. Ethics in the Arabic-Islamic Philosophy. -/- The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on the retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince, had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries, a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with the disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 11. Ethics in the Jewish philosophy. -/- The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place for the first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed too a few traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Tora and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirke Avot could be translated. -/- 12. The practical philosophy revival in Latin Europe. -/- A reconstruction is carried out of a fresh start of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium rescuing a Platonic and Augustinian legacy, with Anselm and Peter Abelard. In this phase remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions, gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of a full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. -/- 13. Scholastic practical philosophy: Thomas Aquinas. -/- Aquinas’s ethics is theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to the repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave pure nature incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too ambitious, and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Prima Secundae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas was able to solve the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from the knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethics, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of the death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not the Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is no way an ethical ‘absolutism’, as both the traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularists tend to believe, but rather an ethic of prudential judgment on the individual case. Exceptions to this approach – or better the result of logical fallacies – are provided by the thesis of the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of so-called intrinsically evil acts, a thesis that would simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences that Thomas did not live long enough to draw. -/- 14. Scholastic practical philosophy: John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. A reconstruction is carried out of the ethical doctrines by both most authoritative Franciscan doctors. Their continuity with Aquinas is vindicated against prejudice carried by centuries of polemics within the Catholic Church and tendentious disparaging of both as forerunners of execrable Reformation. Besides aspects of continuity, also the important novelties are illustrated, first John’s abandonment of Aquinas’s and Augustine’s eudemonism, asserting righteousness for righteousness’s sake, and then William’s explicit defence of the philosopher’s virtues, that is, natural morality, and his solution to the dilemma of God’s omnipotence and the universal validity of natural law extending to God himself. -/- 15. Aristotelianism interpreted by the Magistri Artium. -/- A reconstruction of the until recently forgotten ethical doctrines by the Parisian Magistri Artium, falsely depicted as ‘Averroists’ and either deprecated as heretics or mistaken for predecessors of modern secularism. In fact, they illustrate a view of ‘natural’ virtue as may be understood by human reason without the assistance by Revelation. -/- Etiamsi daremus Deum non esse. Intermediate considerations. Three considerations may be suggested by the story told in the book. The first one is that intellectual histories have been mounted in the past with the same state of mind as one may mount a war chariot. Such constructions are not very helpful as tools for understanding the past. Wars waged in the past have left the field obstructed by ruins not easy to remove even by those historians who have animated by an impartial academic motivation. They have been influenced too by consequences of past emphasis on some authors and damnatio capitis suffered by others, by stratifications left on sources by secondary literature and translations, by allotment of originally close sources to different literary genres, by the monopolization of religious texts by churches with full cooperation by secular scholars who still fear contamination. The second one is that aware or unaware ethnocentrism has carried various calamities to our comprehension of the past. Their last vestiges have surfaced again in the semi-scholarly discussion on the idea of Europe occasioned by the debate on a project of a European Constitution. Mention of Europe’s Christian roots has been the clumsiest move. Proclamations of such roots were so obvious in what they affirmed as they were totally off-path concerning what they omitted, namely that he modern European moral tradition included legacies from Middle-Eastern wisdom, Hellenic philosophy, Roman Imperial legal literature, and, besides, a Jewish legacy in turn incorporating other more ancient Middle-Eastern legacies and which has been partly conveyed by Christianity. And the Islamic-Arabic philosophy too, in so far it made the Nicomachean Ethics available to Latin Christian scholars, is one more of Europe’s roots. The third is that religious traditionalists and secularist fundamentalists have gone hand in hand for a couple of centuries in either extolling or deprecating the allegedly Modern idea of Ethics without God, first formulated by Hugo Grotius with the claim that natural law would still be valid ‘etiamsi daremus – quod sine summo scelere dari potest – Deum non esse’. The facts are, firstly, that this is not an irreligious claim and Grotius was just a pious and meek Christian and, secondly, that it is not a ‘modern’ claim but rather one more formulation of the claim that there is a natural morality, independent of divine revelation, a claim shared by Moshe ben Maimon, Aquinas and William of Ockham. -/- . (shrink)

The ‘doctrine of double effect’ claims that it is in some sense morally less problematic to bring about a negatively evaluated state of affairs as a ‘side effect’ of one’s pursuit of another, morally unobjectionable aim than it is to bring it about in order to achieve that aim. In a first step, this chapter discusses the descriptive difference on which the claim is built. That difference is shown to derive from the attitudinal distinction between intention (...) and ‘acceptance’, a distinction that is in turn claimed to ground in a feature of the decisions that generate the attitudes in question. The resulting analysis is then plugged into two different normative principles that may each be thought to specify the intuitions behind the doctrine of double effect, but which have frequently been conflated. The first concerns the permissibility of bringing about the merely accepted state of affairs, the second its reduced attributability. It is argued that examination of the intuitions behind the two principles supports neither version of the doctrine. Rather, the intuitions are best captured in an attribution principle based on subjective probabilities and a principle of attitude evaluation, neither of which make explicit reference to the attitude of intending. (shrink)

. How does the doctrine of double effect apply to business decisions to sell products which may be harmful to consumers? Lawrence Masek believes that some authors have misapplied the doctrine to this type of decision and, as a consequence, have committed themselves to placing unwarranted constraints on businesses. Seeking to correct this mistake, Masek presents his account of how the doctrine applies here, an account which is rather permissive but which, he claims, nevertheless preserves (...) the virtues of the doctrine. It will be seen, though, that his attempt to loosen these putatively unnecessary constraints by appealing to consumer autonomy and an intuition about the morality of producing harmful products leaves the doctrine of double effect irrelevant to this type of decision. His argument that the doctrine is less restrictive in this context than others suppose leads ultimately to the conclusion that the doctrine does not constrain this kind of business decision at all. (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

Philosophers and ethicists debate this controversial moral principle illustrating its application to current moral dilemmas such as war, suicide, nuclear power, affirmative action, and morphine use for terminal cancer patients.

The doctrine of double effect, together with other moral principles that appeal to the intentions of moral agents, has come under attack from many directions in recent years, as have a variety of rationales that have been given in favor of it. In this paper, our aim is to develop, defend, and provide a new theoretical rationale for a secular version of the doctrine. Following Quinn (1989), we distinguish between Harmful Direct Agency and Harmful Indirect Agency. (...) We propose the following version of the doctrine: that in cases in which harm must come to some in order to achieve a good (and is the least costly of possible harms necessary), the agent foresees the harm, and all other things are equal, a stronger case is needed to justify Harmful Direct Agency than to justify Harmful Indirect Agency. We distinguish between two Kantian rationales that might be given for the doctrine, a “dependent right” rationale, defended by Quinn, and an “independent right” rationale, which we defend. We argue that the doctrine and the “independent right” rationale for it are not vulnerable to counterexamples or counterproposals, and conclude by drawing implications for the larger debate over whether agents' intentions are in any way relevant to permissibility and obligation. (shrink)

In a recent contribution to this journal, Patrick Tully criticizes my view that the doctrine of double effect does not prohibit a pharmaceutical company from selling a drug that has potentially fatal side-effects and that does not treat a life-threatening condition. Tully alleges my account is too permissive and makes the doctrine irrelevant to decisions about selling harmful products. In the following paper, I respond to Tully’s objections and show that he misinterprets my position and misstates (...) some elements of the doctrine of double effect. I also show how the doctrine constrains some decisions about marketing drugs with potentially fatal side-effects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Plea for PityRobert H. KimballIntroductionDoes the ability to feel pity toward the unfortunate represent one of humanity's better instincts, on par with the capacity for love, compassion, and forgiveness? Or is pity actually one of our morally baser emotions, like jealousy, envy, or hatred, because pity can include contempt for its object and an attitude of morally reprehensible superiority on the part of the pitier? Surprisingly, there is (...) little philosophical consensus on this issue, with informed opinion nearly equally divided. That the same emotion can elicit such contrary evaluations shows how elusive a clear understanding of pity can be.Furthermore, is there something wrong—either logically or morally—with attempting to arouse the emotion of pity in others when they do not already feel it themselves (or do not feel it as intensely as we want them to)? Should appeals to pity be rejected because any emotion is inimical to clear thinking or simply irrelevant to the justification of action? Or is there something particularly morally reprehensible about trying to manipulate another's emotions and actions specifically on the basis of pity? Alternatively, at least in some cases could an exhortation to pity be an acceptable, even desirable, aspect of moral education or an often-necessary reminder to care about the misfortunes of others and not just to pursue our own self-interests? Surprisingly, opinion (at least in the informal fallacy tradition) is remarkably unanimous about the undesirability of appealing to pity. But I think their reasons can be improved upon.Traditional analyses of appeal to pity do not seriously analyze the emotion being appealed to, and most treatments of pity as an emotion do not address its use in rhetorical manipulation. I claim that what is wrong with appeal to pity can be satisfactorily understood only if pity itself is adequately understood. I propose to proceed by combining these two questions: what is wrong with pity? and what is wrong with appeal to pity? [End Page 301]In answering the second question, the textbook tradition of informal fallacy analysis holds that when a speaker attempts to arouse pity in an audience in order to induce an action, this situation should be interpreted not under the rubric of nonlogical causal influence, manipulation, or rhetorical persuasion but rather as belonging to the domain of (informal) logic, and in particular as a failed attempt at argument in which a descriptive premise that A pities B does not entail the normative conclusion that B deserves A's help (or that A should help B). Thus in the informal fallacy tradition, experiencing the emotion of pity is never a valid justification for action.2 I believe this rigid reason/emotion distinction has little basis in our actual belief-forming and decision-making practices. Nor do I believe that emotion should be excluded from reasoning, since our emotions are often informative and are sometimes more reliable guides to action than argument.In Appeal to Pity, Douglas Walton (1997) presents a nuanced and considerably more subtle alternative to the textbook tradition, in which he evaluates epistemically the effect of the emotional state of pity on practical reasoning. Analyzing such cases as charitable appeals (e.g., for starving people and disaster victims, arguments for hardship exemptions from general rules, and alleged atrocities), he emphasizes especially the particularizing nature of pity and the way it overrides universal principles, especially of justice. Under Walton's epistemic evaluation of pity, it emerges as a reason-clouding emotion under certain conditions. Furthermore, he shows how the occurrence of pity is susceptible to manipulation; he emphasizes especially cases in which pity is not actually deserved or justified but is manipulatively made to seem so.But Walton looks at a very small slice of the landscape of pity and what might be problematic about it. So in order to evaluate pity fully—not just epistemically but also as a moral emotion and its role in a fully flourishing life—we need to expand our concept of pity. In fact, pity is a very difficult and complex emotion to analyze (Solomon 1993).Definition of "pity"In pitying someone, such as a homeless person, a starving child, or a mutilated... (shrink)

The strategic/terror bomber thought experiment is often employed in the contemporary debate on the principle of double effect (PDE). It is taken to show the intuitive appeal of PDE. In this paper, it is argued, however, that the thought experiment is used in a confused way. What is taken to be one thought experiments in fact is a series of subtly differing examples. Those differences, although subtle, bear on the applicability of these examples in the argumentation for (...) PDE. The main objectives of this paper are to provide a precise description and analysis of the variants of strategic/terror bomber thought experiments. The analysis shows that some variants are flawed mainly because of underdetermination of the cases by their descriptions and problems with rationality of the presented agents. This result seems to cast some new doubts on employment of the strategic/terror bomber thought experiment as an argumentative device supporting PDE. (shrink)

The doctrine of double effect is a moral principle that distinguishes between harm we cause as a means to an end and harm that we cause as a side-effect. As a purely descriptive matter, the DDE is well established that it describes a consistent feature of human moral judgment. There are, however, several rival theories of its psychological cause. I review these theories and consider their advantages and disadvantages. Critically, most extant psychological theories of the (...) DDE regard it as an accidental byproduct of cognitive architecture. This may provide philosophers with some reason to question its normative significance. (shrink)

In “The Contralife Argument and the Principle of Double Effect” (NCBQ, Spring 2011), Lawrence Masek tries to use the principle of double effect to show that natural family planning (NFP) is morally justified. This essay presents a summary explanation of the principle of double effect. It demonstrates that Masek wrongly applies the principle of double effect to NFP. It presents the teaching of the 1968 papal encyclical Humanae vitae (...) with regard to NFP, and contends that to apply the principle of double effect to the case of NFP is not only incorrect but also contrary to teaching of Humanae vitae. Because Masek implies that NFP involves the (justified) permission of evil, his article also counteracts the efforts of the Catholic Church to promote the practice of NFP. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.4 (Winter 2011): 661–667. (shrink)

Few moral theorists would disagree that the fundamental principle of morality – perhaps of practical rationality itself – is “ Do good and avoid evil. ” Yet along with such an uncontroversial principle comes a major question: Can you fulfi l both halves satisfactorily across your life as a moral agent? We all have opportunities to perform acts that do good with no accompanying evil, but these are not as common as we might think. We can avoid evil (...) by doing nothing, but doing nothing implies doing no good either. Clearly the fundamental principle does not require that you go about your life doing good on any and every possible occasion any more than that you sit on your hands and abstain from action out of fear of doing evil. The principle tells us to avoid evil, not to refrain from ever causing it. And the simple fact is that the complexities of life make it inevitable that, much of the time when we go about doing good, we will also be doing evil. Further, they are such that sometimes we can avoid evil only at the cost of not performing a good act which reasonable people would regard as at least permissible, if not sometimes obligatory. So how, as rational, morally responsible agents, are we to satisfy the fundamental principle in an adequate, harmonious fashion, given life ’ s exigencies? This is where the so - called ‘ doctrine of double effect ’ comes into play. Some call it a doctrine, infl uenced by the fact that Catholic ethicists and moral theologians have, since the Middle Ages, codifi ed and ratifi ed it as something akin to a doctrine of Catholic moral philosophy. Others call it the ‘ principle of double effect, ’ though it breaks down into a set of principles unifi ed by a common idea. Yet other writers see it simply as a kind of reasoning about certain types of hard case in ethics. Whatever the preferred nomenclature, the DDE, as I will call it here, is – for all its critics and the diffi culties it faces – a keystone of sound moral thinking, without which the fundamental principle would remain nothing but a high ideal with little consistent applicability. So consider a simple example.. (shrink)

I offer eight arguments against the Doctrine of Double Effect, a normative principle according to which in pursuing the good it is sometimes morally permissible to bring about some evil as a side-effect or merely foreseen consequence: the same evil would not be morally justified as an intended means or end.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Equal Freedom and Utility: Herbert Spencer’s Liberal Utilitarianısm by David WeinsteinDaniel PalmerDavid Weinstein. Equal Freedom and Utility: Herbert Spencer’s Liberal Utilitarianısm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 235. Cloth, $69.95.Herbert Spencer, though influential and widely read in the nineteenth century, has been largely neglected by contemporary philosophers. David Weinstein argues that this neglect is unjustified, and that Spencer’s moral and political thought deserves the same attention (...) that has been afforded to Spencer’s contemporary John Stuart Mill. The comparison with Mill is particularly important for Weinstein. Indeed, he claims that, like Mill, Spencer was a liberal utilitarian who attempted to preserve a place for strong moral rights within a broadly utilitarian framework.A large part of Weinstein’s study is devoted to delineating the precise nature of Spencer’s utilitarianism. Weinstein argues that Spencer is both more consistently utilitarian and more systematic than has often been alleged. In the first two chapters he discusses Spencer’s utilitarianism in relation to his metaphysical principles and his account of moral psychology. Weinstein convincingly demonstrates that Spencer’s liberal utilitarianism follows from his views on social evolution. Spencer viewed evolutionary processes as leading to increasing differentiation among phenomena, which implied for Spencer a trend towards greater individuation of persons as societies evolve. Evolutionary principles also led Spencer to view happiness as largely dependent upon the exercise of faculties. Together, these views lend support to what Weinstein sees as the centerpiece of Spencer’s liberal utilitarianism, his principle of equal freedom, or the claim that “each shall have as much liberty to pursue his ends as consists with maintaining like liberties to pursue their ends by others” (38). The increasing individuation of individuals coupled with the dependence of happiness upon the free exercise of our faculties guaranteed for Spencer that the greatest happiness will be generated through the adoption of the principle of equal freedom.Weinstein’s central argument is that Spencer’s moral philosophy offers a distinctive version of indirect utilitarianism. In chapters 3 through 5 he outlines the main contours of Spencer’s liberal utilitarianism and its relevance to contemporary discussions, maintaining that Spencer accepted the utilitarian principle as the ultimate criterion of actions. However, much like Mill, and in reaction to Bentham, he argued that any direct pursuit of the greatest happiness is self-defeating. Spencer’s indirect utilitarianism sought to promote the conditions upon which happiness is founded through the principle of equal freedom. Moral rights were for him merely corollaries of the principle that flesh out its empty formalism, providing the basis for deliberation. Concrete moral rights such as property rights, contract rights, and exchange rights are therefore the basis for our primary obligations and yet find their ultimate justification in the principle of utility.Spencer’s two-tiered account of our moral obligations is thus remarkably similar to Mill’s account of moral rights in Chapter 5 of Utilitarianism. The difference between them concerns the stringency of moral rights. While Mill saw moral rights as important, but ultimately defeasible, Spencer viewed them as indefeasible. While Mill’s position seems more plausible from the utilitarian perspective, Weinstein shows that Spencer’s stronger position must be judged in terms of his beliefs about the exercise of human [End Page 685] faculties. Weinstein correctly shows that if Spencer is wrong, it is not because, as critics have charged, his position is logically inconsistent, but because he held mistaken views about human nature and society.While the heart of Equal Freedom and Utility concerns the relation between utility and moral rights in Spencer’s work, the final two chapters are devoted to metaethics and applied ethics respectively. Weinstein marshals strong textual support to show that Spencer never simply defined the good as happiness and that G. E. Moore’s use of Spencer in Principia Ethica as an example of someone who committed a glaring version of the naturalistic fallacy was not justified. Spencer simply avoided prolonged treatments of such metaethical concerns. In the last chapter Weinstein argues that Spencer’s evolving views on land nationalization reveals both the general nature of Spencer’s derivation of moral rights from the principle... (shrink)

In replying to my article ‘An Error about the Doctrine of Double Effect’, Kaufman claims that the permission given by the four-condition Doctrine for certain mixed actions is merely complementary to an absolute prohibition—which he claims is the DDE's primary function. I point out again that in many cases this makes an appeal to the DDE's fourth condition not merely redundant but incoherent. Furthermore, his claim that I am a utilitarian maximizer, frustrated by a doctrine (...) prohibiting intentional harms, however great the net overall benefit, is based on a misrepresentation. I did not object to a candidate for justification under the DDE being rejected before reaching the fourth condition, only to its being accepted. (shrink)

The problem of closeness was posed by Philippa Foot in the article “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect”. Foot criticizes the classic version of the principle of double effect which distinguishes direct from indirect intention. On this basis, she considers it justified to cause bad effects which were foreseen but not intended. She believes that if we consider causing a bad effect to be justified then the way we do (...) it is irrelevant, while the reference to the direct/indirect distinction may lead to absurd solutions in some cases that allow us to distinguish two events in one action. These constitute, respectively, the object of direct and indirect intention and they are much too close for an application of the principle of double effect, such as when a doctor performs a craniotomy. The root of the problem of closeness is the question about the possible criterion that would allow us to determine which of the effects of an action are intended and which are merely foreseen. The starting point of the analysis of the problem of closeness in this article is the manner in which Foot outlines it in her article. In the second and more extensive part of the article, a number of contemporary attempts to solve the problem of closeness are presented, while the third section is an attempt to answer the question of why the discussion of the problem of closeness seems to remain deadlocked. (shrink)

The central concern of this article is whether early induction of labor for an anencephalic fetus can ever be morally justified, particularly by a Catholic healthcare ethics committee. By revisiting and refining arguments in articles by Drane (1992) and Bole (1992) published in this journal, a revised argument – consistent with the Catholic moral tradition – can seemingly be constructed that a Catholic healthcare ethics committee might use to justify early induction of labor in some pregnancies involving an anencephalic fetus. (...) Such a revised argument depends upon two central claims; first, that the anencephalic fetus in question is necessarily in the process of dying when early induction of labor occurs, and second, that the fetus is judged to be undergoing extraordinary or disproportionate means of preserving their life as a result of receiving ongoing maternal support of a mother’s womb. The revised argument developed in this article aims to utilize the doctrine of double effect in conjunction with these two central claims to justify early induction of labor for anencephalic fetal persons in some circumstances. Unfortunately, the revised argument – if successful – would be at odds with a stance taken in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) 1996 statement “Moral Principles Concerning Infants with Anencephaly.” However, there is reason to believe the revised argument offered in this article is well aligned with other guidance from the USCCB, contained in the publication _Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Healthcare Services_ (2018). This article concludes by noting some important limitations of the argument and offering hope that consideration of the argument ultimately helps to strengthen the Catholic moral tradition. (shrink)

While some believe that the principle of double effect provides sound ethical guidance, others believe that it does not and have leveled various types of argument against it. One type of argument leveled against it proceeds by applying it to hypothetical “closeness” cases. This objection seeks to show that in such cases the principle permits what patently should not be permitted, and thus is unacceptable because it is too permissive. In this essay, I critically evaluate an (...) argument of this type developed by Alexander R. Pruss. Central to my strategy is to develop and defend a distinction between two kinds of means. I refer to them as closed-ended and open-ended means. I argue that once what is intended is understood in light of this distinction, the principle does not permit what patently should not be permitted, and thus need not be seen as being too permissive. (shrink)

If people have stringent moral rights, then the doctrine of double effect is false or unimportant, at least when it comes to making acts permissible or wrong. There are strong and weak versions of the doctrine of double effect. The strong version asserts that an act is morally right if and only if the agent does not intentionally infringe a moral norm and the act brings about a desirable result (perhaps the best state of (...) affairs available to the agent or a promotion of the common good). The weak version asserts that, other things being equal, it is deontically worse to intentionally infringe a norm than to foreseeably do so. A person’s intention or mere foresight might still be relevant to his or her blameworthiness or virtue, but this is a separate issue. (shrink)

The DDE yields counterintuitive verdicts about certain cases: it may deem it permissible to kill a certain number of people when they are not used as means and their death is not intended, but deny that killing fewer of these people is permissible if that requires intending their death, or using them as means. To accommodate the judgement that we may kill the lesser number in such cases, supporters of the DDE may appeal to Frances Kamm's Principle of Secondary (...) Permissibility. The principle says, roughly, that if it is permissible to kill n people when not intending their death, or using them as means, then it is permissible to kill n − m people in a way that does involve intending their deaths, or using them as means, as ‘secondarily permissible’. In this article I argue that appealing to the PSP to solve the puzzling cases of the DDE is generally misleading and that it fails in particular cases. The crux of my argument is that the PSP allows killings that go against the grain of the DDE. (shrink)

There are different formulations of the doctrine of double effect, and sometimes philosophers propose “revisions” or alternatives, like the means principle, for instance. To demonstrate that such principles are needed in the first place, one would have to compare cases in which all else is equal and show that the difference in intuitions, if any, can only be explained by the one remaining difference and thus by the principle in question. This is not the methodology (...) defenders of the DDE and of related principles use, however. I will discuss how they actually proceed, focusing on their preferred four pairs of examples. While these examples might have rhetorical force, they are nevertheless philosophically and methodologically useless. As a corrective, I shall offer examples that do keep all else equal. These examples undermine the DDE and related principles. I then argue that while the Loop case and the “closeness” problem in the context of Jonathan Bennett’s Sophisticated Bomber example might once have been an embarrassment of sorts for defenders of the DDE, meanwhile their discussion serves as a convenient distraction from the many clear examples disproving the DDE and related principles. I conclude that the methodological mistakes found in defenses of the DDE – the biased framing, the rigged examples, the empirically unwarranted claims about how widely shared certain intuitions are, and the avoidance of the strongest counter-examples – can only be explained by systematic bias. There is simply no sufficient intuitive support for the DDE or related principles. Thus, instead of looking for their “rationales,” they should be abandoned. (shrink)

ABSTRACT William Cooney has recently argued (The Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 6, pp. 201–204) that the social programme of affirmative action, though controversial, can be supported by the doctrine of double effect in that, according to the doctrine, responsibility falls on the side of intended consequences and not on that of unintended consequences. The point of affirmative action is to include certain disadvantaged groups; it is not to exclude other groups, though this is an inevitable (...) and foreseeable by‐product. In this article I contend that Cooney's argument ignores two important conditions of the doctrine of double effect; namely, that the good which results from the intended effect must be at least commensurate with the harm that results from the unintended effect; and, that the intended good effect is causally separate from the unintended harmful effect. Any use of the doctrine which neglects these conditions leads to morally problematic cases. Further, once we take the conditions into account, we have good reason to think that the doctrine of double effect has no relevance to the affirmative action debate. (shrink)

The Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) is an influential non-consequentialist principle positing a role for intention in affecting the moral permissibility of some actions. In particular, the DDE focuses on the intend/foresee distinction, the core claim being that it is sometimes permissible to bring about as a foreseen but unintended side-effect of one’s action some harm it would have been impermissible to aim at as a means or as an end, all else being equal. This (...) article explores the meaning and application of the DDE along with current debates over the nature of the intend/foresee distinction and its moral significance. How is the line between intended effects and merely foreseen but unintended side-effects to be drawn, and how are problem cases best handled? What is an appropriate methodology for debating the tenability of the DDE? How might the DDE interact with other non-consequentialist principles, and how might it be modified to capture other related factors (resulting perhaps in a Doctrine of Triple Effect) or to avoid certain problem cases? Does the DDE make permissibility turn on the actual intentions of particular agents, as critics such as Thomson and Scanlon assume, or is the role of intention more abstract? (shrink)

My interest is in two of the four conditions which must be satisfied if the doctrine of double effect is to be successfully employed. One of these involves the distinction between direct and oblique intention, And I deny that this distinction is the index of character or goodness adherents to the doctrine take it to be. Rather, I emphasize the notion of "control responsibility", In considering several cases around which discussion of the doctrine has focused. (...) I develop this notion, In the course of rejecting several attempts to render it superfluous, And then sustain it, In the face of a possible rival. Finally, I consider a second condition of the doctrine, One which turns upon the view that the order of causation between an evil and a good effect of an act is morally significant, And I suggest that this view is mistaken. (shrink)

The Doctrine of Double Effect and the Principle of Do No Harm raise important theoretical and practical issues, some of which are discussed by Boyle, Donagan, and Quinn. I argue that neither principle is correct, and some revisionist, and probably nonabsolutist, analysis of constraints on action and omission is necessary. In making these points, I examine several approaches to deflection of threat cases, discuss an argument for the permissibility of voluntary euthanasia, and present arguments relevant (...) to medical contexts which justify intentionally hanning some to aid others, with and without the consent of those harmed. Keywords: consent, double effect, euthanasia, harming, organ transplantation, scarce resources, trolley problem CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)