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In this article we critically evaluate an argument against state-sanctioned euthanasia made by David Velleman in his 1992 paper 'Against the right to die'. In that article, Velleman argues that legalizing euthanasia is morally problematic as it will deprive eligible patients of the opportunity of staying 'alive by default'. That is to say, those patients who are rendered eligible for euthanasia as a result of legislative reform will face the burden of having to justify their continued existence to their epistemic peers if they are to be perceived as 'reasonable'. We discuss potential criticisms that could be made of the argument, and consider how a defender of the view might respond. Velleman's argument is particularly interesting as it is a consequentialist argument against state-sanctioned euthanasia, challenging the many consequentialist arguments that have been made in favour of legalizing the procedure. We conclude by suggesting that further research on the question of unfair burdens is important to adequately evaluating the potential harms of legalizing euthanasia for patients at the end of life.

Suppose that a young athlete has just become quadriplegic. He expects to live several more decades, but out of self-interest he autonomously chooses to engage in physician-assisted suicide (PAS) or voluntary active euthanasia (VAE). Some of us are unsure whether he or his physician would be acting rightly in ending his life. One basis for such doubt is the notion that persons have dignity in a Kantian sense. This paper probes responses that David Velleman and Frances Kamm have suggested to the question of whether participating in PAS or VAE to benefit oneself, as the young man might, respects the dignity of persons, specified in an orthodox Kantian way. Velleman claims that it does not, while Kamm insists that, in certain circumstances, it does. I argue against Kamm's position. I go on to contend that while orthodox Kantianism might provide a basis for moral concern regarding the case of the young quadriplegic, it suffers from two serious shortcomings. First, it implies that terminally ill patients are wrong to request VAE or engage in PAS to avoid intense suffering, at least when this suffering has not yet overwhelmed their reason. Second, orthodox Kantianism implies that it is wrong for physicians to withdraw such patients from life-sustaining treatments, even if they request it. To remedy these shortcomings, I sketch an unorthodox Kantian account of respect for the dignity of persons. This account promises to capture the idea that it would be morally problematic for doctors to help the young quadriplegic to die, but to avoid the shortcomings of an orthodox Kantian account.

A traditional idea has it that moral judgment involves more than calculating the consequences of actions; it also requires an assessment of the agent's intentions, the act's nature, and whether the agent uses another person as a means to her ends. I survey experimental developments suggesting that ordinary people often tacitly reason in terms of such deontological rules. It's now unclear whether we should posit a traditional form of the Doctrine of Double Effect. However, further research suggests that a range of non-consequentialist factors influence moral judgment, including: intentions, commissions, personal harm, and agent-centered commitments. Many, if not all, such factors appear to affect how involved the agent is in bringing about an outcome.

Kant's view that we have only indirect duties to animals fails to capture the intuitive notion that wronging animals transgresses duties we owe to those animals. Here I argue that a suitably modified Kantianism can allow for direct duties to animals and, in particular, an imperfect duty to promote animal welfare without unduly compromising its core theoretical commitments, especially its commitments concerning the source and nature of our duties toward rational beings. The basis for such duties is that animal welfare, on my revised Kantian view, is neither a conditioned nor unconditioned good, but a final and nonderivative good that ought to be treated as an end-in-itself. However, this duty to promote animal welfare operates according to a broadly consequentialist logic that both accords well with our considered judgments about our duties to animals and explains differences between these duties and duties owed to rational agents.

In Sein und Zeit Heidegger makes several claims about the nature of ‘assertion’ [Aussage]. These claims are of particular philosophical interest: they illustrate, for example, important points of contact and divergence between Heidegger’s work and philosophical movements including Kantianism, the early Analytic tradition, and contemporary pragmatism.This article provides a new assessment of one of these claims: the claim that assertion is connected to a ‘present-at-hand’ ontology. I also indicate how my analysis sets the stage for a new reading of Heidegger’s further claim that assertion is an explanatorily derivative phenomenon. I begin with a loose overview of Heidegger’s position. Section 1 develops a sharper formulation of the key premises. In sections 2 and 3, I argue that existing treatments of the supposed link between assertion and the ‘present-at-hand’ are unsatisfactory. In section 4 I advance a new, ‘methodological’, interpretation of that link. In section 5 I sketch the implications of my interpretation for the further claim that assertion is explanatorily derivative.

Eino Kaila's thought occupies a curious position within the logical empiricist movement. Along with Hans Reichenbach, Herbert Feigl, and the early Moritz Schlick, Kaila advocates a realist approach towards science and the project of a “scientific world conception”. This realist approach was chiefly directed at both Kantianism and Poincarean conventionalism. The case in point was the theory of measurement. According to Kaila, the foundations of physical reality are characterized by the existence of invariant systems of relations, which he called structures. In a certain sense, these invariant structures, he maintained, are constituted in the act of measuring. By “constitution”, however, Kaila meant neither the dependency of the objects of measurement on a priori concepts (or Kantian categories) nor their being effected by conventional stipulations in a Poincarean sense. He held that invariant structures are, quite literally, real: they exist prior to and independently of our theoretical capacity. By executing measurements, invariant structures are detected and objectively determinable by laws of nature.

In response to Arroyo, I explain my position on the concept of “natural goodness” and how my use of that concept compares to that of Geach and Foot. An Aristotelian or functional notion of goodness provides the material for Kantian endorsement in a theory of value that avoids a metaphysical commitment to intrinsic values. In response to Cummiskey, I review reasons for thinking Kantianism and consequentialism incompatible, especially those objections to aggregation that arise from the notion of the natural good previously described. In response to Moland, I explain why I think Hegelian worries about the supposed emptiness of the Kantian self do not apply to my account. And in response to both Moland and Bird-Pollan, I argue that, contrary to the view of some Hegelians, the intersubjective normativity of reason is not something developed through actual social relations; rather, it is something essential to an individual's relations with himself or herself.

In a prior issue of Developing World Bioethics, Cheryl Macpherson and Ruth Macklin critically engaged with an article of mine, where I articulated a moral theory grounded on indigenous values salient in the sub-Saharan region, and then applied it to four major issues in bioethics, comparing and contrasting its implications with those of the dominant Western moral theories, utilitarianism and Kantianism. In response to my essay, Macpherson and Macklin have posed questions about: whether philosophical justifications are something with which bioethicists ought to be concerned; why something counts as 'African'; how medicine is a moral enterprise; whether an individual right to informed consent is consistent with sub-Saharan values; and when thought experiments help to establish firm conclusions about moral status. These are important issues for the field, and I use this reply to take discussion of them a step or two farther, defending my initial article from Macpherson's and Macklin's critical questions and objections.

The field of bioethics is replete with applications of moral theories such as utilitarianism and Kantianism. For a given dilemma, even if it is not clear how one of these western philosophical principles of right (and wrong) action would resolve it, one can identify many of the considerations that each would conclude is relevant. The field is, in contrast, largely unaware of an African account of what all right (and wrong) actions have in common and of the sorts of factors that for it are germane to developing a sound response to a given bioethical problem. My aim is to help rectify this deficiency by first spelling out a moral theory grounded in the mores of many sub-Saharan peoples, and then applying it to some major bioethical issues, namely, the point of medical treatment, free and informed consent, standards of care and animal experimentation. For each of these four issues, I compare and contrast the implications of the African moral theory with utilitarianism and Kantianism, my overall purposes being to highlight respects in which the African moral theory is distinct and to demonstrate that the field should take it at least as seriously as it does the Western theories.

What do we do when a loved one is seriously messing up her life? While Kantianism describes the predicament nicely as a tension between love and respect, it is not well-suited to resolving it. Kantian respect prevents minding another's business in cases where love demands it. Virtue ethics can readily explain the predicament as a tension between the virtues of sympathy and humility. Moreover, by changing the focus away from the other as a setter of ends and toward the would-be-benefactor's own degree of practical wisdom, virtue ethics permits a more nuanced set of loving responses to self-destructive people.

The central thesis of Derek Parfit's On What Matters is that three of the most important secular moral traditions – Kantianism, contractualism, and consequentialism – all actually converge in a way onto the same view. It is in this sense that he suggests that we may all be ‘climbing the same mountain, but from different sides’. In this paper, I argue that Parfit's argument that we are all metaphorically climbing the same mountain is unsound. One reason his argument does not work is that he has misunderstood the way in which a plausible rule-consequentialism should understand the supervenience of rightness on all possible acceptance levels of the ideal moral code. In place of Parfit's own understanding of this, I develop a view I call ‘variable-rate rule-utilitarianism’, which I argue shares the key insight of Parfit's view but avoids a fatal objection to his own articulation of that insight. Finally, I explore how this modification might allow us to still make a case that we are all ‘climbing the same mountain’, albeit in a very different way and for very different reasons than the ones Parfit had in mind.

In this Introduction to “Re-thinking Dionsyius the Areopagite” it is first explained that the volume sets out to illuminate the contemporary interest in “apophaticism” by close comparison with the original project of the CD. However, given the elusiveness and generativity of the Dionysian tradition, this can only be done adequately by also providing a road-map of the many historic interpretations of the Dionysian corpus, both East and West. Three constellating themes in the volume are then outlined: 1. The (admittedly divisive) importance of Dionysius for the regeneration of both Roman Catholic and Orthodox contemporary theology, in latter-day riposte to Kantianism; 2. The significance of Dionysius for suggesting a fluid, post-modern vision of the self; and 3. The importance of a possible re-reading of Dionysius's impact on both Lutheran and Tridentine spirituality in the era of early modernity.

In recent work, John McDowell has urged that we resurrect the Kantian thesis that concepts without intuitions are empty. I distinguish two forms of the thesis: a strong form that applies to all concepts and a weak form that is limited to empirical concepts. Because McDowell rejects Kant's philosophy of mathematics, he can accept only the weaker form of the thesis. But this position is unstable. The reasoning behind McDowell's insistence that empirical concepts can have content only if they are actualizable in passive experience makes it mysterious how the concepts of pure mathematics can have content. In fact, historically, it was anxiety about the possibility of mathematical content, and not worries about the “Myth of the Given,” that spurred the retreat from Kantian views of empirical content. McDowell owes us some more therapy on this score.

It is sometimes asked whether virtue ethics can be assimilated by Kantianism or utilitarianism, or if it is a distinct position. A look at Aristotle's ethics shows that it certanly can be distinct. In particular, Aristotle presents us with an ethics of aesthetics in contrast to the more standard ethics of cognition: A virtuous agent identifies the right actions by their aesthetic qualities. Moreover, the agent's concern with her own aesthetic character gives us a key to the important role the emotions play for Aristotle, which further distinguishes him from the other two theories we have mentioned.

The contemporary virtue ethics movement has sundered the Utilitarianism/Kantianism gridlock that structured normative ethics for much of the twentieth century; the dyadic menu of orthodox positions has become triadic, and new paths of exploration are now visible to moral philosophers of all theoretical persuasions. This insurgency is substantially due to an appearance of psychological plausibility: Virtue ethicists proffer conceptions of character that are widely considered indispensable to ethical theory's foundations in moral psychology (see Anscombe 1958: 1,15; Williams 1985: 206; Flanagan 1991: 182; Hursthouse 1999: 19-20). The appearance, I argue in Lack of Character (23),2 is largely chimerical. In familiar variants, such as those associated with Aristotelianism, the characterological moral psychology typical of virtue ethics is empirically inadequate: Systematic observation does not reveal the patterns of human behavior such accounts lead one to expect. My argument is based on experimental social psychology, augmented, in the spirit of methodological pluralism, by observations drawn from literature, history, anthropology, and elsewhere, from Survival in Auschwitz to Lord Jim.

Sharon Stanley, Robert Adcock, Jimmy Klausen, and three anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic, 1974), pp. 30–1; also see pp. 32, 228. G. A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 238–42; also see pp. 211–13. Daniel Attas, “Freedom and self-ownership,” Social Theory and Practice, 26 (2000), 1–23 at pp. 11–15; George Brenkert, “Self-ownership, freedom, and autonomy,” Journal of Ethics, 2 (1998), 27–55 at pp. 50–2. The contrast with John Rawls, whose Kantianism is spelled out in exquisite detail in §40 of A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), is instructive. A Kantian Defense of Self-Ownership*

The First Priority Rule (the Priority of Liberty) of John Rawls’s Justice as Fairness reads: “the principles of justice are to be ranked in lexical order and therefore the basic liberties can be restricted only for the sake of liberty.” The basic liberties are those commonly protected by constitutional regimes, including “freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of the person . . . ; the right to hold personal property and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure. . . .” (p. 53). The Priority of Liberty treats these liberties as paramount and prohibits their sacrifice for the sake of efficiency, utilitarian and perfectionist ideals, or even other principles within Justice as Fairness (e.g., Fair Equality of Opportunity and the Difference Principle). The Priority of Liberty has always played a central role in Rawls’s political theory. Rawls himself notes that “the force of justice as fairness would appear to arise from two things: the requirement that all inequalities be justified to the least advantaged, and the priority of liberty. This pair of constraints distinguishes it from intuitionism and teleological theories” (p. 220). As we shall see, its importance in his work has if anything increased over time. Part of the reason for this greater prominence is Rawls’s growing ambivalence about the other distinctive elements of

Traduction anglaise du compte rendu de lecture de Fichte sur l'ouvrage de L. Creuzer consacre a la volonte libre. Premier d'une serie de trois recensions dans le journal «Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung» (Journal de litterature generale), le texte de Fichte critique la these du fatalisme intelligible defendue par K. C. E. Schmid et temoigne de l'effort du philosophe a penser la distinction kantienne entre volonte et volonte libre, liberte et causalite.

In his book Mind and World (1994), John McDowell defends the Kantian position that the content of experience is conceptual. Without this Kantian assumption, he argues, it would be impossible to understand how experience may rationally constrain thought. But McDowell's Kantianism is either false or empty, and his view of the relation between mind and world cannot be stated without transcending the bounds of sense. McDowell's arguments supporting the Kantian thesis, which are very different from Kant's arguments, essentially involve a fallacy of ambiguity. In order to understand how thought may be rationally constrained by experience we should become empiricists.

Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — three eminent thinkers, having little or no need for more money in their purses, and nothing particular to interest them in the law reviews and philosophy journals, set out to meet and discuss legal philosophy in a literary part of the world. It is a way these three have of driving off ennui and formulating the next publication. Whenever they find themselves growing stale about the pen; whenever it is adamp, drizzly November in London; whenever they find themselves involuntarily churning out conference papers and bringing up the rear of every symposium on offer; and especially whenever they find their critics getting such an upper hand on them, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent them from deliberately sitting down and methodically knocking off a paper excoriating every stranger they have met — then, they account it high time to gettogether as soon as they can.

V irtue ethics has recently been rousing itself from a long slumber.* Although twentiethcentury hthical theoryhas been primarily concerned with right and wrong action, we have lately seen a revival of interest in (the) virtue(s) as supplementing or even grounding our understanding of right action, and Aristotle and (to a lesser extent) Plato have had the greatest influence on these developments. Over the last few years, virtue ethicists have largely focused on the individual moral life rather than on issues of social justice, and to the extent virtue ethics is content merely to supplement other views, there may be nothing at all problematic about such an omission or de-emphasis. But most philosophers who call themselves virtue ethicists believe that (the) virtue(s) should play a foundational role in a free-standing total approach to ethics that can take its place, e. g., alongside (utilitarian) consequentialism and Kantian ethics; and they will want (one or another form of) virtue ethics to develop its own distinctive account of social morality and of social justice in particular. Yet anyone who has such a hope will, presumably, recognize the considerable obstacles that lie in its path. Virtue ethics has a proven record of siding with anti-democratic social/political ideals, and when one considers that neither Aristotle nor Plato favored democratic forms of government, one may well wonder whether ancient models can provide any sort of plausible contemporary basis for political philosophy or for ethics as a whole. Even if individualistic virtue ethics is not incompatible with current-day democratic values, the Aristotelian virtue ethicist may have to draw upon other traditions in order to give any sort of account of such values; and in that case she will face an intellectually unpleasant choice. If she declines to develop any sort of political philosophy, virtue ethics simply gives up on any attempt to develop a full-scale ethical alternative to currently dominant views, like utilitarianism/consequentialism and Kantianism, that are clearly capable of generating accounts of both individual and social values. (It is interesting that Rawls’s contractarianismmakes no claim to account for the full range of individual morality.)’ However, if virtue ethics has to borrow from Kantian ethics or consequentialism in order to generate a plausible political philosophy, then it acknowledges their strength and superiority in one major sphere