Dr. Jansen's paper raises three main issues. The one with which he himself is most concerned is the question of which methods of abortion are ethically right, and whether methods which risk the birth of a damaged baby are wrong. But there are two others: first, how the (originally unintended) birth of a live but damaged child alters the moral situation, and secondly, whether the overcoming of sterility by inducing a multiple pregnancy in which some of the fetuses have to (...) be killed in order for any of them to survive is at all morally acceptable. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article discusses a particular problem with the race relations legislation: the fact that to show that discrimination has taken place one must prove not only that a person was unfavourably treated but that this was on the grounds of race. The article considers first whether grounds should be interpreted subjectively or objectively, and argues for an objective interpretation, partly to make proof easier, partly because no obvious injustice is done. Then it considers the kinds of evidence relevant to (...) such a proof, and argues that in many cases, although not all, it is in fact available, at least for the level of proof on the balance of the probabilities, required for civil, as opposed to criminal, proceedings. It is concluded that difficult cases remain, but not as many, or as difficult, as might appear at first sight. (shrink)

This article argues that plato's choice of the dialogue as a vehicle for his philosophy and aristotle's choice of an objective compressed lecturing style (in his later works) has less to do with differences in philosophical doctrine and more with differences in pedagogic aim. Plato aimed at teaching pupils to begin thinking and to keep re-examining the foundations of their thought, aristotle at advancing the sum of human knowledge. This in its turn, it is argued, was connected with a difference (...) in epistemology and with aristotle's greater optimism about our ability to avoid error and to advance in knowledge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:REID' S CRITICISM OF HUME'S THEORY OF PERSONAL IDENTITY One of the most interesting philosophical controversies is that between Reid and Hume, considered as representatives of two different sorts of empiricism. Hume, for these purposes, represents 'radical' empiricism, and the attempt to base knowledge solely on experience and what can be validly inferred from it, regardless of how far this leads one from everyday notions and beliefs. Reid, in (...) contrast, represents 'common sense' empiricism, and the view that the. results of experience and deduction must conform to a number of 'first principles or intuitive judgments' (Essays on the intellectual powers of man, VI, 4), which aie unprovable, but which no one can avoid accepting. It is important to be clear about the status of Reid' s 'intuitive judgments', or 'principles of common sense'. They are not merely the general beliefs of a particular culture, which could be 'vulgar errors or preJUdICeS''. Nor are they merely beliefs generally held by people uncorrupted by philosophy. They are assumptions which have to be made if theoretical or practical activity is to be possible at all, principles which are always accepted in practice even by those who deny them in theory. For example, although the uniformity of nature is not a logically necessary truth, everybody always thinks and acts in ways that presuppose that it is true: 'Nature is governed by fixed laws, and if it were not so, there could be no such thing as prudence in human conduct.... the whole fabric of natural philosophy is built upon this principle.' (Essays, VI, 5) Again, everyone, even a theoretical determinist, makes moral judgments and deliberates what to do; and these activities presuppose a belief in human free will. (Essays, ibid.) Hume himself, as Reid was aware, accepted the validity of some principles of this sort, notably of the 42. uniformity of nature. But Reid was dissatisfied with Hume's account, partly because he thought Hume had rejected far too much, and partly because of the grounds Hume gives for accepting, for example, the validity of induction, and the existence of the external physical world. Hume regards these beliefs as non-rational, and deriving from our psychological make-up; it is nature and not reason which causes the belief in an ordered physical reality. In Hume's eyes this is a sufficient justification: if our nature compels us to believe something, this is as good a ground for believing it as any other. Reid, on the other hand, believed, first, that there were many more principles of this sort than Hume had acknowledged, and secondly, that the justification of them was rational, and not merely psychologically determined, since it was based on the impossibility of thinking and acting coherently without them. Hence, even though Hume builds up with one hand what he pulls 'down with the other, and destroys the rational basis for belief only to replace it by one based on human nature and psychology, Reid continues to treat him as the archsceptic. In constructing his list of first principles in Essays, VI, 5, Reid explicitly or implicitly attacks Hume's 'scepticism' on five points - the existence of the mind; the existence of the physical world and the reliability of our senses; the reliability of memory; the reliability of reason; and the uniformity of nature. Against this scepticism he deploys three types of argument. The first is the argument from the universal beliefs of mankind, particular!/ as displayed in the structural features supposedly common to all languages. The second is the argument that the position of the sceptic is, when its consequences are worked out, either self-contradictory or incoherent. And the third is the argument already mentioned, that this position is inconsistent with other beliefs which the sceptic inevitably holds, since he thinks and acts in ways which are 43. inconsistent with their falsity, and cannot avoid doing so. To assess the force of Reid' s attacks, we have to consider both the strength of arguments of this sort in general and whether they apply in all these five cases. In this article, I want to concentrate on the first issue of the five, that of personal identity. Apart from displaying Reid... (shrink)

This collection of articles, mostly by philosophers, but including two doctors and an economic historian, is intended as a contribution to applied ethics and medical ethics. The articles tackle two questions: how can the autonomy of the elderly be increased, and how can a just proportion of medical resources be secured for them? The seven articles dealing with the first question apply work in the theory of ethics on the nature and limits of autonomy to the particular case study of (...) the elderly: there are a number of detailed conclusions about what can and should be done, and a general consensus that, while the right to die with dignity is important, even more important is the improvement of the quality of life. The seven articles dealing with resources examine the problems created by an ageing population and the arguements for discriminating against the elderly: the main conclusions is that none of these arguments are sound or convincing. Overall the book seeks to make both a theoretical and a practical contribution to this field. (shrink)

This paper considers which applications of research into ageing should be supported. It assumes that both applications which enhance the quality of life for the elderly and applications which extend the life-span are desirable, and then considers which should be prioritised. It is argued that in the present state of our knowledge and under present social and medical conditions there are a number of reasons for favouring the improvement of the quality of life over increasing the life-span, and thinking that (...) this is likely to do more good and for more people. (shrink)

This is a short but very interesting book, which repays study. It is essentially a defence and an application to medical ethics of the principle of liberty (page 12), that “the liberty …of competent, well-informed, free agents must be …maximally protected in matters which concern only or mainly themselves”. Adoption of this Millian principle, which is argued for in the introduction, along with the adoption of principles of equality (that the needs and interests of all should be taken into account) (...) and of responsibility for the welfare of one's fellow beings, raises, it may be said, three questions: who is a person (and therefore to be taken into account); when is a person sufficiently competent, and when do people have to sacrifice some liberty to help or protect the welfare of others? Chapter 1 tackles the first of these questions, following the defence of the principle of liberty in the introduction; chapters two to four deal with issues raised by the second question—whether …. (shrink)

We should be passionate about the elderly. This book contains, albeit with the occasional lull, some passion, adroit philosophical argument and fascinating social and political insights. It originates from a conference in 1992 and, despite talk of Mrs Thatcher, the book has aged well. The first half deals with autonomy in the elderly; whilst the second considers the allocation of scarce resources. The shift from ethics, via clinical practice, to economics and politics is effected with little effort, precisely because of (...) the book's passion. For it deals with real problems that affect individuals and nations. I wonder if autonomy was a Thatcherite notion?! We loved it in the individualistic 1980s, but its appeal has lessened. It does not solve all our problems and is, perhaps, a hindrance to some elderly people. Dunn links it to being human and to human …. (shrink)

An Artificial Intelligence algorithm trained on data that reflect racial biases may yield racially biased outputs, even if the algorithm on its own is unbiased. For example, algorithms used to schedule medical appointments in the USA predict that Black patients are at a higher risk of no-show than non-Black patients, though technically accurate given existing data that prediction results in Black patients being overwhelmingly scheduled in appointment slots that cause longer wait times than non-Black patients. This perpetuates racial inequity, in (...) this case lesser access to medical care. This gives rise to one type of Accuracy-Fairness trade-off: preserve the efficiency offered by using AI to schedule appointments or discard that efficiency in order to avoid perpetuating ethno-racial disparities. Similar trade-offs arise in a range of AI applications including others in medicine, as well as in education, judicial systems, and public security, among others. This article presents a framework for addressing such trade-offs where Machine Learning and Optimization components of the algorithm are decoupled. Applied to medical appointment scheduling, our framework articulates four approaches intervening in different ways on different components of the algorithm. Each yields specific results, in one case preserving accuracy comparable to the current state-of-the-art while eliminating the disparity. (shrink)

A politically oriented study of the thought of the founders of the main schools of contemporary academic philosophy, those which dominate nearly all universities throughout the world. It concentrates on four key masters: Wittgenstein, who founded both Logical Positivism and the so-called Common Language or Analytic school; Heidegger, the acknowledged master of Hermeneutic Philosophy or the so-called Continental school; Lukacs, the founder of Hegelian Marxism and the leading Communist philosopher of the Soviet period; and, finally, the now lesser-known Gentile, (...) the Hegelian Idealist. (shrink)

My critics in this symposium illustrate one principle and three fallacies of disability studies. The principle, which we all share, is that all persons are equal and none are less equal than others. No disability, however slight, nor however severe, implies lesser moral, political or ethical status, worth or value. This is a version of the principle of equality. The three fallacies exhibited by some or all of my critics are the following: Choosing to repair damage or dysfunction or (...) to enhance function, implies either that the previous state is intolerable or that the person in that state is of lesser value or indicates that the individual in that state has a life that is not worthwhile or not thoroughly worth living. None of these implications hold. Exercising choice in reproduction with the aim of producing children who will be either less damaged or diseased, or more healthy, or who will have enhanced capacities, violates the principle or equality. It does not. Disability or impairment must be defined relative either to normalcy, “normal species functioning”, or “species typical functioning”. It is not necessarily so defined. (shrink)

With the resurgence in recent years of Hegelian studies a veritable spate of new translations have appeared of that philosopher’s works. For a long time we have had Wallace’s inimitable version of the lesser Logic and the main text of the Philosophy of Mind. We have had also Johnson and Struther’s translation of the greater Logic, Baillie’s Phenomenology, the History of Philosophy done by E. S. Haldane and The Philosophy of History by Sibree, not to mention various fragmentary editions (...) of the Introduction. Besides these there have been Sir Malcolm Knox’s excellent translations of the Rechtsphilosophie and, more recently, of Lectures on Aesthetics. But in the last few years A. V. Miller has given us a new and much improved version of the Science of Logic and the hitherto untranslated Philosophy of Nature as well as a new and revised edition of Wallace’s Encyclopaedia Logic and his Philosophy of Mind with the addition now of the Zusätze in English. At the same time another translation of the Naturphilosophie by Petry appeared, with voluminous historical and explanatory notes. Now attention is being given to the earlier works, and new translations have appeared, under the imprint of the State University of New York Press, of Hegel’s Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophic and Glauben und Wissen, by Walter Cerf and Henry S. Harris, supplementing the Early Theological Writings earlier provided by Knox and Kroner. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article considers the second treatise of Schelling's Abhandlungen zur Erläuterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre, a lesser-known work from the early Schelling. Here, Schelling proposes to defend the critical position insofar as it purports to be a system based on human reason, but instead he issues a backhanded critique of the assumption on behalf of the critical philosophers to try and limit the bounds of pure reason by means of their own use of reason. Schelling then offers an (...) alternative way to think about the relationship of mind and matter in nature. This article argues that Schelling's actual explanation of the critical philosophy as a position founded by reasonable minds ultimately belies his promise to defend it, thus calling into question that Schelling's thought prior to 1800 was a mere reiteration of Kantian/Fichtean transcendentalism. (shrink)

This is the first book to provide comprehensive coverage of the full range of philosophical writing in Britain in the eighteenth century. A team of experts provides new accounts of both major and lesser-known thinkers, and explores the diverse approaches in the period to logic and metaphysics, the passions, morality, criticism, and politics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionSchelling and the EnvironmentChelsea C. Harry (bio)Scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change is anthropogenic, caused by our greenhouse gas emissions.1 Given the evidence that exists, we should be able to convince ourselves to change the everyday behaviors resulting in these emissions. If we hope to save ourselves, other animals, plants, and the environment from a devastating future, then why would we continue to use fossil fuels?The answer here (...) is not an easy one. And yet, the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, provides us with a possible cause. In his most famous work on ethics,2 Aristotle argued that being weak-willed, suffering from what he called, “akrasia,” is the reason we do things that we know we shouldn’t do. It is a condition that results when desire wins over reason. For example, I eat a chocolate bar when I know I should eat a salad because my desire for chocolate wins over what I have reasoned to be best for my health. Simply put, reason might be what distinguishes us from other animals and plants, but it is not always our most powerful faculty. It stands both to experience and to reason, then, that rational decision might not be what is going to get us out of this climate crisis. Then, what is?In this special issue, we hear from five contemporary scholars of the 18th–19th century German philosopher, F.W.J. Schelling, an oft-called “protean thinker” whose prolific, sometimes creative, and diverse works spanned over seventy years. A onetime roommate of Hegel and Hölderlin, Schelling’s works are lesser-known outside specialist circles, and yet one finds that his prescient insights continue to have much to offer. This is especially true vis-à-vis the climate crisis, as Schelling was the first post-Kantian philosopher to take nature seriously. He eschewed the modern, Kantian, and post-Kantian trend to focus on [End Page 1] ipseity, the self, and on what we as humans can rationally know. Instead, he returned to metaphysics and argued for a wholistic conception and experience of life—all life. For Schelling, humans are rational as an expression of nature, rather than as an exception to nature. As John Sallis put it so well as he argued for the Platonic influence in Schelling: “For what Schelling rewrites within the text of modern philosophy is a discourse on nature.”3 Sallis then reminds us that in Schelling’s 1809 text, Philosophical Investigations of the Essence of Human Freedom (“Die Freiheitschrift”), he openly criticizes post-Cartesian philosophy generally for its exclusion of nature; “All modern European philosophy since it began with Descartes has this common defect, that nature does not exist for it and that it lacks a living ground.”4 Schelling’s intention was to resolve the defect, and because of his efforts in this regard, his work has something to say to us about our relationship to the environment.The idea to think about what Schelling can offer us in our current climate crisis is hardly new. In 2014, the North American Schelling Society (NASS), hosted by Bruce Matthews and Bard College, thematized its third international conference on “Schelling in the Anthropocene,” asking scholars to think beyond modern philosophy’s legacy of the human/nature divide and to discuss Schelling’s contribution to the anthropogenic environmental crisis we currently face. Since then, published work on this topic includes: Bruce Matthews’s, “Schelling in the Anthropocene,”5 Christopher Lauer’s, “Confronting the Anthropocene,” 6 and Vincent Lee’s, “Schelling and the Sixth Extinction.”7 Other journals have published special issues on related topics, including McGrath et al. Schelling After Theory special issue of Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, McGrath et al. The Many Faces of F.W.J. Schelling special issue of Analecta Hermeneutica, Tritten et al. Nature, Speculation, and the Return to Schelling special issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, and Bahoh, et al. Philosophies of Nature special issue of Comparative and Continental Philosophy. While this is by no means an exhaustive list, other contemporary thinkers who have been part of this conversation include: Kyla Bruff, Charlotte Alderwick, Manfred Frank, Markus Gabriel, Iain Grant,8 Lore... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HUME ON THE 'DISTINCTION OF REASON1* In a 1959 paper, Richard H. Popkin1 propounded what was then taken to be a most extraordinary thesis: Hume may never have read Berkeley. Popkin's paper marks the end of one of the stranger stories in the history of philosophy, the relationship of the British Empiricists — Locke, Berkeley, Hume — to one another. The thesis was hardly news either to Berkeley or (...) Hume scholars because for several decades in careful studies of the historical contexts and sources they had relied less and less on any theory about significant common themes. In this paper I rehearse the arguments against the "partnership" doctrine and then turn to some ways in which Berkeley and Hume differ over abstractionism and the 'distinction of reason'. Finally, I discuss George Davie's suggestion that this 'distinction' may belong to a very different side of Hume's thought. The linking of Locke with Berkeley is not a feature of early commentary on Berkeley. Berkeley was seen by his contemporaries as a product of Pierre Bayle's scepticism or of Malebranche's immaterialism.2 The work of A.A. Luce, and to a lesser extent, of T. E. Jessop, seeks to restore Berkeley to a place in those traditions and to reduce his indebtedness to Locke. The work of Hume scholars from Kemp Smith to Ardal, Davie, Norton, and Popkin all places Hume outside the direct Berkeley line. So far as the traditional epistemological picture was concerned, there was not enough internal evidence to support a Hume-Berkeley connection. The argument took a different turn when a new Hume letter came to light. Hume's letter to Michael Ramsay from Orleans is dated August 31, 1737. I desire of you, if you have Leizure, to read over La Recherche de la Vérité of Pere Malebranche, the Principles of 90 Human Knowledge by Dr Berkeley, some of the more metaphysical Articles of Bailes Dictionary; such as those /...of/ Zeno, & Spinoza. Des-Cartes Meditations wou'd also be useful....5 In 1973, Michael Morrisroe, Jr., surveyed the contributions of Wiener, Popkin, Mossner, Hall, Flew, and Conroy to the debate. Morrisroe takes the several Hume references to Berkeley as internal evidence that Hume read Berkeley. He then prints a new Hume letter to Michael Ramsay, dated "Rheims. Sepfc. 29 1734. N. S." A ten sentence letter, the eighth reads: "It is my Pleasure to read over again today Locke's Essays and the Principles of Human Knowledge by Dr. Berkeley which are printed in their original state and in French copy." Morrisroe explains in a footnote that he was granted permission to make a typescript of the letter, that it was sold at auction, and that its "present location... is unknown." In addition, he thanks six graduate students: "without their attention to bibliogaphical detail this letter might not have been made ready for publication until much later." But the bibliographical detail does not include telling us whether he saw the original or how the Hume authorship was established; nor does it include speculation on what Hume means in that eighth sentence. Did Hume find one book containing Locke and Berkeley in French and in English which he then read in one day? A bilingual Locke plus a bilingual Berkeley? Or can he mean an edition of Locke's Essay in French and an edition of Berkeley's Principles in English? That seems to be the least likely interpretation, unless the reference to Berkeley is a mere parenthetical afterthought, and Hume had his hands on Locke in English and French plus an English edition of Berkeley. Whatever this letter means, we know that Locke's Essay was available in Pierre Coste's translation. Berkeley is another story. The "Principles appeared in 1710. A revised edition, together with the Three Dialogues (also revised) was published in 1734. The first French edition appears to have been in 1889. The Three Dialogues first appeared in 1713 and the first French translation in 1750. The New Theory of Vision, first published in 1709, appeared together with the first edition of Alciphron in 1732. French translations appeared together in 1734. In any case, it can be granted, if only on... (shrink)

A recent organ distribution scandal in Germany raises questions of general importance on which many thousands of lives may well depend. The scandal in Germany has produced reactions that are likely to occur whenever and wherever distribution irregularities occur and become public knowledge. After it had become known that physicians in three German hospitals were in the habit of manipulating records in order to fast-track their patients’ cases, the country experienced a decrease of available organs by a staggering 40% in (...) October 2012. Even though this loss of trust by donors and their families is understandable, and potentially a legitimate form of protest against wrongful distribution, the withdrawal of agreement to serve as a posthumous donor in response to irregularities also inevitably results in avoidable poor outcomes for highly vulnerable individuals. In this paper, we provide a moral analysis of such dilemmas and make recommendations as to the way forward. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Principles of justice and equality demand that HIV seropositive individuals and those with AIDS should not be discriminated against in any area of social provision. If social policy on AIDS is constructed in terms of reciprocal obligations, that is if obligations to the HIV seropositive individual and obligations of the HIV seropositive individual are given equal weight, the civil rights of HIV seropositive individuals may be secured and this may create a climate in which HIV seropositive individuals will more (...) readily notify partners, and others at risk of infection, of their HIV status. It is conceivable that such a climate could facilitate greater control of the spread of HIV/aids. (shrink)

`Fundamentalism' is a label used often pejoratively of religious conservatism. Evangelicals are growing in number and power around the world and are frequently regarded as fundamentalist. This volume examines fundamentalism as a mentality which has greatly affected evangelicalism, but which some evangelicals now wish to leave behind.

We present evidence indicating new individual differences with people's intuitions about the relation of determinism to freedom and moral responsibility. We analysed participants' written explanations of why a person acted. Participants offered one of either 'decision' or 'causal' based explanations of behaviours in some paradigmatic cases. Those who gave causal explanations tended to have more incompatibilist intuitions than those who gave decision explanations. Importantly, the affective content of a scenario influenced the type of explanation given. Scenarios containing highly affective actions (...) (e.g. murder) tended to generate more decision explanations than scenarios with low affective content (e.g. cheating on taxes). These results give important clues about the proximal processes generating some intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. (shrink)

How do children acquire beliefs from testimony? In this chapter, we discuss children's trust in testimony, their sensitivity to and use of defeaters, and their appeals to positive reasons for trusting what other people tell them. Empirical evidence shows that, from an early age, children have a tendency to trust testimony. However, this tendency to trust is accompanied by sensitivity to cues that suggest unreliability, including inaccuracy of the message and characteristics of the speaker. Not only are children sensitive to (...) evidence of unreliability, but they are also sensitive to the positive reasons a speaker may have for the reliability of their testimony. This evidence is discussed in relation to reductivist and non-reductivist viewpoints. (shrink)

Empirically minded researchers (e.g., experimental philosophers) have begun exploring the “folk” notion of intentional action, often with surprising results. In this paper, we extend these lines of research and present new evidence from a radically new paradigm in experimental philosophy. Our results suggest that in some circumstances people make strikingly different judgments about intentions and intentionality as a function of whether the person brings about or observes an event. Implications for traditional action theory and the experimental study of folk intuitions (...) are discussed. (shrink)

It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person's will. Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to do this or that, men may also want to have certain desires and motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are. Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call "first-order desires" or "desires of the (...) first order," which are simply desires to do or not to do one thing or another. No animal other than man, however, appears to have the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in the formation of second-order desires. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Bioethics Genethics Medical Ethics.

Harry G. Frankfurt begins his inquiry by asking, “What is it about human beings that makes it possible for us to take ourselves seriously?” Based on The Tanner Lectures in Moral Philosophy, Taking Ourselves Seriously and Getting It Right delves into this provocative and original question. The author maintains that taking ourselves seriously presupposes an inward-directed, reflexive oversight that enables us to focus our attention directly upon ourselves, and “[it] means that we are not prepared to accept ourselves just (...) as we come. We want our thoughts, our feelings, our choices, and our behavior to make sense. We are not satisfied to think that our ideas are formed haphazardly, or that our actions are driven by transient and opaque impulses or by mindless decisions. We need to direct ourselves—or at any rate to believe that we are directing ourselves—in thoughtful conformity to stable and appropriate norms. We want to get things right.” The essays delineate two features that have a critical role to play in this: our rationality, and our ability to love. Frankfurt incisively explores the roles of reason and of love in our active lives, and considers the relation between these two motivating forces of our actions. The argument is that the authority of practical reason is less fundamental than the authority of love. Love, as the author defines it, is a volitional matter, that is, it consists in what we are actually committed to caring about. Frankfurt adds that “The object of love can be almost anything—a life, a quality of experience, a person, a group, a moral ideal, a nonmoral ideal, a tradition, whatever.” However, these objects and ideals are difficult to comprehend and often in conflict with each other. Moral principles play an important supporting role in this process as they help us develop and elucidate a vision that inspires our love. The first section of the book consists of the two lectures, which are entitled “Taking Ourselves Seriously” and “Getting It Right.” The second section consists of comments in response by Christine M. Korsgaard, Michael E. Bratman, and Meir Dan-Cohen. The book includes a preface by Debra Satz. (shrink)

Whenever the government makes medical resource allocation choices, there will be opportunity costs associated with those choices: some patients will have treatment and live longer, while a different group of patients will die prematurely. Because of this, we have to make sure that the benefits we get from investing in treatment A are large enough to justify the benefits forgone from not investing in the next best alternative, treatment B. There has been an increase in spending and reallocation of resources (...) during the COVID-19 pandemic that may have been warranted given the urgency of the situation. However, these actions do not bypass the opportunity cost principle although they can appear to in the short term, since spending increases cannot continue indefinitely and there are patient groups who lose out when resources are redirected to pandemic services. Therefore, policy-makers must consider who bears the cost of the displaced healthcare resources. Failure to do so runs a risk of reducing overall population health while disproportionally worsening health in socially disadvantaged groups. We give the example of ethnic minorities in England who already had the worst health and, due to structural injustices, were hardest hit by the pandemic and may stand to lose the most when services are reallocated to meet the resource demands of the crisis. How can we prevent this form of health inequity? Our proposal is forward-looking: we suggest that the government should invest our resources wisely while taking issues of equity into account–that is, introduce cost–equity analysis. (shrink)

Now that the collective death of mankind has become a possibility, no other thought can remain unimpaired. Harry Redner traces historically the onset of this acute state of Nihilism from what might be called the Faustian revolution, symbolized by Faust's pronouncement “In the beginning was the Deed.” Redner reflects on the passage of the three main Fausts, from Marlowe’s to Goethe’s to Thomas Mann’s, and this reflection serves as the dramatic metaphor for a review of the relationship of Progress (...) to Nihilism in modern civilization. Starting with an exposition of the key Faustian thinkers—Marx, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger—the book proceeds by examining the dominant modern ideas on Man, Time, and Nihilism with reference to Foucault, Derrida, and Althusser. It focuses on Language, which is a key preoccupation of all these thinkers but has not yet been taken far enough to afford a basis for the explanation of fundamental changes in civilization. Language in its creative and destructive functions, as constituting both the conscious and unconscious of a culture, is reconceived so as to account for the hidden link between Progress and Nihilism. The author then explores sociologically the dominant aspects of Progress in terms of the ideas of Weber, Adorno, and Marcuse on Technology, Subjectivity, and Activism. Finally, an extensive literary study of the three main Fausts concludes with a coda on the future of music. In the Beginning Was the Deed is lucid and direct, tinged with wry humor. Redner represent Man in the nuclear age and reflects on that representation, seeking to comprehend our era, draw ethical and political conclusions, and explore action as a response to the threat of annihilation. (shrink)