Contemporary ethical issues : a personalist perspective / Walter G. Jeffko.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jeffko, Walter G.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethical problems.

Personalism.

Physical Description:

448 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

Amherst, N.Y. : Humanity Books, 2008.

Summary:

This second edition of Contemporary Ethical Issues explores a series of compelling moral problems from a personalist perspective influenced by the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray (1891-1976). In his many books, articles, and pamphlets spanning fifty years, and most notably his Gifford Lectures titled "The Form of the Personal." Macmurray developed a robust personalism that emphasizes the primacy of persons as rational agents whose self-realization is achieved in a loving community where justice and individual rights are respected. From the background of a liberal Roman Catholic, Walter G. Jeffko utilizes key elements of Macmurray's thought in developing his own philosophical viewpoint, and he relates Macmurray's ideas to a wide variety of important philosophers, ethicists, and other notable thinkers, including ecologists.

In the opening chapters, Jeffko develops a theory of person, value, and ethics whose central ideas are: a conception of person as a communicative and rational agent: reason as the standard of value; instrumental, aesthetic, and moral value as the three basic modes of value; the principle of community as the supreme moral standard; and the principle of intentionality (which replaces the traditional principle of double effect and grounds the doing/allowing and voluntary/involuntary distinctions) as the main procedural focus guiding the application of the community principle.

In successive chapters, this theory is applied to many issues such as suicide, abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, euthanasia (including assisted suicide), punishment and the death penalty, privacy, private property and distributive justice, Nozick's libertarianism versus Plato's republic, democracy and capitalism. Rawls's political liberalism and religious faith, same-sex marriage and the family, the moral treatment of animals, affirmative action, and the global environmental crisis. Many recent Supreme Court decisions are discussed and evaluated, as is the presidency of George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Jeffko brings logical precision and a lucid style to the study of ethics, blending powerful scholarship with readability.

Contents:

Person, reason, and value

Moral value, intentionality, and community

Suicide and the right to die

Abortion, personhood, and community

Euthanasia : a reinterpretation

The death penalty and purposes of punishment

Privacy, private property, and justice

The personalist society, community, and justice

The moral treatment of animals

Affirmative action and justice

Community and the environmental crisis.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 403-422) and index.

ISBN:

9781591025702

1591025702

OCLC:

181862670