Handouts for Health Ethics

THOMAS AQUINAS
• also known as Thomas of Aquin or Aquino
• born ca. 1225; died 7 March 1274
• was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in the Dominican Order from Italy
• an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor
Angelicus and Doctor Communis
• He is frequently referred to as Thomas because "Aquinas" refers to his residence rather than his surname.
• proponent of natural theology
• father of the Thomistic school of philosophy and theology
• His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy was conceived as a reaction
against, or as an agreement with, his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law and political theory.
• model teacher for those studying for the priesthood.
• Best-known works are the Summa Theologica and the Summa Contra Gentiles.
• One of the 33 Doctors of the Church
• Church's greatest theologian and philosopher.
Biography
Early years and desire to become a Dominican (1225-1244)
• Aquinas was born c. 1225 out of his father Count Landulf's castle of Roccasecca in the Kingdom of Sicily, in
the present-day Lazio.
• Landulf's brother Sinibald was abbot of the original Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino.
• Through his mother, Theodora Countess of Theate, Aquinas was related to the Hohenstaufen dynasty of Holy
Roman emperors.
• At the age of five, Aquinas began his early education at Monte Cassino
• in early 1239, Aquinas enrolled at the studium generale (university) recently established by Frederick in Naples.
• It was here that Aquinas was probably introduced to Aristotle, Averroes and Maimonides, all of whom would
influence his theological philosophy.
• during his study at Naples, Aquinas came under the influence of John of St. Julian, a Dominican preacher in
Naples, who was part of the active effort by the Dominican order to recruit devout followers.
• his teacher in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music was Petrus de Ibernia.
• Thomas resolved to join the Dominican Order.
• In an attempt to prevent interference by Theodora in Aquinas' choice, the Dominicans arranged for Aquinas to
be removed to Rome, and from Rome, sent to Paris.
• On his way to Rome, his brothers seized him as he was drinking from a spring and took him back to his parents
at the castle of Monte San Giovanni Campano.
• He was held for two years in the family homes at Monte San Giovanni and Rocasecca in an attempt to prevent
him from assuming the Dominican habit and to push him into renouncing his new aspiration.
• By 1244, Aquinas was sent first to Naples and then to Rome to meet Johannes von Wildeshausen, the Master
General of the Dominican Order.
Paris, Cologne, Albert Magnus, and First Paris Regency (1245-1259)
• In 1245, Aquinas was sent to study at the University of Paris' Faculty of Arts where he most likely met
Dominican scholar Albertus Magnus.
• In 1248, Albertus was sent by his superiors to teach at the new studium generale at Cologne
• Aquinas followed him, declining Pope Innocent IV's offer to appoint him abbot of Monte Cassino as a
Dominican. Albertus then appointed the reluctant Aquinas magister studentium.

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 • Aquinas taught in Cologne as an apprentice professor, instructing students on the books of the Old Testament
and writing Literal Commentary on Isaiah, Commentary on Jeremiah and Commentary on
Lamentations.
• in 1252 he returned to Paris to study for the master's degree in theology.
• He lectured on the Bible as an apprentice professor, and upon becoming a bachelor of the Sentences, he
devoted his final three years of study to commenting on Peter Lombard's Sentences.
• Aquinas composed a massive commentary on the Sentences entitled Commentary on the Sentences. Aside
from his masters writings, he wrote On Being and Essence for his fellow Dominicans in Paris.
• 1256, Aquinas was appointed regent master in theology at Paris and one of his first works upon assuming this
office was Against Those Who Assail the Worship of God and Religion, defending the mendicant orders
which had come under attack by William of Saint-Amour.
• 1256 to 1259, Aquinas wrote numerous works, including: Disputed Questions on Truth, a collection of
twenty-nine disputed questions on aspects of faith and the human condition prepared for the public university
debates he presided over on Lent and Advent; Quodlibetal Questions, a collection of his responses to questions
posed to him by the academic audience; and both Commentary on Boethius's De trinitate and Commentary
on Boethius's De hebdomadibus, commentaries on the works of 6th century philosopher Anicius Manlius
Severinus Boethius.
• By the end of his regency, Aquinas was working on one of his most famous works, Summa contra Gentiles.
Naples, Orvieto, Rome, and Santa Sabina (1259-1269)
• 1259, Aquinas returned to Naples where he lived until he arrived in Orvieto around September 1261.
• In Orvieto, he was appointed conventual lector, in charge of the education of friars unable to attend a studium
generale.
• Aquinas completed his Summa contra Gentiles, and wrote the The Golden Chain.
• He also wrote the liturgy for the newly created feast of Corpus Christi and produced works for Pope Urban
IV concerning Greek Orthodox theology, e.g. Contra errores graecorum.
• 1265 he was ordered by the Dominicans to establish a studium for the Order in Rome at the priory of Santa
Sabina, which he did from 1265 until he was called back to Paris in 1268.
• he wrote a variety of other works like his unfinished Compendium Theologiae and Reply to Brother John of
Vercelli Regarding 108 Articles Drawn from the Work of Peter of Tarentaise.
• he conducted a series of important disputations on the power of God, which he compiled into his De potentia.
The Quarrelsome Second Paris Regency (1269-1272)
• 1268- 1272 the Dominican Order assigned Aquinas to be regent master at the University of Paris
• "Averroism" or "radical Aristotelianism" have arisen in universities.
• Aquinas wrote works, On the Unicity of Intellect, against the Averroists in which he blasts Averroism as
incompatible with Christian doctrine.
• he finished the second part of the Summa and wrote De virtutibus and De aeternitati mundi, the latter of
which dealt with controversial Averroist and Aristotelian beginninglessness of the universe.
• Bonaventure and John Peckham conspired to make his second regency much more difficult and troubled than
the first.
• William of Baglione accused Aquinas of encouraging Averroists, calling him the "blind leader of the blind".
Aquinas called these individuals the Grumblers.
• Aquinas was angered when he discovered Siger of Brabant teaching Averroistic interpretations of Aristotle to
Parisian students.
• 10 December 1270, the bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier, issued an edict condemning thirteen Aristotlelian
and Averroistic propositions as heretical and excommunicating anyone who continued to support them.
• Augustinians, were fearful that this introduction of Aristotelianism and the more extreme Averroism might
somehow contaminate the purity of the Christian faith.
• 1270 and 1272 Aquinas conducted a series of disputations between:On Virtues in General, On Cardinal
Virtues, On Hope.

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Final days (1272-1274)
• 1272 Aquinas took leave from the University of Paris
• He chose to establish the institution in Naples, and moved there to take his post as regent master.
• He took his time at Naples to work on the third part of the Summa
• 6 December 1273 Aquinas was celebrating the Mass of St Nicholas when he unexpectedly abandoned his
routine and refused to dictate to his socius Reginald of Piperno.
• Pope Gregory X convened the Second Council of Lyons to be held on 1 May 1274
• Aquinas' work for Pope Urban IV concerning the Greeks, Contra errores graecorum, was to be presented.
• He died on 7 March 1274 while giving commentary on the Song of Songs.
Condemnation of 1277 and Subsequent Canonization
• 1277,Etienne Tempier, issued the condemnation of 1270.
• This new condemnation was aimed to clarify that God's absolute power transcended any principles of logic that
Aristotle or Averroes might place on it.
• It contained a list of 219 propositions that the bishop had determined to violate the omnipotence of God, and
included in this list were twenty Thomistic propositions.
• In The Divine Comedy, Dante sees the glorified spirit of Aquinas in the Heaven of the Sun with the other great
exemplars of religious wisdom.
• Dante also asserts that Aquinas died by poisoning, on the order of Charles of Anjou Villani cites this belief,
and the Anonimo Fiorentino describes the crime and its motive.
• historian Ludovico Antonio Muratori reproduces the account made by one of Aquinas' friends, and this
version of the story gives no hint of foul play.
• Pope John XXII, pronounced Thomas a saint.
• 1567, Pope Pius V ranked the festival of St. Thomas Aquinas with those of the four great Latin fathers:
Ambrose, Augustine of Hippo, Jerome, and Gregory.
• It was not until the First Vatican Council that Thomas was elevated to the preeminent status of "teacher of
the church".
• 4 August 1879, Pope Leo XIII stated that Aquinas' theology was a definitive exposition of Catholic doctrine.
• Leo XIII also decreed that all Catholic seminaries and universities must teach Aquinas' doctrines, and where
Aquinas did not speak on a topic, the teachers were "urged to teach conclusions that were reconcilable with his
thinking.”
• 1880, Aquinas was declared patron of all Catholic educational establishments.
• His remains were placed in the Church of the Jacobins in Toulouse in 1369.
• Between 1789 and 1974, they were held in Basilique de Saint-Sernin, Toulouse.
• 1974, they were returned to the Church of the Jacobins
• Aquinas has two feast days. 28 January, the date of the translation of his relics to Toulouse.
• The General Roman Calendar of 1962 commemorates Aquinas on 7 March, his day of death.
Philosophy
• Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses — Aquinas's peripatetic axiom
• influence on subsequent Christian theology, Roman Catholic Church
• he stands as a vehicle and modifier of Aristotelianism, which he fused with the thought of Augustine.
• his most important and enduring work is the Summa Theologica, in which he expounds his systematic
theology of the quinquae viae.
Epistemology
• Aquinas believed "that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man needs divine help, that the
intellect may be moved by God to its act."
• human beings have the natural capacity to know many things without special divine revelation, even though
such revelation occurs from time to time, "especially in regard to faith."

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 • Aquinas was also an Aristotelian and an empiricist.
Revelation
• Aquinas believed that truth is known through reason (natural revelation) and faith (supernatural
revelation).
• Supernatural revelation has its origin in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and is made available through the
teaching of the prophets, summed up in Holy Scripture, and transmitted by the Magisterium, the sum of
which is called "Tradition".
• Natural revelation is the truth available to all people through their human nature; certain truths all men can
attain from correct human reasoning.
• In Aquinas' view, special revelation is equivalent to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
• The major theological components of Christianity, such as the Trinity and the Incarnation, are revealed in the
teachings of the Church and the Scriptures and may not otherwise be deduced.
• Supernatural revelation (faith) and natural revelation (reason) are complementary rather than contradictory
in nature, for they pertain to the same unity: truth.
Analogy
Aquinas noted three forms of descriptive language: univocal, analogical, and equivocal.
• Univocality is the use of a descriptor in the same sense when applied to two objects or groups of objects. For
instance, when the word "milk" is applied both to milk produced by cows and by any other female mammal.
• Analogy, Aquinas maintained, occurs when a descriptor changes some but not all of its meaning. For example,
the word "healthy" is analogical in that it applies both to a healthy person or animal (those that enjoy of good
health) and to some food or drink (if it is good for the health).
• Equivocation is the complete change in meaning of the descriptor and is an informal fallacy. For example,
when the word "bank" is applied to river banks and financial banks.
Ethics
Aquinas's ethics are based on the concept of "first principles of action." In his Summa Theologica, he wrote:
“Virtue denotes a certain perfection of a power. Now a thing's perfection is considered chiefly in regard to its end.
But the end of power is act. Wherefore power is said to be perfect, according as it is determinate to its act.”
Aquinas defined the four cardinal virtues as prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude. The cardinal virtues are natural
and revealed in nature, and they are binding on everyone. There are, however, three theological virtues: faith, hope, and
charity. These are supernatural and are distinct from other virtues in their object, namely, God:
“Now the object of the theological virtues is God Himself, Who is the last end of all, as surpassing the knowledge of
our reason. On the other hand, the object of the intellectual and moral virtues is something comprehensible to human
reason. Wherefore the theological virtues are specifically distinct from the moral and intellectual virtues.”
Furthermore, Aquinas distinguished four kinds of law: eternal, natural, human, and divine. Eternal law is the decree of God
that governs all creation. Natural law is the human "participation" in the eternal law and is discovered by reason.[54] Natural
law, of course, is based on "first principles":
“. . . this is the first precept of the law, that good is to be done and promoted, and evil is to be avoided. All other
precepts of the natural law are based on this . . .”
The desires to live and to procreate are counted by Aquinas among those basic (natural) human values on which all human
values are based. However, Aquinas was vehemently opposed to non-procreative sexual activity; not only did this lead him
to view masturbation, oral sex, and even coitus interruptus, as being worse than incest and rape, but also he condemned all
sexual positions other than the missionary position, on the assumption that they made conception more difficult.
Human law is positive law: the natural law applied by governments to societies. Divine law is the specially revealed law in
the scriptures.
Aquinas also greatly influenced Catholic understandings of mortal and venial sins.
Aquinas denied that human beings have any duty of charity to animals because they are not persons. Otherwise, it would be
unlawful to use them for food. But this does not give us license to be cruel to them, for "cruel habits might carry over into
our treatment of human beings."

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Theology
Aquinas viewed theology, or the sacred doctrine, as a science,[60] the raw material data of which consists of written
scripture and the tradition of the Catholic Church. These sources of data were produced by the self-revelation of God to
individuals and groups of people throughout history. Faith and reason, while distinct but related, are the two primary tools
for processing the data of theology. Aquinas believed both were necessary - or, rather, that the confluence of both was
necessary - for one to obtain true knowledge of God. Aquinas blended Greek philosophy and Christian doctrine by
suggesting that rational thinking and the study of nature, like revelation, were valid ways to understand truths pertaining to
God. According to Aquinas, God reveals himself through nature, so to study nature is to study God. The ultimate goals of
theology, in Aquinas’ mind, are to use reason to grasp the truth about God and to experience salvation through that truth.
Nature of God
Aquinas believed that the existence of God is neither obvious nor unprovable. In the Summa Theologica, he considered in
great detail five reasons for the existence of God. These are widely known as the quinquae viae, or the "Five Ways."
Concerning the nature of God, Aquinas felt the best approach, commonly called the via negativa, is to consider what God
is not. This led him to propose five statements about the divine qualities:
1. God is simple, without composition of parts, such as body and soul, or matter and form.
2. God is perfect, lacking nothing. That is, God is distinguished from other beings on account of God's complete
actuality.
3. God is infinite. That is, God is not finite in the ways that created beings are physically, intellectually, and
emotionally limited. This infinity is to be distinguished from infinity of size and infinity of number.
4. God is immutable, incapable of change on the levels of God's essence and character.
5. God is one, without diversification within God's self. The unity of God is such that God's essence is the same as
God's existence. In Aquinas's words, "in itself the proposition 'God exists' is necessarily true, for in it subject
and predicate are the same."
In this approach, he is following, among others, the Jewish philosopher Maimonides.
Nature of the Trinity
Aquinas argued that God, while perfectly united, also is perfectly described by Three Interrelated Persons. These three
persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are constituted by their relations within the essence of God. The Father generates the
Son (or the Word) by the relation of self-awareness. This eternal generation then produces an eternal Spirit "who enjoys the
divine nature as the Love of God, the Love of the Father for the Word."
This Trinity exists independently from the world. It transcends the created world, but the Trinity also decided to
communicate God's self and God's goodness to human beings. This takes place through the Incarnation of the Word in the
person of Jesus Christ and through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (indeed, the very essence of the Trinity itself) within
those who have experienced salvation by God.
Nature of Jesus Christ
In the Summa Theologica, Aquinas begins his discussion of Jesus Christ by recounting the biblical story of Adam and Eve
and by describing the negative effects of original sin. The purpose of Christ's Incarnation was to restore human nature by
removing "the contamination of sin", which humans cannot do by themselves. "Divine Wisdom judged it fitting that God
should become man, so that thus one and the same person would be able both to restore man and to offer satisfaction."
Aquinas argued against several specific contemporary and historical theologians who held differing views about Christ. In
response to Photinus, Aquinas stated that Jesus was truly divine and not simply a human being. Against Nestorius, who
suggested that Son of God was merely conjoined to the man Christ, Aquinas argued that the fullness of God was an integral
part of Christ's existence. However, countering Apollinaris' views, Aquinas held that Christ had a truly human (rational)
soul, as well. This produced a duality of natures in Christ. Aquinas argued against Eutyches that this duality persisted after
the Incarnation. Aquinas stated that these two natures existed simultaneously yet distinguishably in one real human body,
unlike the teachings of Manichaeus and Valentinus.
In short, "Christ had a real body of the same nature of ours, a true rational soul, and, together with these, perfect Deity."
Thus, there is both unity (in his one hypostasis) and diversity (in his two natures, human and Divine) in Christ.
Goal of human life
In Aquinas's thought, the goal of human existence is union and eternal fellowship with God. Specifically, this goal is
achieved through the beatific vision, an event in which a person experiences perfect, unending happiness by seeing the very
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essence of God. This vision, which occurs after death, is a gift from God given to those who have experienced salvation
and redemption through Christ while living on earth.
This ultimate goal carries implications for one's present life on earth. Aquinas stated that an individual's will must be
ordered toward right things, such as charity, peace, and holiness. He sees this as the way to happiness. Aquinas orders his
treatment of the moral life around the idea of happiness. The relationship between will and goal is antecedent in nature
"because rectitude of the will consists in being duly ordered to the last end [that is, the beatific vision]." Those who truly
seek to understand and see God will necessarily love what God loves. Such love requires morality and bears fruit in
everyday human choices.
Modern influence
Many modern ethicists both within and outside the Catholic Church (notably Philippa Foot and Alasdair MacIntyre) have
recently commented on the possible use of Aquinas's virtue ethics as a way of avoiding utilitarianism or Kantian "sense of
duty" (called deontology). Through the work of twentieth century philosophers such as Elizabeth Anscombe (especially in
her book Intention), Aquinas's principle of double effect specifically and his theory of intentional activity generally have
been influential.
It is remarkable that Aquinas's aesthetic theories, especially the concept of claritas, deeply influenced the literary practice
of modernist writer James Joyce, who used to extol Aquinas as being second only to Aristotle among Western
philosophers. The influence of Aquinas's aesthetics also can be found in the works of the Italian semiotician Umberto Eco,
who wrote an essay on aesthetic ideas in Aquinas (published in 1956 and republished in 1988 in a revised edition).
The Eastern Orthodox Church has had a complex relationship with Aquinas' work. For a long time, Aquinas and scholastic
or schoolbook theology was a standard part of the education of Orthodox seminarians. His philosophy found a strong
advocate in the person of at least one Patriarch of Constantinople, Gennadius Scholarius. However, in the twentieth
century, there was a reaction against this "Latin captivity" of the Orthodox theology (Georges Florovsky), and Orthodox
writers have emphasized the otherness of Scholasticism.
The pioneer of neurodynamics, cognitive neuroscientist Walter Freeman, considers the work of Aquinas important in
modeling intentionality, the directedness of the mind toward what it is aware of.

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 IMMANUEL KANT

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Immanuel Kant (German pronunciation: [ɪˈmanuɛl kant]; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was an 18th-century
German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He is regarded as one of the most
influential thinkers of modern Europe and of the late Enlightenment.

Kant created a new widespread perspective in philosophy which influenced philosophy through to the 21st Century. He
also published important works of epistemology, as well as works relevant to religion, law, and history. One of his most
prominent works is the Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation into the limitations and structure of reason itself. It
encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics and epistemology, and highlights Kant's own contribution to these areas.
The other main works of his maturity are the Critique of Practical Reason, which concentrates on ethics, and the Critique
of Judgment, which investigates aesthetics and teleology.

Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can
be reformed through epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources and limits of human knowledge we can
ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of
that object. He concluded that all objects about which the mind can think must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore
if the mind can think only in terms of causality – which he concluded that it does – then we can know prior to experiencing
them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it is possible that
there are objects of such nature which the mind cannot think, and so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be
applied outside of experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause.
And so the grand questions of speculative metaphysics cannot be answered by the human mind, but the sciences are firmly
grounded in laws of the mind.

Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists and the rationalists. The empiricists believed
that knowledge is acquired through experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to
Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without
applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being
subsumed under pure reason.

Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the
rationalists and empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer each saw themselves as
correcting and expanding the Kantian system, thus bringing about various forms of German idealism. Kant continues to be
a major influence on philosophy, influencing both analytic and continental philosophy.

Biography

Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, the capital of Prussia at that time, today the city of Kaliningrad in the
Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast. He was the fourth of eleven children (five of them reached adulthood). Baptized
'Emanuel', he changed his name to 'Immanuel' after learning Hebrew. In his entire life, he never traveled more than a
hundred miles from Königsberg. His father Johann Georg Kant (1682–1746) was a German craftsman from Memel, at the
time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipėda, Lithuania). His mother Anna Regina Porter (1697–1737), born in
Nuremberg Regina Dorothea Reuter, was German, the daughter of a Scottish saddle maker. Johann Georg Kant was born
in Memel, a harness maker like his grandfather (who had emigrated from Scotland) and his great grandfather before him.
Kant's grandfather immigrated from Scotland to East Prussia and even his father spelled their family name "Cant." In his
youth, Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student. He was raised in a Pietist household that stressed intense religious
devotion, personal humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. Consequently, Kant received a stern education – strict,
punitive, and disciplinary – that preferred Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science.

The Young Scholar

Kant showed a great aptitude to study at an early age. He was first sent to Collegium Fredericianum and then enrolled at
the University of Königsberg (where he would spend his entire career) in 1740, at the age of 16. He studied the philosophy
of Leibniz and Wolff under Martin Knutzen, a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in British philosophy

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and science and who introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Newton. Knutzen dissuaded Kant from the
theory of pre-established harmony, which he regarded as "the pillow for the lazy mind". He also dissuaded the young
scholar from idealism, which was negatively regarded by most philosophers in the 18th century. The theory of
transcendental idealism that Kant developed in the "Critique of Pure Reason" is not traditional idealism, i.e. the idea that
reality is purely mental. In fact, Kant produced arguments against traditional idealism in the second part of the "Critique of
Pure Reason". His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant became a private tutor in the
smaller towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly research. 1749 saw the publication of his first
philosophical work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces.

Kant is best known for his transcendental idealist philosophy that time and space are not materially real but merely the
ideal a priori (derived from principle without factual support) condition of our internal intuition. But what is not well
known is that Kant is responsible for an important astronomical discovery, namely the discovery of the retardation of the
rotation of the Earth, for which he won the Berlin Academy Prize in 1754. Even more importantly, from this Kant
concluded that time is not a thing in itself determined from experience, objects, motion, and change, but rather an illusion
of the human mind that preconditions possible experience.

According to Lord Kelvin:

"Kant pointed out in the middle of last century, what had not previously been discovered by mathematicians or
physical astronomers, that the frictional resistance against tidal currents on the earth's surface must cause a
diminution of the earth's rotational speed. This immense discovery in Natural Philosophy seems to have attracted
little attention,--indeed to have passed quite unnoticed, --among mathematicians, and astronomers, and naturalists,
until about 1840, when the doctrine of energy began to be taken to heart." -- Lord Kelvin, physicist, 1897

He became a university lecturer in 1755. The subject on which he lectured was "Metaphysics"; the course textbook was
written by A.G. Baumgarten.

According to Thomas Huxley:

"The sort of geological speculation to which I am now referring (geological aetiology, in short) was created as a
science by that famous philosopher, Immanuel Kant, when, in 1775, he wrote his General Natural History and Theory
of the Celestial Bodies; or, an Attempt to Account for the Constitutional and Mechanical Origin of the Universe,
upon Newtonian Principles." -- Thomas H. Huxley, 1869

In the General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels)
(1755), Kant laid out the Nebular hypothesis, in which he deduced that the Solar System formed from a large cloud of gas,
a nebula. He thus attempted to explain the order of the solar system, seen previously by Newton as being imposed from the
beginning by God. Kant also correctly deduced that the Milky Way was a large disk of stars, which he theorized also
formed from a (much larger) spinning cloud of gas. He further suggested the possibility that other nebulae might also be
similarly large and distant disks of stars. These postulations opened new horizons for astronomy: for the first time
extending astronomy beyond the solar system to galactic and extragalactic realms.

From this point on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he continued to write on the sciences
throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the
Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following year: Attempt to
Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a
Demonstration of the Existence of God. In 1764, Kant wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and
then was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the
Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often referred to as "the Prize Essay"). In 1770, at the age
of 45, Kant was finally appointed Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Königsberg. Kant wrote his
Inaugural Dissertation in defence of this appointment. This work saw the emergence of several central themes of his
mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity. Not to observe
this distinction would mean to commit the error of subreption, and, as he says in the last chapter of the dissertation, only in
avoidance of this error will metaphysics flourish.

The issue that vexed Kant was central to what twentieth century scholars termed "the philosophy of mind." The flowering
of the natural sciences had led to an understanding of how data reaches the brain. Sunlight may fall upon a distant object,
whereupon light is reflected from various parts of the object in a way that maps the surface features (color, texture, etc.) of
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the object. The light reaches the eye of a human observer, passes through the cornea, is focused by the lens upon the retina
where it forms an image similar to that formed by light passing through a pinhole into a camera obscura. The retinal cells
next send impulses through the optic nerve and thereafter they form a mapping in the brain of the visual features of the
distant object. The interior mapping is not the exterior thing being mapped, and our belief that there is a meaningful
relationship between the exterior object and the mapping in the brain depends on a chain of reasoning that is not fully
grounded. But the uncertainty aroused by these considerations, the uncertainties raised by optical illusions, misperceptions,
delusions, etc., are not the end of the problems.

Kant saw the mind could not function as an empty container that simply receives data from the outside. Something had to
be giving order to the incoming data. Images of external objects have to be kept in the same sequence in which they were
received. This ordering occurs through the mind's intuition of time. The same considerations apply to the mind's function
of constituting space for ordering mappings of visual and tactile signals arriving via the already described chains of
physical causation.

The Silent Decade

At the age of 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher. Much was expected of him.
In response to a letter from his student, Markus Herz, Kant came to recognize that in the Inaugural Dissertation, he had
failed to account for the relation and connection between our sensible and intellectual faculties, i.e., he needed to explain
both how humans acquire data and how they process data—related but very different processes. He also credited David
Hume with awakening him from "dogmatic slumber" (circa 1770). Kant did not publish any work in philosophy for the
next eleven years.

Kant spent his silent decade working on a solution to the problem mentioned above. Although fond of company and
conversation with others, Kant isolated himself. He resisted friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. In 1778, in
response to one of these offers by a former pupil, Kant wrote "Any change makes me apprehensive, even if it offers the
greatest promise of improving my condition, and I am persuaded by this natural instinct of mine that I must take heed if I
wish that the threads which the Fates spin so thin and weak in my case to be spun to any length. My great thanks, to my
well-wishers and friends, who think so kindly of me as to undertake my welfare, but at the same time a most humble
request to protect me in my current condition from any disturbance."

When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason. Although now uniformly
recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, this Critique was largely ignored upon its initial
publication. The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in what some considered a
convoluted style. It received few reviews, and these granted no significance to the work. Its density made it, as Johann
Gottfried Herder put it in a letter to Johann Georg Hamann, a "tough nut to crack," obscured by "…all this heavy
gossamer." Its reception stood in stark contrast, to the praise Kant had received for earlier works such as his "Prize Essay"
and other shorter works that precede the first Critique. These well-received and readable tracts include one on the
earthquake in Lisbon which was so popular that it was sold by the page. Prior to the change in course documented in the
first Critique, his books sold well, and by the time he published Observations On the Feeling of the Beautiful and the
Sublime in 1764 he had become a popular author of some note. Kant was disappointed with the first Critique's reception.
Recognizing the need to clarify the original treatise, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as a
summary of its main views. He also encouraged his friend, Johann Schultz, to publish a brief commentary on the Critique
of Pure Reason.

Kant's reputation gradually rose through the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the 1784 essay, "Answer to the
Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (his first work on moral philosophy);
and, from 1786, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected
source. In 1786, Karl Reinhold began to publish a series of public letters on the Kantian philosophy. In these letters,
Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the Pantheism Dispute.
Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently deceased G. E. Lessing (a distinguished dramatist and philosophical essayist) of
Spinozism. Such a charge, tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Moses Mendelssohn, and a
bitter public dispute arose among partisans. The controversy gradually escalated into a general debate over the values of
the Enlightenment and the value of reason itself. Reinhold maintained in his letters that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
could settle this dispute by defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were widely read and made
Kant the most famous philosopher of his era.

Kant's Early Work

9
A variety of popular beliefs have arisen concerning Kant's life. It is often held, for instance, that Kant was a late bloomer,
that he only became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant
wrote his greatest works relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value of his earlier works. Recent
Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with
his mature work.

Many of the common myths concerning Kant's personal mannerisms are enumerated, explained, and refuted in
Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. It is often held
that Kant lived a very strict and predictable life, leading to the oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by
his daily walks.

Kant's later work

Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft) in 1787, heavily revising the
first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his
moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797’s Metaphysics
of Morals. The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology. He
also wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics. These works were well received
by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status in eighteenth century philosophy. There were several
journals devoted solely to defending and criticizing the Kantian philosophy. But despite his success, philosophical trends
were moving in another direction. Many of Kant's most important disciples (including Reinhold, Beck and Fichte)
transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical forms of idealism. The progressive stages of revision of Kant's
teachings marked the emergence of German Idealism. Kant opposed these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in
an open letter in 1799. It was one of his final philosophical acts. In 1800, a student of Kant, named Gottlob Benjamin
Jäsche, published a manual of logic for teachers called Logik, which he had prepared at the request of Kant. Jäsche
prepared the Logik using a copy of a text book in logic by Georg Freidrich Meier entitled Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, in
which Kant had written copious notes and annotations. The Logik has been considered to be of fundamental importance to
Kant's philosophy, and the understanding of it. For, the great nineteenth century logician Charles Sanders Peirce remarked,
in an incomplete review of Thomas Kingsmill Abbott's English translation of the introduction to the Logik, that "Kant's
whole philosophy turns upon his logic." Also, Robert Schirokauer Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz, wrote in the
translators' introduction to their English translation of the Logik, "Its importance lies not only in its significance for the
Critique of Pure Reason, the second part of which is a restatement of fundamental tenets of the Logic, but in its position
within the whole of Kant's work." Kant's health, long poor, took a turn for the worse and he died at Königsberg on 12
February 1804 uttering "Genug" [enough] before expiring. His unfinished final work, the fragmentary Opus Postumum,
was (as its title suggests) published posthumously.

Kant never concluded that one could form a coherent account of the universe and of human experience without grounding
such an account in the "thing in itself." Many of those who followed him argued that since the "thing in itself" was
unknowable its existence could not simply be assumed. Rather than arbitrarily switching to an account that was
ungrounded in anything supposed to be the "real," as did the German Idealists, another group arose to ask how our
(generally reliable) accounts of a coherent and rule-abiding universe were actually grounded. This new kind of philosophy
became known as Phenomenology, and its preeminent spokesman was Edmund Husserl

Kant's philosophy

In Kant's essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?," Kant defined the Enlightenment as an age shaped by
the Latin motto Sapere aude ("Dare to Know"). Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates
of external authority. His work reconciled many of the differences between the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the
18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work
has also been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers.

Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really
know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of society and morality, Kant asserted, people are
reasonably justified in believing in them, even though they could never know for sure whether they are real or not. He
explained:

“All the preparations of reason, therefore, in what may be called pure philosophy, are in reality directed to those three
problems only [God, the soul, and freedom]. However, these three elements in themselves still hold independent,
10
 proportional, objective weight individually. Moreover, in a collective relational context; namely, to know what ought
to be done: if the will is free, if there is a God, and if there is a future world. As this concerns our actions with
reference to the highest aims of life, we see that the ultimate intention of nature in her wise provision was really, in
the constitution of our reason, directed to moral interests only. ”

The sense of an enlightened approach and the critical method required that "If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try
to prove that it is not. And if he succeeds in doing neither (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to
accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Hence the
question no longer is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether we may not be
deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposition of its being real." The
presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was then a practical concern, for "Morality, by itself, constitutes a system, but
happiness does not, unless it is distributed in exact proportion to morality. This, however, is possible in an intelligible
world only under a wise author and ruler. Reason compels us to admit such a ruler, together with life in such a world,
which we must consider as future life, or else all moral laws are to be considered as idle dreams…"

The two interconnected foundations of what Kant called his "critical philosophy" that created the "Copernican revolution"
that he claimed to have wrought in philosophy were his epistemology of Transcendental Idealism and his moral philosophy
of the autonomy of practical reason. These teachings placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive
and moral worlds. With regard to knowledge, Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science could
never be accounted for merely by the fortuitous accumulation of sense perceptions. It was instead the product of the rule-
based activity of "synthesis." This activity consisted of conceptual unification and integration carried out by the mind
through concepts or the "categories of the understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time,
which are not concepts, but are forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus
the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it are dependent upon the mind. There is wide
disagreement among Kant scholars on the correct interpretation of this train of thought. The 'two-world' interpretation
regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological limitation, that we are never able to transcend the bounds of our
own mind, meaning that we cannot access the "thing-in-itself". Kant, however, also speaks of the thing in itself or
transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from
the conditions of sensibility. Following this line of thought, some interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not
represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alone – this
is known as the two-aspect view. With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything
outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will is one that
acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law
obliges one to treat humanity – understood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as others – as an end
in itself rather than (merely) as means to other ends the individual might hold.

These ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis. The specifics of Kant's
account generated immediate and lasting controversy. Nevertheless, his theses – that the mind itself necessarily makes a
constitutive contribution to its knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather than psychological, that
philosophy involves self-critical activity, that morality is rooted in human freedom, and that to act autonomously is to act
according to rational moral principles – have all had a lasting effect on subsequent philosophy.

Moral philosophy

Kant developed his moral philosophy in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Critique of
Practical Reason (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (1797) .

In the Groundwork, Kant's method involves trying to convert our everyday, obvious, rational knowledge of morality into
philosophical knowledge. The latter two works followed a method of using "practical reason", which is based only upon
things about which reason can tell us, and not deriving any principles from experience, to reach conclusions which are able
to be applied to the world of experience (in the second part of The Metaphysic of Morals).

Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the "Categorical Imperative", and is
derived from the concept of duty. Kant defines the demands of the moral law as "categorical imperatives." Categorical
imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed in all
situations and circumstances if our behavior is to observe the moral law. It is from the Categorical Imperative that all other
moral obligations are generated, and by which all moral obligations can be tested. Kant also stated that the moral means
and ends can be applied to the categorical imperative, that rational beings can pursue certain "ends" using the appropriate
11
"means." Ends that are based on physical needs or wants will always give for merely hypothetical imperatives. The
categorical imperative, however, may be based only on something that is an "end in itself". That is, an end that is a means
only to itself and not to some other need, desire, or purpose. He believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself,
and is not based on contingent facts about the world, such as what would make us happy, but to act upon the moral law
which has no other motive than "worthiness of being happy". Accordingly, he believed that moral obligation applies to all
and only rational agents.

A categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; that is, it has the force of an obligation regardless of our will or
desires (Contrast this with hypothetical imperative) In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) Kant enumerated
three formulations of the categorical imperative which he believed to be roughly equivalent:

Kant believed that if an action is not done with the motive of duty, then it is without moral value. He thought that every
action should have pure intention behind it; otherwise it was meaningless. He did not necessarily believe that the final
result was the most important aspect of an action, but that how the person felt while carrying out the action was the time at
which value was set to the result.

In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant also posited the "counter-utilitarian idea that there is a difference
between preferences and values and that considerations of individual rights temper calculations of aggregate utility", a
concept that is an axiom in economics:

Everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the
other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the
condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic
worth, i.e., a dignity.

A phrase quoted by Kant, which is used to summarize the counter-utilitarian nature of his moral philosophy, is Fiat
justitia, pereat mundus, ("Let justice be done, though the world perish"), which he translates loosely as "Let justice reign
even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it". This appears in his 1795 Perpetual Peace (Zum ewigen Frieden.
Ein philosophischer Entwurf.)

The first formulation

The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) of the moral imperative "requires that the maxims be chosen as though
they should hold as universal laws of nature." This formulation in principle has as its supreme law the creed "Always act
according to that maxim whose universality as a law you can at the same time will" and is the "only condition under which
a will can never come into conflict with itself...."

One interpretation of the first formulation is called the "universalisability test". An agent's maxim, according to Kant, is his
"subjective principle of human actions": that is, what the agent believes is his reason to act. The universalisability test has
five steps:

1. Find the agent's maxim (i.e., an action paired with its motivation). Take for example the declaration "I will lie
for personal benefit." Lying is the action; the motivation is to fulfill some sort of desire. Paired together, they
form the maxim.

2. Imagine a possible world in which everyone in a similar position to the real-world agent followed that maxim.

3. Decide whether any contradictions or irrationalities arise in the possible world as a result of following the
maxim.

4. If a contradiction or irrationality arises, acting on that maxim is not allowed in the real world.

5. If there is no contradiction, then acting on that maxim is permissible, and in some instances required.

The second formulation

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The second formulation (or Formula of the End in Itself) holds that "the rational being, as by its nature an end and thus as
an end in itself, must serve in every maxim as the condition restricting all merely relative and arbitrary ends." The principle
dictates that you "[a]ct with reference to every rational being (whether yourself or another) so that it is an end in itself in
your maxim", meaning that the rational being is "the basis of all maxims of action" and "must be treated never as a mere
means but as the supreme limiting condition in the use of all means, i.e., as an end at the same time."

The third formulation

The third formulation (Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the first two and is the basis for the "complete
determination of all maxims". It says "that all maxims which stem from autonomous legislation ought to harmonize with a
possible realm of ends as with a realm of nature." In principle, "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as
the universal law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as "a member in
the universal realm of ends", legislating universal laws through our maxims (Code of Conduct), in a "possible realm of
ends."

Idea of God

Kant stated the practical necessity for a belief in God in his Critique of Practical Reason. As an idea of pure reason, "we do
not have the slightest ground to assume in an absolute manner… the object of this idea…", but adds that the idea of God
cannot be separated from the relation of happiness with morality as the "ideal of the supreme good." The foundation of this
connection is an intelligible moral world, and "is necessary from the practical point of view" (compare Voltaire: "If God
did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.") In the Jäsche Logic (1800) he wrote "One cannot provide objective
reality for any theoretical idea, or prove it, except for the idea of freedom, because this is the condition of the moral law,
whose reality is an axiom. The reality of the idea of God can only be proved by means of this idea, and hence only with a
practical purpose, i.e., to act as though there is a God, and hence only for this purpose".

Along with this idea over reason and God, Kant places thought over religion and nature, i.e. the idea of religion being
natural or naturalistic. Kant saw reason as natural, and as some part of Christianity is based on reason and morality, as Kant
points out this is major in the scriptures, it is inevitable that Christianity is 'natural'. However, it is not 'naturalistic' in the
sense that the religion does include supernatural or transcendent belief. Aside from this, a key point is that Kant saw that
the Bible should be seen as a source of natural morality no matter whether there is/was any truth behind the supernatural
factor. Meaning that it is not necessary to know whether the supernatural part of Christianity has any truth to abide by and
use the core Christian moral code.

Kant articulates in Book Four some of his strongest criticisms of the organization and practices of Christianity that
encourage what he sees as a religion of counterfeit service to God. Among the major targets of his criticism are external
ritual, superstition and a hierarchical church order. He sees all of these as efforts to make oneself pleasing to God in ways
other than conscientious adherence to the principle of moral rightness in the choice of one's actions. The severity of Kant's
criticisms on these matters, along with his rejection of the possibility of theoretical proofs for the existence of God and his
philosophical re-interpretation of some basic Christian doctrines, have provided the basis for interpretations that see Kant
as thoroughly hostile to religion in general and Christianity in particular.

Idea of freedom

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between the transcendental idea of freedom, which as a psychological
concept is "mainly empirical" and refers to "the question whether we must admit a power of spontaneously beginning a
series of successive things or states" as a real ground of necessity in regard to causality, and the practical concept of
freedom as the independence of our will from the "coercion" or "necessitation through sensuous impulses." Kant finds it a
source of difficulty that the practical concept of freedom is founded on the transcendental idea of freedom, but for the sake
of practical interests uses the practical meaning, taking "no account of… its transcendental meaning", which he feels was
properly "disposed of" in the Third Antinomy, and as an element in the question of the freedom of the will is for
philosophy "a real stumbling-block" that has "embarrassed speculative reason".

Kant calls practical "everything that is possible through freedom", and the pure practical laws that are never given through
sensuous conditions but are held analogously with the universal law of causality are moral laws. Reason can give us only
the "pragmatic laws of free action through the senses", but pure practical laws given by reason a priori dictate "what ought
to be done".

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Influence

The vastness of Kant's influence on Western thought is immeasurable. Over and above his specific influence on specific
thinkers, Kant changed the framework within which philosophical inquiry has been carried out from his day through the
present in ways that have been irreversible. In other words, he accomplished a paradigm shift: very little philosophy since
Kant has been carried out as an extension of pre-Kantian philosophy or in the mode of thought and discourse of pre-
Kantian philosophy. This shift consists in several closely related innovations that have become axiomatic to post-Kantian
thought, both in philosophy itself and in the social sciences and humanities generally:

• Kant's "Copernican revolution", that placed the role of the human subject or knower at the center of inquiry into
our knowledge, such that it is impossible to philosophize about things as they are independently of us or of how
they are for us;

• his invention of critical philosophy, that is of the notion of being able to discover and systematically explore
possible inherent limits to our ability to know through philosophical reasoning;

• his creation of the concept of "conditions of possibility", as in his notion of "the conditions of possible
experience" – that is that things, knowledge, and forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them
possible, so that to understand or know them we have to first understand these conditions;

• his theory that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind;

• his notion of moral autonomy as central to humanity;

• his assertion of the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as means.

Some or all of these Kantian ideas can be seen in schools of thought as different from one another as German Idealism,
Marxism, positivism, phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, linguistic philosophy, structuralism, post-
structuralism, and deconstructionism. Kant's influence also has extended to the social and behavioral sciences, as in the
sociology of Max Weber, the psychology of Jean Piaget, and the linguistics of Noam Chomsky. Because of the
thoroughness of the Kantian paradigm shift, his influence extends even to thinkers who do not specifically refer to his work
or use his terminology.

During his own life, there was a considerable amount of attention paid to his thought, much of it critical, though he did
have a positive influence on Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Novalis during the 1780s and 1790s. The
philosophical movement known as German Idealism developed from Kant's theoretical and practical writings. The German
Idealists Fichte and Schelling, for example, attempted to bring traditionally "metaphysically" laden notions like "the
Absolute," "God," or "Being" into the scope of Kant's critical philosophy. In so doing, the German Idealists attempted to
reverse Kant's establishment of the unknowableness of unexperiencable ideas.

Hegel was one of the first major critics of Kant's philosophy. Hegel thought Kant's moral philosophy was too formal,
abstract and ahistorical. In response to Kant's abstract and formal account of morality, Hegel developed an ethics that
considered the "ethical life" of the community. But Hegel's notion of "ethical life" is meant to subsume, rather than replace,
Kantian "morality." And Hegel's philosophical work as a whole can be understood as attempting to defend Kant's
conception of freedom as going beyond finite "inclinations," by means of reason. Thus, in contrast to later critics like
Friedrich Nietzsche or Bertrand Russell, Hegel shares some of Kant's most basic concerns.

Many British Roman Catholic writers, notably G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, seized on Kant and promoted his work,
with a view to restoring the philosophical legitimacy of a belief in God. Reaction against this, and an attack on Kant's use
of language, is found in Ronald Englefield's article, Kant as Defender of the Faith in Nineteenth-century England,
reprinted in Critique of Pure Verbiage, Essays on Abuses of Language in Literary, Religious, and Philosophical Writings.
These criticisms of Kant were common in the anti-idealistic arguments of the logical positivism school and its admirers.

Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism. He, like G. E. Schulze, Jacobi and Fichte
before him, was critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Things in themselves, they argued, are neither the cause of

14
our representations nor are they something completely beyond our access. For Schopenhauer things in themselves do not
exist independently of the non-rational will. The world, as Schopenhauer would have it, is the striving and largely
unconscious will.

With the success and wide influence of Hegel's writings, Kant's influence began to wane, though there was in Germany a
brief movement that hailed a return to Kant in the 1860s, beginning with the publication of Kant und die Epigonen in 1865
by Otto Liebmann, whose motto was "Back to Kant". During the turn of the 20th century there was an important revival of
Kant's theoretical philosophy, known as Marburg Neo-Kantianism, represented in the work of Hermann Cohen, Paul
Natorp, Ernst Cassirer, and anti-Neo-Kantian Nicolai Hartmann.

Jurgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral philosophers whose work is strongly influenced
by Kant's moral philosophy. They both, regardless of recent relativist trends in philosophy, have argued that universality is
essential to any viable moral philosophy.

With his Perpetual Peace, Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many of the ideas that have come to form the
democratic peace theory, one of the main controversies in political science.

Kant's notion of "Critique" or criticism has been quite influential. The Early German Romantics, especially Friedrich
Schlegel in his "Athenaeum Fragments", used Kant's self-reflexive conception of criticism in their Romantic theory of
poetry. Also in Aesthetics, Clement Greenberg, in his classic essay "Modernist Painting", uses Kantian criticism, what
Greenberg refers to as "immanent criticism", to justify the aims of Abstract painting, a movement Greenberg saw as aware
of the key limitiaton—flatness—that makes up the medium of painting.

Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of synthetic a priori knowledge, which means they are necessary and
universal, yet known through intuition. Kant’s often brief remarks about mathematics influenced the mathematical school
known as intuitionism, a movement in philosophy of mathematics opposed to Hilbert’s formalism, and the logicism of
Frege and Bertrand Russell.

Kant's work on mathematics and synthetic a priori knowledge is also cited by theoretical physicist Albert Einstein as an
early influence on his intellectual development.

Post-Kantian philosophy has yet to return to the style of thinking and arguing that characterized much of philosophy and
metaphysics before Kant, although many British and American philosophers have preferred to trace their intellectual
origins to Hume, thus bypassing Kant. The British philosopher P. F. Strawson is a notable exception, as is the American
philosopher Wilfrid Sellars.

Due in part to the influence of Strawson and Sellars, among others, there has been a renewed interest in Kant's view of the
mind. Central to many debates in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science is Kant's conception of the unity of
consciousness.

The Emmanuel Kants, a drinking society at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, take their name from this eminent figure in
Western philosophy.

In a Monty Python sketch, Immanuel Kant is featured as part of the starting lineup of a German soccer team composed
entirely of Philosophers.

15
 W. D. ROSS

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir (William) David Ross KBE (15 April 1877 – 5 May 1971) was a Scottish philosopher, known for work in ethics. His
best known work is The Right and the Good (1930), and he is perhaps best known for developing a pluralist, deontological
form of intuitionist ethics in response to G.E. Moore's intuitionism. However, Ross also translated a number of Aristotle's
works, and wrote on Greek philosophy.

Life

William David Ross was born in Thurso, Caithness in the north of Scotland. He spent most of his first six years as a child
in southern India. He was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh. In 1895, he
gained a first class MA degree in classics. He completed his studies at Balliol College, Oxford and gained a lectureship at
Oriel College in 1900, followed by a fellowship in 1902.

Ross joined the army in 1915. During World War I he worked in the Ministry of munitions and was a major on the special
list. He received the Order of the British Empire for this work. In 1938 he was knighted.

Ross was White's Professor of Moral Philosophy (1923–1928), Provost of Oriel College, Oxford (1929–1947), Vice-
Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1941 to 1944 and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (1944–1947). He was president of the
Aristotelian Society from 1939 to 1940.

He married Edith Ogden in 1906 and they had four daughters, Margaret, Rosalind, Eleanor and Katharine. Edith died in
1953 and he died in Oxford in 1971.

Ross's ethical theory

W.D. Ross was a moral realist, a non-naturalist, and an intuitionist. He argued that there are moral truths. He wrote:

The moral order...is just as much part of the fundamental nature of the universe (and...of any possible universe in which
there are moral agents at all) as is the spatial or numerical structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic.

Thus, according to Ross, the claim that something is good is true if that thing really is good. Ross also agreed with G.E.
Moore's claim that any attempt to define ethical statements solely in terms of statements about the natural world commits
the naturalistic fallacy.

Ross rejected Moore's consequentialist ethics. According to consequentialist theories, what people ought to do is
determined only by whether their actions will bring about the most good. By contrast, Ross argues that maximising the
good is only one of several prima facie obligations which play a role in determining what a person ought to do in any given
case.

Ross gives a list of seven prima facie obligations, which he does not claim is all-inclusive: fidelity; reparation; gratitude;
non-maleficence; justice; beneficence; and self-improvement. In any given situation, any number of these prima facie
obligations may apply. In the case of ethical dilemmas, they may even contradict one another. Someone could have a prima
facie obligation of reparation, say, an obligation to help people who helped you shift house, shift house themselves, and a
prima facie obligation of fidelity, say, taking your children on a promised trip to the park, and these could conflict.
Nonetheless, there can never be a true ethical dilemma, Ross would argue, because one of the prima facie obligations in a

16
given situation is always the weightiest, and overrules all the others. This is thus the absolute obligation, the action that the
person ought to perform.

It is frequently argued, however, that Ross should have used the term "pro tanto" rather than "prima facie". Shelly Kagan,
for example, wrote:

"It may be helpful to note explicitly that in distinguishing between pro tanto and prima facie reasons I depart from
the unfortunate terminology proposed by Ross, which has invited confusion and misunderstanding. I take it that –
despite his misleading label – it is actually pro tanto reasons that Ross has in mind in his discussion of what he
calls prima facie duties."

Explaining the difference between pro tanto and prima facie, Kagan wrote: "A pro tanto reason has genuine weight, but
nonetheless may be outweighed by other considerations. Thus, calling a reason a pro tanto reason is to be distinguished
from calling it a prima facie reason, which I take to involve an epistemological qualification: a prima facie reason appears
to be a reason, but may actually not be a reason at all".

Moral Theory

Ross's criticisms of consequentialist moral theories:

• ethical egoism (the moral theory that says that an action is right if and only if it is in the long-term interests of
the person who performs it):
A "great part of duty" consists in respecting the rights and serving the interests of others "whatever the
cost to ourselves may be."

• hedonistic utilitarianism:
Pleasure is not the only thing that we recognize as being intrinsically good; we recognize other things--
e.g., "the possession of a good character," and "an intelligent understanding of the world"--as
also having intrinsic value.

• ideal utilitarianism (the moral theory that says that an action is right if and only if the net amount of intrinsic
value it brings into the world is at least as great as that that any other possible action in the situation would
bring into the world):
"[P]roductivity of maximum good is not what makes all right actions right. . . ."

Why does Ross think that producing maximum intrinsic goodness is not always what makes actions right?

• Common sense tells us in some situations that an action (e.g., keeping a promise) is right, not because of its
consequences, but because of what has happened in the past (e.g., the making of the promise).
• Common sense also tells us in some situations that we have more than one duty and that one duty (e.g.,
relieving distress) may be "more of a duty" than another duty (e.g., fulfilling a promise).
• In a situation in which two alternative actions producing equal net amounts of intrinsic goodness differ only in
that one would fulfill a promise and the other would not, one's moral obligation would be to perform the action
that would fulfill the promise.

What should we look for in a moral theory, according to Ross?

• A moral theory should "fit the facts" (even if this means that the theory becomes less simple).
• The "facts" that a moral theory should "fit" are "the moral convictions of thoughtful and well-educated people."

17
 • In case there are inconsistencies among "the moral convictions of thoughtful and well-educated people," we
should keep those that "stand better the test of reflection" and discard the others.

Elements of Ross's Moral Theory:

• A variety of relations among individuals are morally significant--including potential benefactor-potential

beneficiary, promiser-promisee, creditor-debtor, wife-husband, child-parent, friend-friend, fellow countryman-
fellow countryman, and others.
• Each of these relations is the foundation of what Ross calls a "prima facie duty."
• A prima facie duty (also called "conditional duty") is a "characteristic...which an act has, in virtue of being of a
certain kind..., of being an act which would be a duty proper if it were not at the same time of another kind
which is morally significant."
• A prima facie duty is fundamentally different from "a duty proper or actual duty." (By "duty proper," Ross
means what we have been referring to as "moral obligation.")
• Whenever I have to make a moral decision in a situation in which more than one prima facie duty applies, I
must "study the situation as fully as I can until I form the considered opinion (it is never more) that in the
circumstances one of them is more incumbent than any other...." The prima facie duty I judge to be "more
incumbent than any other" in the situation is probably my "duty proper" or actual moral obligation.
• There are a few general "rules of thumb" to follow in judging which prima facie duties are "more incumbent"
than others in various situations--e.g., nonmaleficence is generally more incumbent than beneficence. (See
below.) However, there is no ranking among the prima facie duties that applies to every situation. Each
situation must be judged separately.
• We apprehend our prima facie duties in much the same way that we apprehend the axioms of mathematics or
geometry: we do so by reflecting on "the self-evident prima facie rightness of an individual act of a particular
type."
• "The moral order expressed in [the principles of prima facie duties] is just as much part of the fundamental
nature of the universe...as is the...structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic."

Ross's (incomplete) list of prima facie duties:

• Duties stemming from one's own previous actions:

1. fidelity - duty to fulfill (explicit and implicit) promises/agreements into which one has entered
2. reparation - duty to make up for wrongful acts previously done to others
• Duties stemming from the previous actions of others:
3. gratitude - duty to repay others for past favors done for oneself
• Duties stemming from the (possibility of) a mismatch between persons' pleasure or happiness and their "merit":
4. justice - duty to prevent or correct such a mismatch
• Duties stemming from the possibility of improving the conditions of others with respect to virtue, intelligence,
or pleasure:
5. beneficence - duty to improve the conditions of others in these respects
• Duties stemming from the possibility of improving one's own condition with respect to virtue or intelligence:
6. self-improvement - duty to improve one's own condition in these respects
• Special duty to be distinguished from the duty of beneficence:
7. nonmaleficence - duty not to injure others

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Possible objections to Ross's theory (considered by Ross):

1. Ross's list of prima facie duties is unsystematic and follows no logical principle.
o Ross's reply - The list is not claimed to be complete; it is claimed only to be accurate as far as it
goes.
2. Ross's moral theory provides no principle for determining what our actual moral obligations are in particular
situations.
o Ross's reply - There is no reason to assume that the basic reasons why we have the moral obligations
that we have are the same in every situation.
3. Ross's moral theory assumes, without adequate justification, that the list of prima facie duties we recognize, is
accurate and is not in need of critical examination:
o Ross's reply –
a) In recognizing something as a prima facie duty, we are apprehending what is self-evident--i.e., that to
be an action of a certain kind (e.g., promise-keeping) is morally significant.
b) The only "data" for a moral theory that are available to us are the moral convictions we arrive at via
serious thought and reflection.
c) To overturn our basic moral convictions just because they conflicted with some moral theory would be
like people's "repudiating their actual experience of beauty" because they conflicted with some theory of
beauty.

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 JOHN RAWLS
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Rawls (February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and
political philosophy.
Rawls received the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999, the latter presented
by President Bill Clinton, in recognition of how Rawls's thought "helped a whole generation of learned Americans revive
their faith in democracy itself."

Early life
John Borden (Bordley) Rawls was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He was the second of five sons to William Lee Rawls and
Anna Abell Stump. Rawls attended school in Baltimore for a short time before transferring to Kent School, an
Episcopalian preparatory school in Connecticut. Upon graduation in 1939, Rawls attended Princeton University, and was
elected to the The Ivy Club. During his last two years at Princeton he “became deeply concerned with theology and its
doctrines”. He considered attending a seminary to study for the Episcopal priesthood. In 1943, he completed his Bachelor
of Arts degree and joined the Army. During World War II, Rawls served as an infantryman in the Pacific, where he toured
New Guinea, the Philippines, and Japan; There, he witnessed the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima. After this
experience, Rawls turned down an offer to become an officer and left the army as a private in 1946. Shortly thereafter, he
returned to Princeton to pursue a doctorate in moral philosophy.
Rawls married Margaret Fox, a Brown University graduate, in 1949.
Career
After earning his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1950, Rawls taught there until 1952, when he received a Fulbright Fellowship to
Oxford University (Christ Church), where he was influenced by the liberal political theorist and historian Isaiah Berlin and
the legal theorist H.L.A. Hart. After returning to the United States, he served first as an assistant and then associate
professor at Cornell University. In 1962, he became a full professor of philosophy at Cornell, and soon achieved a tenured
position at MIT. In 1962 he moved to Harvard University, where he taught for almost forty years, and where he trained
some of the contemporary figures in moral and political philosophy, including Thomas Nagel and Christine Korsgaard.
Later life
Rawls suffered the first of several strokes in 1995, which severely impeded his ability to continue working. Nevertheless,
he was still able to complete a work entitled The Law of Peoples, which contains the most complete statement of his views
on international justice, before his death in November 2002.
Contribution to political and moral philosophy

Rawls is noted for his contributions to liberal political philosophy. Among the ideas from Rawls' work that have received
wide attention are:

• Justice as Fairness, which consists of the liberty principle, fair equality of opportunity, and the difference
principle.
• The original position.
• Reflective equilibrium.
• Overlapping consensus.
• Public reason.

There is general agreement in academia that the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971 was important (some would say
vital) to a revival, during the 1960s and 1970s, in the academic study of political philosophy. His work has crossed
disciplinary lines, receiving serious attention from economists, legal scholars, political scientists, sociologists, and
theologians. Rawls has the unique distinction among contemporary political philosophers of being frequently cited by the
courts of law in the United States and referred to by practicing politicians in the United States and United Kingdom.
Writings
A Theory of Justice
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In A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempts to reconcile liberty and equality in a principled way, offering an account of "justice
as fairness." Central to this effort is his famous approach to the seemingly intractable problem of distributive justice.
Rawls appeals to the social contract. What principles of justice would we agree to if we desired to cooperate with others,
but would also prefer more of the benefits, and less of the burdens, associated with cooperation? Justice as fairness is thus
offered to people who are neither saintly altruists nor greedy egoists. Human beings are, as Rawls puts it, both rational and
reasonable. Because we are rational we have ends we want to achieve, but we are reasonable insofar as we are happy to
achieve these ends together if we can, in accord with mutually acceptable regulative principles. But given how different our
needs and aspirations often are, how can we find principles that are acceptable to each of us? Rawls gives us a model of a
fair situation for making this choice (his argument from the original position and the famous veil of ignorance), and he
argues that two principles of justice would be especially attractive.
We would, Rawls argues, affirm a principle of equal basic liberties, thus protecting the familiar liberal freedoms of
conscience, association, expression, and the like (included here is a right to hold and use personal property, but Rawls
defends that right in terms of our moral capacities and self-respect, not by appeal to a natural right of self-ownership, thus
distinguishing his account from the classical liberalism of John Locke, and the libertarian stance of Robert Nozick). But we
would also want to ensure that, whatever our station in society, liberties represent meaningful options for us. For example,
formal guarantees of political voice and freedom of assembly are of little real worth to the desperately poor and
marginalized in society. Demanding that everyone have exactly the same effective opportunities in life is a non-starter:
achieving this would almost certainly offend the very liberties that are supposedly being equalized. Nonetheless, we would
want to ensure at least the "fair worth" of our liberties: wherever one ends up in society, one wants life to be worth living,
with enough effective freedom to pursue personal goals. Thus we would be moved to affirm a second principle requiring
fair equality of opportunity, paired with the famous (and controversial) difference principle. This second principle ensures
that those with comparable talents and motivation face roughly similar life chances, and that inequalities in society work to
the benefit of the least advantaged.
Rawls held that these principles of justice apply to the "basic structure" of fundamental social institutions (courts, markets,
the constitution, etc), a qualification that has been the source of some controversy and constructive debate (see, for
instance, the important work of Gerald Cohen). Rawls further argued that these principles were to be lexically ordered, thus
giving priority to basic liberties over the more equality-oriented demands of the second principle. This has also been a topic
of much debate among moral and political philosophers. Finally, Rawls took his approach as applying in the first instance
to what he called a "well-ordered society ... designed to advance the good of its members and effectively regulated by a
public conception of justice". In this respect, he understood justice as fairness as a contribution to "ideal theory," working
"out principles that characterize a well-ordered society under favorable circumstances." Much recent work in political
philosophy has asked what justice as fairness might dictate (or indeed, whether it is very useful at all) for problems of
"partial compliance" under "nonideal theory." Does Rawls's theory tell us much that is useful about what we should do in
societies already characterized by profound injustices, deep distrust, material deprivation, and the like?
Political Liberalism
Rawls' later work focused on the question of stability: could a society ordered by the two principles of justice endure? His
answer to this question is contained in a collection of lectures titled Political Liberalism. In Political Liberalism, Rawls
introduced the idea of an overlapping consensus — or agreement on justice as fairness between citizens who hold different
religious and philosophical views (or conceptions of the good). Political Liberalism also introduced the idea of public
reason — the common reason of all citizens.
In Political Liberalism Rawls addressed the most common criticism leveled at A Theory of Justice — the criticism that the
principles of justice were simply an alternative systematic conception of justice that was superior to utilitarianism or any
other comprehensive theory. This meant that justice as fairness turned out to be simply another reasonable comprehensive
doctrine that was incompatible with other reasonable doctrines. It failed to distinguish between a comprehensive moral
theory which addressed the problem of justice and that of a political conception of justice that was independent of any
comprehensive theory.
The political conception of justice that Rawls introduces in Political Liberalism is the view of justice that people with
conflicting, but reasonable, metaphysical and/or religious views would agree to regulate the basic structure of society.
What distinguishes Rawls' account from previous conceptions of liberalism is that it seeks to arrive at a consensus without
appealing to any one metaphysical source of his own. Hence the idea of "political liberalism", contrary to John Locke or
John Stuart Mill, who promote a more robust cultural and metaphysical liberal philosophy, Rawls' account is an attempt to
secure the possibility of a liberal consensus regardless of the "deep" religious or metaphysical values that the parties
endorse (so long as these remain open to compromise, i.e., "reasonable"). The ideal result is therefore conceived as an
"overlapping consensus" because different and often conflicting accounts of morality, nature, etc., are intended to "overlap"
with each other on the question of governance.

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Rawls also modified the principles of justice to become the following (with the first principle having priority over the
second, and the first half of the second having priority over the latter half):

1. Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of basic rights and liberties, which scheme is
compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those
liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value.
2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first they are to be attached to positions and
offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second they are to be to the greatest
benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

These principles are subtly modified from the principles in Theory. The first principle now reads 'equal claim' instead of
'equal right', and he also replaces the phrase 'system of basic liberties' with 'a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights
and liberties.'
The Law of Peoples
Although there were passing comments on international affairs in A Theory of Justice, it wasn't until late in his career that
Rawls formulated a comprehensive theory of international politics with the publication of The Law of Peoples. He claimed
there that "well-ordered" peoples could be either "liberal" or "decent". Rawls argued that the legitimacy of a liberal
international order is contingent on tolerating the latter, which differ from liberal peoples, among other ways, in that they
might have state religions and deny adherents of minority faiths the right to hold positions of power within the state, and
organize political participation via consultation hierarchies rather than elections. However, no well-ordered peoples may
violate human rights or behave in an externally aggressive manner. States that do so are referred to as "outlaw states,"
"societies burdened by unfavourable conditions" and "benevolent absolutisms", and do not have the right to mutual respect
and toleration possessed by liberal and decent peoples.
Rawls' views on global distributive justice as they were expressed in this work surprised many of his fellow egalitarian
liberals. Charles Beitz, for instance, had previously written a study that argued for the application of Rawls' Difference
Principles globally. Rawls denied that his principles should be so applied, partly on the grounds that states were self-
sufficient, unlike citizens, in the cooperative enterprises that constitute domestic societies. Although Rawls recognized that
aid should be given to governments who are unable to protect human rights for economic reasons, he claimed that the
purpose for this aid is not to achieve an eventual state of global equality, but rather only to ensure that these societies could
maintain liberal or decent political institutions. He argued, among other things, that continuing to give aid indefinitely
would see nations with industrious populations subsidize those with idle populations and would create a moral hazard
problem where governments could spend irresponsibly in the knowledge that they will be bailed out by those nations who
had spent responsibly.
Rawls' discussion of 'non-ideal' theory, on the other hand, included a condemnation of bombing civilians and of the
American bombing of German and Japanese cities in World War II, as well as discussions of immigration and nuclear
proliferation. Rawls also detailed here the ideal of the statesmen, a political leader who looks to the next generation,
promotes international harmony, even in the face of significant domestic pressure to do otherwise. Rawls also claimed,
controversially, that violations of human rights can legitimate military intervention in the violating states, though he also
expressed the hope that such societies could be induced to reform peacefully by the good example of liberal and decent
peoples.

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BIOETHICS
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bioethics is the philosophical study of the ethical controversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine.
Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology,
medicine, politics, law, philosophy, and theology.

History

Although bioethical issues have been debated since ancient times, and public attention briefly focused on the role of human
subjects in biomedical experiments following the revelation of Nazi experiments conducted during World War II, the
modern field of bioethics first emerged as an academic discipline in the 1960s. Technological advances in such diverse
areas as organ transplantation and end-of-life care, including the development of kidney dialysis and respirators, posed
novel questions regarding when and how care might be withdrawn. These questions often fell upon philosophers and
religious scholars, but by the 1970s, bioethical think tanks and academic bioethics programs emerged. Among the earliest
such institutions were the Hastings Center (originally known as The Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences),
founded in 1969 by philosopher Daniel Callahan and psychiatrist Willard Gaylin, and the Kennedy Institute of Ethics,
established at Georgetown University in 1971. The publication of Principles of Bioethics by James F. Childress and Tom
Beauchamp—the first American textbook of bioethics—marked a transformative moment in the discipline.

During the subsequent three decades, bioethical issues gained widespread attention through the court cases surrounding the
deaths of Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan and Terri Schiavo. The field developed its own cadre of widely-known
advocates, such as Al Jonsen at the University of Washington, John Fletcher at the University of Virginia, Minnesota,
Glenn McGee at SUNY Albany, Jacob M. Appel at Brown University, Ruth Faden at Johns Hopkins University, and
Arthur Caplan at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1995, President Bill Clinton established the President’s Council on
Bioethics, a sign that the field had finally reached an unprecedented level of maturity and acceptance. President George W.
Bush also relied upon a Council on Bioethics in rendering decisions in areas such as the public funding of embryonic stem-
cell research.

Purpose and scope

The field of bioethics addresses a broad swath of human inquiry, ranging from debates over the boundaries of life (eg.
abortion, euthanasia) to the allocation of scarce health care resources (eg. organ donation, health care rationing) to the right
to turn down medical care for religious or cultural reasons. Bioethicists often disagree among themselves over the precise
limits of their discipline, debating whether the field should concern itself with the ethical evaluation of all questions
involving biology and medicine, or only a subset of these questions. Some bioethicists would narrow ethical evaluation
only to the morality of medical treatments or technological innovations, and the timing of medical treatment of humans.
Others would broaden the scope of ethical evaluation to include the morality of all actions that might help or harm
organisms capable of feeling fear and pain, and include within bioethics all such actions if they bear a relation to medicine
and biology. However, most bioethicists share a commitment to discussing these complex issues in an honest, civil and
intelligent way, using tools from the many different disciplines that "feed" the field to produce meaningful frameworks for
analysis.

Principles

One of the first areas addressed by modern bioethicists was that of human experimentation. The National Commission for
the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research was initially established in 1974 to identify the
basic ethical principles that should underlie the conduct of biomedical and behavioral research involving human subjects.
However, the fundamental principles announced in the Belmont Report (1979)--namely, autonomy, beneficence and
justice--have influenced the thinking of bioethicists across a wide range of issues. Others have added non-maleficence,
human dignity and the sanctity of life to this list of cardinal values.

Perspectives and methodology

Bioethicists come from a wide variety of backgrounds and have training in a diverse array of disciplines. The field contains
individuals trained in philosophy such as Peter Singer of Princeton University and Daniel Brock of Harvard University,

23
medically-trained clinician ethicists such as Mark Siegler of the University of Chicago and Joseph Fins of Cornell
University, lawyers such as Jacob Appel and Wesley J. Smith, political economists like Francis Fukuyama, and theologians
including James Childress. The field, once dominated by formally trained philosophers, has become increasingly
interdisciplinary, with some critics even claiming that the methods of analytic philosophy have had a negative effect on the
field's development. Leading journals in the field include the Hastings Center Report, the Journal of Medical Ethics and the
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics.

Many religious communities have their own histories of inquiry into bioethical issues and have developed rules and
guidelines on how to deal with these issues from within the viewpoint of their respective faiths. The Jewish, Christian and
Muslim faiths have each developed a considerable body of literature on these matters. In the case of many non-Western
cultures, a strict separation of religion from philosophy does not exist. In many Asian cultures, for example, there is a
lively (and often less dogmatic, but more pragmatic) discussion on bioethical issues. Buddhist bioethics, in general, is
characterised by a naturalistic outlook that leads to a rationalistic, pragmatic approach. Buddhist bioethicists include
Damien Keown. In India, Vandana Shiva is the leading bioethicist speaking from the Hindu tradition. In Africa, and partly
also in Latin America, the debate on bioethics frequently focusses on its practical relevance in the context of
underdevelopment and geopolitical power relations.

Issues

Areas of health sciences that are the subject of published, peer-reviewed bioethical analysis include:

• Abortion • Gene therapy • Patients' Bill of Rights

• Animal rights • Genetically modified food • Placebo
• Artificial insemination • Genetically modified organism • Population control
• Artificial life • Genomics • Prescription drugs (prices
• Artificial womb • Great Ape Project in the US)
• Assisted suicide • Human cloning • Procreative beneficence
• Biopiracy • Human enhancement • Professional ethics
• Blood/blood plasma • Human genetic engineering • Psychosurgery
(trade) • Iatrogenesis • Quality of Life
• Body modification • Infertility (treatments)
(Healthcare)
• Brain-computer interface • Recreational drug use
• Life extension
• Chimeras • Reproductive rights
• Life support
• Circumcision • Reprogenetics
• Lobotomy
• Cloning • Sperm and eggs (donation)
• Medical malpractice
• Confidentiality (medical • Spiritual drug use
• Medical research
records) • Stem cell research
• Medical torture
• Consent • Suicide
• Moral obligation
• Contraception (birth • Surrogacy
• Nanomedicine
control) • Transexuality
• Cryonics • Organ donation (fair allocation,
class and race biases) • Transhumanism
• Disability • Transplant trade
• Pain management
• Eugenics • Xenotransplantation
• Parthenogenesis
• Euthanasia (human, non-
human animal) • Feeding tube

…AS EXCERPTED FROM COMPTON´S INTERACTIVE ENCYCLOPEDIA

Biology and medicine are sciences, but they are both sciences that deal with living beings. They have direct effects on
human beings and other living species, so they quickly raise ethical and other value problems as well as scientific ones.

24
Bioethics is the branch of ethics, or moral decision-making, that deals with the problems of biology and medicine. It
requires disciplined, systematic reflection on these difficult issues.
Scientists can change the genetic information in bacteria and are rapidly developing the capacity to change it in many
animal species, including humans. But should they? People change the nature of the human population by aborting
defective or unwanted fetuses, by controlling when pregnancy occurs, and by planning limits on population size. But
should they? Physicians can keep seriously ill patients alive indefinitely, using artificial respirators, machines that take
over the control of the beating of the heart, and drugs to control blood pressure and consciousness. But should they?
People are beginning to ask whether there comes a time when patients should be allowed to die. Citizens are claiming
"patients´rights," insisting on being informed about medical procedures, and deciding how to allocate health resources
fairly. When they ask these questions and make these decisions, they are dealing with bioethics.
PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL ETHICS
Systematic ethical thinking about these issues comes from several different sources, including medical professions,
religious traditions, and secular, philosophical thought. The medical professions have formulated codes that date back as
far as the Hippocratic oath, which originated on the Greek island of Cos in the 4th century BC. The Hippocratic oath
includes a pledge like those taken when Greeks joined secret religious, philisophical, and scientific groups. It reflects the
ideas of the Pythagoreans, an important group of the day.
Modern professional codes date from one written by the physician Thomas Percival in 1797. It was originally written to
settle a dispute in Manchester, England, among three groups of medical specialists (physicians, surgeons, and
apothecaries). It contained statements about the duties of physicians to one another, to patients, and to society, as well as
the duties of patients to physicians and of society to physicians. It became the basis for the first United States codes,
written in 1847 by the American Medical Association. These codes all emphasize that the physician´s primary duty is to
benefit the patient. Usually they assume the physician knows what is best for the patient. In this sense they are
paternalistic.
NONPROFESSIONAL BIOETHICS
One problem with the professional codes has been that they apply only to members of a professional group. Many who are
not professionally involved in medicine do not always agree with what they say. Religious groups, especially Jews and
Roman Catholics, have for centuries developed their own positions on many important bioethical issues. Talmudic
Judaism, for example, takes a strong stand against taking life (including fetal life), has strict rules about autopsy, and has
special dietary laws.
Roman Catholic moral theology emphasizes five basic principles:
(1) The principles of stewardship. Life comes from God, and humans are "stewards" responsible for the care of the
body.
(2) The inviolability of human life. Innocent life may never purposefully be taken in actions such as abortion,
suicide, or euthanasia.
(3) The principle of totality. A part of the body exists for the good of the whole, and therefore limbs, for example,
may be amputated if it is necessary to protect the rest of the body.
(4) The principle of double effect. In certain difficult situations, it may be permissible to produce a bad effect in
order to achieve a good one, provided that the action undertaken is not itself evil, that the evil is not intended, that
it is not a means to the good result, and that there is at least as much good produced as evil. This principle justifies
removing a cancerous uterus from a woman even though she is pregnant (because the evil of killing her fetus is
indirect and unintended), but it does not justify directly intervening to kill the fetus even if killing the fetus might
keep the woman from dying of a heart attack.
(5) The principle of sexuality. Human sexual functions exist for two purposes: for the procreation and nurturing of
children and for the expression of the loving union within the marital bond. Thus sexual relations outside marriage
and practices involving contraception have traditionally been condemned, though some within this tradition have
accepted certain kinds of contraception, especially when it means that children already in the family are more
responsibly cared for.
Other religious groups, including Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Moslem, Hindu, and Buddhist, hold special positions on
matters of medical and biological ethics, though their positions are usually not as well developed as those of Jews and
Roman Catholics. In addition, secular philosophical and political traditions have increasingly developed positions on these
issues. In 1972 a Patients´Bill of Rights was drafted by a group made up of both lay people and medical professionals.

25
It was the first effort to develop a formal systematic stance on issues of biological and medical ethics outside professional
and religious circles. It expresses ethical thought that is closely related to that of early modern liberal political philosophers
such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and to the tradition of the Founding Fathers of the United States, including
Thomas Jefferson and the writers of the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution. It is the first bioethical statement
emphasizing the rights of patients rather than the more paternalistic ideas that are represented by the Hippocratic tradition.
EUTHANASIA
An example of the difference is seen in the ethical question of how to care for a terminally ill patient. Traditionally
physicians have determined whether or not to tell a dying patient about his or her condition by trying to judge if it would
help or hurt the patient to have the information. More recently physicians have increasingly favored disclosure. Many favor
discplosure because they believe that the patient has the right to the information, regardless of whether it helps or hurts.
Similar tensions exist over the treatment of the dying patient. It is widely held that active killing even for mercy is morally
unacceptable. Holders of this view say that it is morally more acceptable to let a patient die than to kill for mercy. Some
phillosophers argue that the results are the same, but most hold that there is a difference--authorizing killing would set a
dangerous precedent, and it is simply wrong to kill actively.
Virtually all groups recognize that there are some treatments available to dying patients that need not be given. Two criteria
usually are used to identify treatment that are morally expendable: if they are useless or if they involve a grave burden.
Traditionally it was left to the physician to decide if a treatment was useless or burdensome. It is now widely held,
especially among those who emphasize the rights of patients, that this judgment must be made by the patient because it
should be based on the patient´s own beliefs, values, and religious tradition. Thus, in the United States, an adult patient
who is mentally competent is never forced by legal means to undergo treatment against his or her wishes (unless the
treatment is for the benefit of another, such as a vaccination or other public health measure). If the patient is not competent,
the judgment must be made by a family member. If health professionals disagree strongly, they must seek a court order
overturning the family member´s judgment. This is done routinely, for example, in cases of parents who refuse a lifesaving
blood transfusion for their child because of their religious beliefs.
GENETICS
Bioethics includes questions of basic biology as well as clinical medicine, research, and health policy. Genetics provides an
example of how clinical and broader biological ethical problems interconnect. Medicine now has the capacity to determine
the likelihood that a child will be afflicted with a genetic disease. This can be done to some degree by considering family
history or the age of the parents. Using techniques such as amniocentesis, chorionic villi biopsy, and ultrasound pictures,
geneticists can examine the genetic and physical makeup of a fetus in time to abort if the fetus is afflicted and the parents
so choose. This raises all the ethical problems of abortion, plus many more. Some people, for example, even if they accept
abortion in general, object to the idea that a fetus with a known, specific condition can be aborted. They do not approve of
deciding whether people should live or die based on their genetic or physical makeup. In some cases, such as in conditions
in which diseases affect only children of one sex, the geneticist can determine the sex of the fetus but not whether the fetus
is diseased. In such a case an expectant mother may have to choose abortion with the possibility of aborting a normal
infant. The ability to determine the sex of the fetus also raises the possibility that some parents wanting a child of a certain
sex may choose to abort simply because the fetus is of the unwanted sex.
Scientists are rapidly developing the capacity to go beyond aborting fetuses with genetic defects. They are learning how to
change genetic material, how to move genes from one species to another, and how to replace a defective gene with a more
normal one. When this technology is perfected, it may have crucial effects on agriculture, production of livestock, and
production of drugs as well as providing the potential to replace defective genes in humans. While the benefits are
potentially enormous, objections are also being raised. These include concern that new species of microorganisms, for
example, may be created that could cause uncontrollable disease or some serious, unexpected harm. The most fundamental
question raised by this new work is whether there is something basically unethical about human attempts to change genetic
codes to create new species of animals.
OTHER ETHICAL ISSUES
Other ethical issues arise in the relationship between the clinician and the patient, including problems of confidentiality,
informed consent, and respect for patient autonomy. The issues also include professional relations such as advertising, fee
splitting, the reporting of incompetent practitioners, and the ethics of referring a patient from one physician to another.
Increasingly, however, biological and medical ethics confronts problems that extend beyond the isolated, individual
physician-patient relationship. The ethics of research on human subject is one such example. A related issue is to what
extent the tissues of aborted fetuses may be used in medical research. Many ethical problems also surround the use of
alternative means of achieving pregnancy--surrogate parenting and artificial insemination using donor sperm, for example.
Problems of public health is another area of ethical controversy--whether, for instance, to quarantine certain individuals in
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danger of spreading a disease in order to protect others, or whether to force people to take treatments such as vaccinations
and fluorides in their water supply.
A major new area of bioethics is the ethics of health policy and health-resource allocation. Typical ethical problems faced
by health planners include whether people have a right to health care and whether society has a right to force people into
healthful behavior when it may pay for their care if they become ill. The most basic health-planning ethical problem is
balancing the efficient use of health-care resources against a more equitable distribution even when less good is done in
total. If efficiency is the dominant goal, some who have rare diseases, who live in out-of-the-way places, or who are
members of minority groups will probably go untreated.
Robert W. Veach

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 FROM THE CATHOLIC MEDICAL ASSOCIATION

The Linacre Institute was established within the Catholic Medical Association to develop position papers on various
bioethical issues, based on the moral and ethical principles contained herein.

o Since there is no incompatibility between science and religion, it is possible to provide the highest
standards of medical care without compromising Catholic principles.

o life of every individual is created in the image and likeness of God and is therefore sacred and
inviolable from conception to natural death.

o All persons are entitled to a dignified death in God's own time, but directly killing patients or
assisting in their suicide is abhorrent regardless of poor quality of life or survival expectancy.

o The duty to preserve life does not involve an obligation to prolong the dying process by
technological measures.

o A competent patient is entitled to decline extraordinary therapeutic measures whose burdens exceed
their benefits.

o The patient's autonomy does not supersede the conscience of the physician. Therefore, the physician
must be free to refuse to participate in immoral procedures, and free to refuse to refer to other providers who
might be willing to perform such procedures.

o Abortion is an unspeakable crime and no Catholic physician should cooperate formally or materially
in its performance.

o The life of an individual is a great good which is a good "of" the person and not just a good "for" the
person. Life is not merely instrumental to other goals - it is an intrinsic good.

o Food and drink are modalities of ordinary care and not a treatment of a disease. Discontinuing
nutrition and hydration for a patient who is not imminently dying violates in its intention the distinction
between 'causing death' and 'allowing death'.

o There should be no invidious discrimination in the delivery of medical care based on social or
economic factors. An operation that is indicated for the intelligent child of wealthy parents is also indicated for
the retarded child of impoverished parents.

o The unitive and procreative ends of marriage may not be artificially separated. Any measure whose
directly intended purpose is to sterilize the patient temporarily or permanently is morally unacceptable.

o The family as a natural institution is divinely inspired. The family is the essential building block
from which society is constructed.

o The economic and social policies of the state should be ordered to the protection and strengthening
of families.

o A family is a group related by birth, marriage or adoption. Any attempt to elevate extramarital or
homosexual cohabitation to the status of committed heterosexual marriage is contrary to the best interests of the
family and society.
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o It is appropriate for individuals and families to espouse a value system and to promote that system
both in private and in their community activities.

o The value of any individual life is not diminished by physical or mental handicap, economic
circumstances or state of dependency based on age.

o The economy of the United States should be ordered so as to provide equality of opportunity
regardless of race, religion or national origin. Although individual differences may prevent equality of outcome,
all individuals should be free to pursue their maximum potential in a just society.

o The state exists for the individual and not the individual for the state. Medical decisions should be
made in the best interests of the individual patient rather than the interest of relatives or the society at large.

o In an affluent society, rationing of limited medical resources or triage among individual patients
should be carried out in accordance with the principles of distributive justice.

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 VATICAN RELEASES DOCUMENT ON BIOETHICS

The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith today released Dignitas Personae, a document which addresses a range of
issues including stem cell therapies, embryo experimentation and infertility treatments.

It reaffirms the Vatican's existing teachings, Donum Vitae (1987) and Evangelium Vitae (1995), and addresses new
bioethical questions about issues such as hybrid embryos and human cloning.

Dignitas Personae focuses on the dignity of the human embryo, and promotes biomedical research that is respectful of the
dignity of every human being and procreation. Key principles it uses to determine whether new biomedical research is
ethical include: "'The human being is to be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception; and therefore
from the same moment his or her rights as a person must be recognized, among which in the first place is the inviolable
right of every innocent being to life.'"

"The origin of human life has its authentic context in marriage and in the family, where it is generated through an act which
expresses the reciprocal love between a man and a woman. Procreation which is truly responsible vis-à-vis the child to be
born 'must be the fruit of marriage'."

"[The Church] hopes moreover that the results of such research may also be made available in areas of the world that are
poor and afflicted by disease, so that those who are most in need will receive humanitarian assistance." "The Bishops of
England and Wales welcome this new Instruction on bioethics," said the Most Reverend Peter Smith, Archbishop of
Cardiff. "It affirms the Church's support of ethical scientific research that seeks to cure disease and relieve suffering."

Dignitas Personae acknowledges the great strides biomedical research has made in the treatment of diseases and calls for
more scientific development in areas such as adult stem cell research: "Methods which do not cause serious harm to the
subject from whom the stem cells are taken are to be considered licit. This is generally the case when tissues are taken
from: a) an adult organism; b) the blood of the umbilical cord at the time of birth; c) fetuses who have died of natural
causes. The obtaining of stem cells from a living human embryo, on the other hand, invariably causes the death of the
embryo and is consequently gravely illicit." "Research initiatives involving the use of adult stem cells, since they do not
present ethical problems, should be encouraged and supported."

The Vatican's comments about this issue are particularly timely given recent news reports of a woman in Spain whose
trachea was repaired using adult stem cells. Other promising surgeries involving adult stem cell therapies were announced
last week in Hanover, Germany to help stroke victims regain movement and speech and at Imperial College London to help
heart attack patients.

Archbishop Smith said: "These developments demonstrate the power of medical science and the potential of adult stem
cells in curing diseases and relieving suffering," said the Most Reverend Peter Smith, Archbishop of Cardiff. "We hope to
see more research focusing on adult stem cells, as their use raises none of the problems created by embryonic stem cells
which require the destruction of human embryos."

Dignitas Personae recognises the important role that professionals in the biomedical community play in society: "The
Magisterium also seeks to offer a word of support and encouragement for the perspective on culture which considers
science an invaluable service to the integral good of the life and dignity of every human being. The Church therefore views
scientific research with hope and desires that many Christians will dedicate themselves to the progress of biomedicine and
will bear witness to their faith in this field." Dignitas Personae also responds to new bioethical questions about hybrid
embryos and human cloning:

Hybrid embryos

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"From the ethical standpoint, such procedures represent an offense against the dignity of human beings on account of the
admixture of human and animal genetic elements capable of disrupting the specific identity of man. The possible use of the
stem cells, taken from these embryos, may also involve additional health risks, as yet unknown, due to the presence of
animal genetic material in their cytoplasm. To consciously expose a human being to such risks is morally and ethically
unacceptable."

Human Cloning

"Human cloning is intrinsically illicit in that it seeks to give rise to a new human being without a connection to the act of
reciprocal self-giving between the spouses and, more radically, without any link to sexuality. This leads to manipulation
and abuses gravely injurious to human dignity."

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