Euthanasia, death with dignity, and the law

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Gavin J. Fairbairn

Suicide is devastating. It is an assault on our ideas of what living is about. In Contemplating Suicide, Gavin Fairbairn takes a fresh look at suicidal self harm. His view is distinctive in emphasising the intentions that a person has in acting, rather than external facts. Fairbairn constructs a natural history of suicidal self harm and examines some of the ethical issues it raises. He sets his philosophical reflections against a background of experience in the caring professions and uses a storytelling approach in offering a critique of the current language of self harm. He offers cogent reasons for abandoning the mindless use of terms such as attempted suicide and parasuicide, and introduces a number of new terms including cosmic roulette, which he uses to describe a family of human acts in which people gamble with their lives. By elaborating a richer model of suicidal self harm than most philosophers and practitioners of caring professions currently inhabit, Fairbairn makes a significant contribution to the development of understanding in this area.

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Jesper Ryberg, J. Angelo Corlett

This collection of original contributions by philosophers working in the ethics of punishment presents the reader with new perspectives on various interesting and relevant topics including: punishment and discrimination, punishment and forgiveness, punishment and rehabilitation, punishment and public opinion, punishment and restitution, punishment and tortur, e punishment and dignity /from the publisher's website.

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James M. Humber and Robert F. Almeder

A panel of philosophers, ethicists, feminists, and historians examine the moral issues posed by stem cell research, and introduce the principle arguments for and against such research. The book attempts to offer both a balanced presentation and thoughtful critiques of the main arguments in the debate.

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Raphael Cohen-Almagor

"Speech, Media, and Ethics: The Limits of Free Expression is an interdisciplinary work that employs ethics, liberal philosophy, and legal and media studies to outline boundaries to freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Moral principles are applied to analyse practical questions that deal with free expression and its limits. Part One deals with recent controversies over freedom of expression. It addresses the right to demonstrate, the right to picket the private homes of public officials, and the right to compete in elections, suggesting boundaries to these basic rights. Part Two focuses on freedom of communications and media ethics, a very timely concern in the Western world. It considers the concept of 'the public's right to know' and its ethical constraints. The essays analyse some of the basic principles, and fallacies, of the media, offering ethical limits on their work while emphasizing that these limits should be self-imposed rather than imposed from above by the legislature or the courts."--Jacket.