Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:06:58.518Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Acting and Refraining/Intention and Foresight

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Philip E. Devine
Philip E. Devine
Affiliation:
Stonehill College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is commonplace that negative duties are more stringent than positive duties: for example that it is harder to justify killing than letting die. It is almost equally commonplace that this distinction requires defence, in particular against those who regard it as a mere apology for the privileges of the wealthy and secure.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Spring 1987 , pp. 87 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Harris, John. “The Marxist Conception of Violence”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 3/1 (1974), 431–433;Google ScholarSinger, Peter, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1/2 (1972), 119–243.Google Scholar

2 Here and throughout “he” is used in the sense of “he or she” except where the context requires a male individual.

3 Cf. Wreen, Michael, “Breathing a Little Life into a Distinction”, Philosophical Studies 46/3 (1984), 395–402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 For example, Green, O. H., “Killing and Letting Die”, American Philosophical Quarterly 17/3 (1980), 195–201Google ScholarPubMed.

5 Audi, Robert, “The Moral Rights of the Terminally Ill”, in Davis, John W., Hoffmeister, Barry, and Shorten, Sarah, eds., Contemporary Issues in Biomedical Ethics (Clifton, NJ: Humana Press, 1979), 440.Google Scholar

6 Grisez, Germain, “Toward a Consistent Natural Law Ethics of Killing”, American Journal of Jurisprudence 15 (1970), 76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 For an attempt at such an answer, see my Ethics of Homicide (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), chap. 4Google Scholar.

8 Recall that she was in no pain, so that giving her morphine could not be justified in the way it would be in the case of a terminal cancer patient.

9 Work on this essay was begun at the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on Human Action (Robert Audi, Director), held at the University of Nebraska in 1984. I am indebted to the National Endowment for Humanities and the University of Scranton for their support; to O. H. Green for suggesting the present topic; and to Robert Audi, Mark Strasser, Irving Thalberg, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Michael Zimmerman, and three anonymous readers for their comments on earlier drafts.