Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8kt4b Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-07T18:13:39.955Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - CONSENSUS IN A LIBERAL SOCIETY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2011

Max Charlesworth
Affiliation:
Deakin University, Victoria
Get access

Summary

The liberal ideal and bioethical realities

At the end of The Republic Plato confesses that the state he has constructed is an ideal, a thought-experiment, and that it would be difficult, even impossible given human self-interest, to realise in practice. Nevertheless as a utopian political regime it has a purpose, Plato suggests, in that it enables us to measure actual political structures and processes against it. Plato's aim, of course, was to show that both tyranny at one extreme and popular or mob democracy at the other could never be just regimes, and that we need the paternalism of an elite group of ‘philosopher rulers’ to bring about a just society.

To some extent the ideal of the liberal society elaborated here, and its implications for bioethics, plays the same role as Plato's imaginary polis in that it enables us to assess the actual state of current bioethical discussion and practice in our society. In many liberal democratic societies the liberal values we have been discussing often exist in a compromised form and there are flagrant inconsistencies in the way those values are applied in bioethical practice. As a result, the respect for personal autonomy, the animating value of the liberal society, is often mixed with various forms of paternalism, both medical and bureaucratic; the state and the law often invade the realm of personal morality and act as moral policemen; the toleration of ethical pluralism is minimised in the name of social unity and cohesion.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1993

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.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×