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Acting and Refraining/Intention and Foresight
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
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
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- Information
- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Spring 1987 , pp. 87 - 94
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1987
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.