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18The Pro‐Life Maternal‐Fetal Medicine Physician A Problem of IntegrityHastings Center Report 25 (1): 22-26. 1995.If the practice of maternal‐fetal medicine sometimes results in abortion, can a physician strongly opposed to abortion maintain his own integrity and still practice in this field?
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131Philosophical and Ethical Issues in DisabilityJournal of Moral Philosophy 9 (4): 573-587. 2012.What is a disability? What sorts of limitations do persons with disabilities or impairments experience? What is there about having a disability or impairment that makes it disadvantageous for the individuals with it? Are persons with severe cognitive impairments capable of making autonomous decisions? What role should disability play in the construction of theories of justice? Is it ever ethical for parents to seek to create a child with an impairment? This anthology addresses these and other qu…Read more
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40Care and Commitment: Taking the Personal Point of ViewOup Usa. 1991.Despite the current popularity of what is commonly referred to as an `ethics of care', no one has yet undertaken a systematic philosophical study of `care' itself. In this book, Jeffrey Blustein presents the first such study, offering a detailed exploration of human `care' in its various guises: concern for and commitment to individuals, ideals, and causes. Blustein focuses on the nature and value of personal integrity and intimacy, and on the questions they raise for traditional moral theory.
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32[Access article in HTML]Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10 (1): 1-20. 2000.: Urban bioethics seeks to broaden the traditional focus of bioethics to encompass questions about the interplay of individuals with family, group, community, and society. Urban bioethics will need to deal with cultural diversity, issues of equity, and the conflict between individual rights and the public good. Encouraging a multicultural ethical discernment, fostering an appreciation of the political, economic, sociological, and psychological issues that inform the question of urban moral choic…Read more
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18Self-Conceptions, Agency, and the Value of Individual PersonsDialogue 38 (1): 3-26. 1999.RÉSUMÉ: J'examine ici trois façons de défendre l'idée que les personnes ont individuellement une valeur. Je pars de la thèse selon laquelle la valeur des individus tient à la valeur de leurs qualités particulières. Je m'arrête alors sur l'objection que pour comprendre ce qui fait la valeur individuelle des personnes, il nous faut accorder une place distinctive à leurs conceptions d'elles-mêmes. L'approche par la conception de soi qui résulte de ces considérations se révèle problématique à l'exam…Read more
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22On children and proxy consentJournal of Medical Ethics 4 (3): 138-140. 1978.The meaning of valid proxy consent for children has recently been the subject of an important debate between Richard McCormick and Paul Ramsey on the ethics of experimenting with children. Ramsey is willing to agree with McCormick that parental consent for a child to undergo some medical procedure is valid only if parents consider what the child would consent to if he could. But beyond this, Ramsey has a fundamentally different conception of the child from McCormick, and therefore gives a very d…Read more
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77Doing the best for one’s child: satisficing versus optimizing parentalism (review)Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 33 (3): 199-205. 2012.The maxim “parents should do what is in the best interests of their child” seems like an unassailable truth, and yet, as I argue here, there are serious problems with it when it is taken seriously. One problem concerns the sort of demands such a principle places on parents; the other concerns its larger social implications when conceived as part of a national policy for the rearing of children. The theory of parenting that creates these problems I call “optimizing parentalism.” To avoid them, I …Read more
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100Pain: Ethics, Culture, and Informed Consent to ReliefJournal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 24 (4): 348-359. 1996.As medical technology becomes more sophisticate the ability to manipulate nature and manage disease forces the dilemma of when can becomes ought. Indeed, most bioethical discourse is framed in terms of balancing the values and interests and the benefits and burdens that inform principled decisions about how, when, and whether interventions should occur. Yet, despite advances in science and technology, one caregiver mandate remains as constant and compelling as it was for the earliest shaman—the …Read more
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9Character-Principlism and the Particularity ObjectionMetaphilosophy 28 (1-2): 135-155. 1997.This paper is a response to particularist critics of the normative force of moral principles. The particularist critique, as I understand it, is a rejection not only of principle‐based accounts of moral deliberation and justification, but also of accounts of character in which principles play a central role. I focus on the latter challenge and counter it with a view I call character‐principlism. I begin by discussing in a general way what motivates the particularity objection to principles and t…Read more
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75What bioethics needs to learn about familiesTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 19 (2): 101-115. 1998.
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26Placebos in the clinical setting: Unjustified deception or good medicine?Ethics and Behavior 8 (1). 1998.This Article does not have an abstract
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53Choosing for Others as Continuing a Life Story: The Problem of Personal Identity RevisitedJournal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 27 (1): 20-31. 1999.Philosophically, the most interesting objection to the reliance on advance directives to guide treatment decisions for formerly competent patients is the argument from the loss of personal identity. Starting with a psychological continuity theory of personal identity, the argument concludes that the very conditions that bring an advance directive into play may destroy the conditions necessary for personal identity, and so undercut the authority of the directive. In this article, I concede that i…Read more
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44Reply to Ross's “Arguments against Respecting a Minor's Refusal of Efficacious Life-Saving Treatment Redux”Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 18 (4): 440. 2009.
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15Urban BioethicsKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10 (1): 1-20. 2000.Urban bioethics seeks to broaden the traditional focus of bioethics to encompass questions about the interplay of individuals with family, group, community, and society. Urban bioethics will need to deal with cultural diversity, issues of equity, and the conflict between individual rights and the public good. Encouraging a multicultural ethical discernment, fostering an appreciation of the political, economic, sociological, and psychological issues that inform the question of urban moral choice,…Read more
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22The Family in Medical DecisionmakingHastings Center Report 23 (3): 6-13. 1993.Should the authority to make treatment decisions be extended to the competent patient's family? Neither arguments from fairness nor communitarian concerns justify such an infringement on patient autonomy.
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147Forgiveness, commemoration, and restorative justice: The role of moral emotionsMetaphilosophy 41 (4): 582-617. 2010.Abstract: Forgiveness of wrongdoing in response to public apology and amends making seems, on the face of it, to leave little room for the continued commemoration of wrongdoing. This rests on a misunderstanding of forgiveness, however, and we can explain why there need be no incompatibility between them. To do this, I emphasize the role of what I call nonangry negative moral emotions in constituting memories of wrongdoing. Memories so constituted can persist after forgiveness and have important …Read more
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26On the doctrine of parens patriae: Fiduciary obligations and state powerCriminal Justice Ethics 2 (2): 39-47. 1983.
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31When Doctors Break the RulesCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 21 (2): 249-259. 2012.Suppose a primary care physician practicing in an underserved community orders a treatment for one of her indigent patients under the state’s Medicaid program.
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City College of New York (CUNY)Department of PhilosophyArthur Zitrin Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics
New York City, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |