Rem B. Edwards

Ethics of Psychiatry addresses the key ethical and legal issues in mental health care. With selections by Paul S. Applebaum, Christopher Boorse, Kerry Brace, Peter R. Breggin, Paula J. Caplan, Glen O. Gabbard, Donald H.J. Hermann, Lawrie Reznek, Thomas Szasz, Jerome Wakefield, Bruce J. Winick, and Robert M. Veatch, among others, this sourcebook offers the latest research in psychiatry, psychology, advocacy, mental health law, social services, and medical ethics relevant to the rational autonomy of psychiatric patients.

This book explains and advances formal axiology as originally developed by Robert S. Hartman. Formal axiology identifies the general or formal patterns involved in (1) the meaning of "good" and other value concepts, (2) WHAT we value (value-objects), and (3) HOW we value (evaluations). It explains the rational, practical, and affective aspects of evaluation, and it shows how to make value judgments more rationally and effectively. It distinguishes between intrinsic, extrinsic, and systemic values and evaluations, and it discusses how they fall into a rational hierarchy of value. It argues for the intrinsic worth of unique conscious beings and develops an an axiological ethics in three value dimensions. It explores the search for a logical calculus of value, and it introduces applications of axiology to psychology, religion, aesthetics, and business. It is critical of Hartman's shortcomings,, builds upon his strengths, and extends his theory of value where it is incomplete.

John Wesley was an incredible person both in what he did and what he thought. Viewed against the background of the Christian scholars of his day and those who went before him, his thinking was immensely creative, insightful, and at times downright radical. From this book readers will learn more about what he thought than about what he did, but both are explored. Most Methodists know a little bit about what he did, but almost nothing about what he thought. When readers find out about them, they may be both astonished and very pleasantly surprised.

A Return to Moral and Religious Philosophy in Early America concentrates especially on three philosophical positions that dominated early American philosophy, Puritanism and Idealism, the Enlightenment or Age of Realism, and Transcendentalism. This book focuses primarily but not exclusively on the best representatives of each. Jonathan Edwards was the most brilliant and philosophically minded of early Puritan thinkers; his thinking was colored by metaphysical idealism. Thomas Jefferson gave us the best of the Age of Reason, but other Enlightenment thinker like Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, and Tom Pain are considered where relevant. Ralph Waldo Emerson is presented as the best of that romantic individualism known as Transcendentalism. Briefer references are made to other early American thinkers like Samuel Johnson, John Witherspoon, Cadwallader Colden, John Adams, James Madison, Henry David Thorough, and Theodore Parker. Considerable quoted material, especially from the central figures, is included. A moral and religious interpretative framework for binding all of this together into a coherent story is provided.

This work is conceived as a modem study of the relationships of the concept of human freedom with the moral concepts of responsibility and obligation and other closely allied notions. One pitfall into which writers on my sub jects have occasionally fallen has been that of spending too much time in critically examining positions and arguments which no sane philosopher has ever offered. In order to guard against the danger of debating with "straw men," I have attempted to engage in critical conversations with several twentieth century writers on my theme. I have attempted to pay special at tention to a handful of writers who have written extremely important and influential discussions and who are representatives of a diversity of per spectives on the issues involved. In particular, I have taken note of the work of two determinists, Sir David Ross and Hastings Rashdall, a libertarian, C. A. Campbell, and a reprel>entative of the more recent linguistic-analytic approach, P. Nowell-Smith. Many other important writers have been brought in at crucial points in the conversation. But this is not a history of the problem in the 20th century. Rather, it is a critical, systematic study of a problem or set of related problems. This work may be divided roughly into two parts, a metaphysical-psycho logical part comprising the first three chapters, and a metaethical-ethical part consisting of the last three chapters.