Andrew Edgar

Professionalism is initially understood as a historical process, through which certain commercial services sought to improve their social status by separating themselves from mere crafts or trades. This process may be traced clearly with the aspiration of British portrait painters, in the eighteenth century, to acquire a social status akin to that of already established professionals, such as clerics and doctors. This may be understood, to a significant degree, as a process of gentrification. The values of the professional thereby lie as much in the etiquette and other social skills with which they deal with their clients, than with any distinctive form of skill or value. Professionalisation as gentrification seemingly says little about the nature of modern professionalism. However, if this process is also construed as one in which the goals and achievements of the profession come to be subject to radical reflection, then something significant about professional values emerges. On this account, the profession is distinguished from craft or trade on the grounds that the goals of the profession, and the effectiveness of any attempt to realise them, are not transparent to the client. While a lay person will typically have the competence necessary to judge whether or not a craft worker has achieved their goal, that person will not necessarily be able to recognise the values that determine the success of a medical operation. It will be concluded that the values of a profession are articulated intrinsically to the profession, in terms of the contested understanding that the professionals themselves have of the meaning of the profession and the narratives within which its history is to be told.

This paper explores space as a core source of aesthetic pleasure in various codes of football. The paper begins by applying Kant’s distinction between the agreeable and the pleasurable to sport, arguing that the appreciation of sport entails more than just excitement. Pleasure comes from an appreciation of the rules, strategies and history of the game. The significance of the rules of various codes of football in articulating our experience of space will be taken as fundamental to such appreciation. Drawing on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and the ‘topoanalysis’ of Gaston Bachelard, it will be argued that the aesthetic appreciation of football lies, not simply in recognising the complexity and subtlety of the movement of players and ball about the pitch, but more significantly in the creative and poetic imagination that the player embodies, and the striving of the player to create places within the course of play within which they can exercise their own competence as a player, and inhibit the compete..

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that developments in transhumanist technologies may have upon human cultures, and to do so by exploring a potential debate between Habermas and the transhumanists. Transhumanists, such as Nick Bostrom, typically see the potential in genetic and other technologies for positively expanding and transcending human nature. In contrast, Habermas is a representative of those who are fearful of this technology, suggesting that it will compound the deleterious effects of the colonisation of the lifeworld, further constraining human autonomy and undermining the meaningfulness of the lifeworld by expanding the technological control and manipulation of humanity. It will be argued that these opposed positions are grounded in fundamentally different understandings of the consequences of scientific and technological advance. On one level, the transhumanists remain confident that the lifeworld has within it the resources necessary to find meaning and purpose in a society deeply infused by genetic technology. Habermas disagrees. On another level, the difference is articulated by Horkheimer and Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, primarily by challenging what may be understood as a Baconian faith in science as a project for the domination of nature. While the transhumanists broadly embrace this faith, Habermas returns to something akin to Horkheimer and Adorno’s pessimistic scepticism

It does not typically seem to be worthwhile rewatching a sport match, for example, in a video recording, once the result is known. Sports matches are like detective stories. Once one knows ‘whodunit’, there seems little point in revisiting the tale. By drawing on an argument from musicologist Edward T. Cone, this paper argues that certain sports matches may be revisited with profit. The initial experience of a game may be of a series of events that are often ambiguous or confusing as to their meaning or purpose. The full appreciation of a sport match requires, not just this initial familiarity with the immediately perceived events of the game, but also an awareness of the tactics being deployed by both sides. An understanding of tactics and strategy is akin to the analysis of a piece of music. A further viewing of the game, during which one can appreciate how the tactics inform the events naively experienced in the first viewing, will yield, it will be argued, an aesthetic pleasure. This takes the experience of sport beyond the merely entertaining or exciting. In certain games, the third viewing may also transcend an appreciation of the merely formal qualities of the game, and so offer substantial insights into what it is to be human.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an account of ‘flourishing’ that is relevant to health care provision, both in terms of the flourishing of the individual patient and carer, and in terms of the flourishing of the caring institution. It is argued that, unlike related concepts such as ‘happiness’, ‘well-being’ or ‘quality of life’, ‘flourishing’ uniquely has the power to capture the importance of the vulnerability of human being. Drawing on the likes of Heidegger and Nussbaum, it is argued that humans are at once beings who are autonomous and thereby capable of making sense of their lives, but also subject to the contingencies of their bodies and environments. To flourish requires that one engages, imaginatively and creatively, with those contingencies. The experience of illness, highlighting the vulnerability of the human being, thereby becomes an important experience, stimulating reflection in order to make sense of one’s life as a narrative. To flourish, it is argued, is to tell a story of one’s life, realistically engaging with vulnerability and suffering, and thus creating a framework through which one can meaningful and constructively go on with one’s life.

I respond to Lennart Nordenfelt's analysis of dignity by questioning his attempt to establish an objective standard by which dignity can be determined. I approach this by considering the way in which claims to dignity may be contested and defended. This leads, in the cases of dignity of merit and dignity of moral status, to an apparent relativism. This relativism is checked by further consideration of dignity of identity, and in particular by consideration of the nature of the processes that serve to humiliate people. It is suggested that acts of humiliation attack certain competences that human beings develop as embodied, social beings. Menschenwürde may then be articulated as an account of human nature, in terms of the human potential to develop a series of core competences. This account of human nature aspires to universality, and as such offers an objective ground to dignity. This paper is a product of the research project on Dignity and Older Europeans Programme, Contract No QLG6, 2001, 00888).

This paper explores the implications that the construction and use of avatars in games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft have for our understanding of personal identity. It asks whether the avatar can meaningfully be experienced as a separate person, existing in parallel to the flesh and blood player. A rehearsal of Cartesian and Lockean accounts of personal identity constructs an understanding of the self that is challenged by the experience of online play. It will be argued that playful engagement in virtual worlds invites the participant to reflect upon the human being as embodied and social; qualities of which are marginalised by Descartes and Locke. The strangeness of this experience of virtual worlds confronts the player with a challenge to construct a coherent narrative of online life, of which treating the avatar as a separate person is a coherent option. This opens up the virtual world as an important space within which personal identity is explored, but one with complex implicati...

As I pass the editorship of Health Care Analysis to the very capable hands of Dr. John Coggon, I can perhaps be indulged in a few moments of reflection on the last 8 years. I have strived to make the journal a forum within which scholars can articulate a diverse range of concerns about health care, both from a theoretical perspective, and from a practical one. The journal has attracted contributions from around the world, and from both established scholars and, I am proud to say, young scholars just beginning their careers, but with new and exciting contributions to make.Reviewing the papers I have published, I see that a number of long-standing concerns have received new and profound treatments. These include the nature of health and wellbeing; the problem of limiting access to health care and securing justice; the challenges that new technologies, not least in reproductive and genetic medicine, pose; questions of patient autonomy and empowerment; and the roles and responsibilities of

The problem of public consultation over the allocation of health care resources is addressed by considering the role that quality of life measures, such as QALYs and the Nottingham Health Profile, could play. Such measures are typically grounded in social surveys, and as such may reflect public preferences for health care priorities. Using Charles Taylor's concepts of “weak” and “strong” evaluation, it is suggested that current quality of life measures are inadequate, insofar as they typically presuppose that survey respondents are mere “weak evaluators”, who express only inarticulate preferences. Respondents may, conversely, be understood as strong evaluators, with deeper visions of human nature and the good life informing their health preferences. Space is then created for such respondents to be asked to defend their preferences, and so be encouraged to reflect critically and publicly on the beliefs and prejudices that ground their view of health care priorities

Face transplants have been performed, in a small number, since 2005. Popular concern over the morality of the face transplant has tended to focus on the role that one’s face plays in one’s sense of self or one’s personal identity. In order to address this concern, the current paper will explore the significance of face transplants in the light of a theory of the self that draws on symbolic interactionism, narrative theory, and accounts of embodiment. The paper will respond to certain presuppositions concerning personal identity made by Huxtable and Woodley. A theory of the self will be articulated that draws on the work of Merleau-Ponty and G. H. Mead, in order to place embodiment and social interaction centrally to an understanding of self-identity. This will allow an account of the nature of the suffering that a face transplant seeks to remedy, and its worth as an operation, and crucially the impact that it may have on the sense of personal identity of the recipient of the transplant. The conclusion will review the treatment in the context of the prejudices that members of contemporary societies may hold against those with disfigurements

This paper uses the social theory of Erving Goffman in order to argue that confidentiality should be understood in relation to the mundane social skills by which individuals present and respect specific self-images of themselves and others during social interaction. The breaching of confidentiality is analysed in terms of one person's capacity to embarrass another, and so to expose that person as incompetent. Respecting confidentiality may at once serve to protect the vulnerable from an unjust society, and yet also protect the guilty from just accusation. Ethical reasoning about confidentiality must therefore recognize the dangers of prejudice and violence inherent in decisions to breach or to respect confidentiality. Case studies are used to illustrate the efficacy of this account, culminating with analyses of three examples from the UKCC document Confidentiality

This comprehensive introduction to the thought of Jurgen Habermas covers the full range of his ideas from his early work on student politics to his recent work on communicative action, ethics and law. Andrew Edgar examines Habermas' key texts in chronological order, revealing the developments, shifts and turns in Habermas' thinking as he refines his basic insights and incorporates new sources and ideas. Some of the themes discussed include Habermas' early reshaping of Marxist theory and practice, his characterization of critical theory, his conception of universal pragmatics, his theories of communicative action and discourse ethics, and his defence of the project of modernity. Edgar offers much more than a schematic run through of Habermas' big ideas. He deals in detail with Habermas' arguments in order to demonstrate how he weaves together multiple strands of thought, and he usefully situates Habermas' ideas within the contexts of the history of German philosophy, the history of sociology, and within contemporary debates in both continental and analytic philosophy. By engaging with some of Habermas' key critics and contrasting his views with the ideas of contemporaries, Edgar is able to give a clear sense of Habermas' place and importance in contemporary philosophy and social theory