John Hardwig

For Socrates, philosophy is self-examination. If the Euthyphro is still to be philosophy in this sense, it must challenge people living now. This paper offers a reading that does this. First, a better case is made for something like the kind of expertise Euthyphro claims and for his position about piety. Second, Socrates and Euthyphro embody different views about the kind of expertise that would be relevant to discovering and engendering piety. Finally, Socrates’ unorthodox conception of piety is made explicit. With these features highlighted, the Euthyphro still possesses the power to provoke and challenge.

Better public health and medicine have given us a new kind of death and with it, a new fear – the fear that death will come too late and take too long. The generation that is dying now is largely unprepared for this new kind of death, for traditionally, people have always tried to avoid or postpone death. But if we are to avoid a bad death – too slow and too late – many of us with access to 21st century medicine will need to develop a very new art, the art of going to meet death. We will need the wisdom to discern when our lives are over, sometimes even without medical indicators such as a terminal or chronic illness. Then we will need the skill to wrap things up, both within ourselves and with our loved ones, and finally, the courage, decisiveness and resolution to take steps to end our lives.

W0mcn’s liberation, it is oftcn said, strikes closer t0 home than othcr forms of human liberation. Although basic shifts in attitudes arc required for thc liberation 0f, for example, workers 0r blacks and othcr ethnic minorities, thcsc types of liberation could bc accomplished without fundamental changes in what we call 0ur “privatc" lives or 0ur personal relationships. The liberation 0f blacks 0r workers is largely an affair 0f public roles and institutions, 21 matter 0f socialjusticc, and it is thus carried 0ut relatively impcrsonally and anonymously in the marketplace and workplace, thc university and governmental institutions. Granted, if thc liberation 0f blacks and workers is t0 bc complete, I might have t0 bc willing t0 have some in my club and my suburb. Somc 0f my bcst friends might then bc blacks 0r workers, and I might even have t0 bc willing t0 have my daughter marry 0nc. Nonetheless, it might well be truc that my club and neighborhood, my friendships, and my relationship t0 my daughter could go 0n pretty much as bcforc, 0ncc "thcy” had been admitted.

For all their differences, the “pro-choice” and the “pro-life” views of abortion are largely in agreement about one aspect of abortion decisions: where an abortion is morally legitimate, the pregnant woman should be permitted to decide whether or not to have an abortion. But I argue in this paper that if the man who will become the father of the fetus is known, if he believes that he will not be able (or permitted) to simply walk away from his biological offspring, and if he does not think it would be a good idea for him to a) become a parent, b) with this woman, or c) at this time, then the woman should have an abortion. Given the life-altering moral obligations involved in raising a child, a woman should not decide to make her (sexual) partner a father without his full consent.