Daniel Weinstock

Talk of harm reduction has expanded horizontally, to apply to an ever-widening range of policy domains, and vertically, becoming part of official legal and political discourse. This expansion calls for philosophical theorization. What is the best way in which to characterize harm reduction? Does it represent a distinctive ethical position? How is it best morally justified, and what are its moral limits? I distinguish two varieties of harm reduction. One of them, technocratic harm reduction, is premised on the fact of non-enforceability of prohibitionist policies. The second, deliberative harm reduction, is premised on the fact of reasonable disagreement, grounded in the fact that reasonable persons disagree about a range of controversial behaviours. I argue that deliberative harm reduction better accounts for some of harm reduction’s most attractive features, and provides a plausible way of accounting for harm reductions’s justificatory grounds and limits.

In this article, I distinguish boycotts from other kinds of superficially similar types of actions, and argue that boycotts involve at least coordinated activity on the part of the members of a group to abstain on moral grounds from otherwise normal interaction with the members of another group. Boycotts in their minimal forms do not face high justificatory hurdles, since they involve the exercise of freedom of speech, along with the exercise by members of the boycotting group of basic rights and freedoms, such as the right to associate, freedom of movement, and the like. The justificatory hurdles are greater, though not insurmountable, when boycotts involve the coercion of members of the boycotting group who either disagree with the grounds for boycott, or with the appropriateness of boycotting as a strategy to bring about a morally desirable change, or when they involve defeating the reasonable expectations of members of the boycotted group. I describe the justificatory challenges in both these cases, as well as the ways in which they can be met.

ABSTRACT Recent writings by philosophers such as David Miller and Yael Tamir have undertaken to provide nationalism with a normative foundation, a task which has been all but ignored by post‐War English‐language political philosophy. I identify and criticise three lines of argument which have been deployed in their writings. First, it is argued by Miller that the universalism and abstraction of rationalist moral theories have made them suspicious of ‘particularisms’ such as nationalism, but that they stem from a faulty metaethics. Against this I argue that abstraction and universality need not be grounded in a universalist metaethics, but can be derived pragmatically from the ethical needs of multicultural societies. Second, it is argued that liberal policies such as taxation and material redistribution, restrictions on immigration, as well as liberal concepts such as political obligation, presuppose the validity of the nationalist point of view. Against this I hold that nationalism never provides the strongest moral grounds for these policies and concepts, and that, in the specific case of distributive justice, it can even undermine them. And third, I examine the argument that the historical excesses of which nationalists have been guilty are actually the product of a narrow, ‘ethnic’nationalism, in contrast to which we can articulate a categorically distinct, open, ‘civic’nationalism, which would be broadly compatible with liberal political morality. I argue that the concept of civic nationalism is unstable, and that under fairly plausible and widespread empirical conditions, it either collapses back into a form of ethnic nationalism, or else becomes devoid of any recognisably nationalist content.

This article provides an introduction to the articles in this theme issue. This collection examines epistemological, ontological, moral and political questions in medicine in light of the philosophical ideas of Charles Taylor. A synthesis of Taylor's relevant work is presented. Taylor has argued for a conception of the human sciences that regards human life as meaningful–deriving meaning from surrounding horizons of significance. An overview of the interdisciplinary articles in this issue is presented. This collection advances our thinking in the philosophy of medicine as well as the philosophy of Charles Taylor

This is the first comprehensive evaluation of Charles Taylor's work and a major contribution to leading questions in philosophy and the human sciences as they face an increasingly pluralistic age. Charles Taylor is one of the most influential contemporary moral and political philosophers: in an era of specialisation he is one of the few thinkers who has developed a comprehensive philosophy which speaks to the conditions of the modern world in a way that is compelling to specialists in various disciplines. This collection of specially commissioned essays brings together twelve distinguished scholars from a variety of fields to discuss critically Taylor's work. The topics range from the history of philosophy, to truth, modernity and postmodernity, theism, interpretation, the human sciences, liberalism, pluralism and difference. Taylor responds to all the contributions and re-articulates his own views.

ABSTRACTThis report on end‐of‐life decision‐making in Canada was produced by an international expert panel and commissioned by the Royal Society of Canada. It consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 reviews what is known about end‐of‐life care and opinions about assisted dying in Canada.Chapter 2 reviews the legal status quo in Canada with regard to various forms of assisted death.Chapter 3 reviews ethical issues pertaining to assisted death. The analysis is grounded in core values central to Canada's constitutional order.Chapter 4 reviews the experiences had in a number of jurisdictions that have decriminalized or recently reviewed assisted dying in some shape or form.Chapter 5 provides recommendations with regard to the provision of palliative care in Canada, as well as recommendations for reform with respect to the various forms of assisted death covered in this document

The apportionment of responsibility for health policy within multi‐level states should be sensitive to a number of conflicting normative pressures, some of which militate for placing decision‐making authority at the higher reaches of policy‐making structures, while others would seem to require placing them lower down this structure. The principle of subsidiarity is a structural principle that addresses in a manner that is neutral with respect to these values a way of addressing the conflicting claims of these values. Standard accounts of federalism fare poorly with respect to the criterion of subsidiarity. While central governments are at first glance better equipped to apply such a principle to the issue of the distribution of authority, there are strong empirical grounds for thinking that centralized governments will non‐neutrally privilege central authorities in applying the principle. Federal structures that admit of overlapping jurisdictions, and that therefore require that deliberation among federal parties occur as a condition of the problem of the distribution of powers over health care being solved, are most amenable to solving problems of distribution of authority.

Language is central to political philosophy, yet until now there has been little in the way of a common framework capable of bridging disciplines that share an interest in language, power, and ethics. Studies are predominantly carried out in isolated disciplinary silos - notably linguistics, philosophy, political science, public administration, and education. This volume proposes a new vision for understanding the political ethics of language, particularly in linguistically diverse societies, and it establishes the necessary common framework for this field of inquiry: language ethics. Through creative and constructive thinking, Language Ethics considers how to advance our understanding of the human commonalities of moral and linguistic capacities and the challenge of linguistic difference and societal interdependence. The book embraces the longstanding centrality of language to moral reasoning and reinterprets it in a manner that draws on the social and political life of real-world inter- and intralinguistic issues. Contributors to this collection are leading international experts from different disciplines and approaches whose voices add diverse insight to the discourse on ethics and language justice. Exploring social, political, and economic realities, Language Ethics illuminates the complex nexus between ethics and language and highlights the contemporary challenges facing multilingual societies, including the uncertainties, ambiguities, anxieties, and hopes that accompany them.