Alvaro Fernandes

Philosophical Writing: An Introduction, 4th Edition, features numerous updates and revisions to A. P. Martinich’s best-selling text that instructs beginning philosophy students on how to craft a well-written philosophical essay. Features an entirely new chapter on how to read a philosophical essay, new sections on quantification and modality, and rhetoric in philosophical writing, as well as more updated essay examples Includes many new essay examples and an accompanying website with further topics and examples Traces the evolution of a good philosophical essay from draft stage to completion Emphasizes what a student should do in crafting an essay, rather than on what not to do Written with clarity and humor by a leading philosopher.

The character and extent of disabilities, especially cognitive disability, have posed significance problems for existing moral theories. Certain philosophers have even questioned the moral personhood of people with disabilities and have argued that people with profound cognitive impairments should not be granted the same moral status as those who are cognitively able-bodied. This paper proposes an alternative understanding of moral personhood as relational rather than individuated. This relational moral personhood finds its foundation in the clinical practice and psychoanalysis of Julia Kristeva and the hermeneutic narrative identity of Paul Ricoeur. One consequence of this relational personhood is a new understanding of moral status through narrative co-authorship rather than intellectual or social capacity. Another consequence is a refiguration of narrative identity as narrative interdependence

The work of phenomenologists of medicine has been dedicated to re-centering the patient’s first-person perspective in discussions of illness experience. Thus, the phenomenology of medicine engages in the work of accounting for what has remained neglected or unexamined in dominant models of medical thinking. The scholars represented in this issue share in this recuperative impulse to uncover what has been omitted or overlooked in their respective ethical debates. In this issue, authors introduce or re-evaluate ideas and perspectives that deepen discussions of the phenomenology of illness, transgender media representation, the limits of the duty to treat, and compensation for blood plasma.