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293Bowling, A.: 1997, Measuring Health; a Review of Quality of Life Measurement Scales (2nd ed.) (review)Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 1 (2): 181-182. 1998.
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117A Hermeneutics of SportSport, Ethics and Philosophy 7 (1). 2013.(2013). A Hermeneutics of Sport. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy: Vol. 7, Sport and Art: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Sport, pp. 140-167. doi: 10.1080/17511321.2012.761893
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116The Hermeneutic Challenge of Genetic Engineering: Habermas and the TranshumanistsMedicine, Health Care and Philosophy 12 (2): 157-167. 2009.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 delet…Read more
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106The structure of the next three chapters owes much to Kant's four great definitions of ‘beauty’ found with his Critique of Judgement, in the ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’ (1952, §§1–22). The first pa...
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102Sport as Liturgy: Towards a Radical Orthodoxy of SportStudies in Christian Ethics 25 (1): 20-34. 2012.The purpose of this paper is to suggest that sport can be understood as a form of engagement with the fundamental contingency and vulnerability of the human condition, and as such that it expresses a yearning for meaning in a modern society that offers only the illusion of meaning. Sport, at its most profound, is argued to be a negative liturgy, in the sense that it highlights an absence of meaning, rather than offering a positive alternative. The paper draws on an analysis of contemporary socie…Read more
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98This 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 appreciat…Read more
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85In this essay I explore the relationship of sport to art. I do not intend to argue that sport is one of the arts. I will rather argue that sport and art have a commonality, in that both are alienated philosophy. This is to propose – in an argument that has its roots in Hegel's aesthetics – that sport and art may both be interpreted as a way of reflecting upon metaphysical and normative issues, albeit in media that are alien to philosophy's conceptual language. The medium of art is the manipulati…Read more
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84The 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 th…Read more
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81Integrity and the moral complexity of professional practiceNursing Philosophy 12 (2): 94-106. 2011.The paper offers an account of integrity as the capacity to deliberate and reflect usefully in the light of context, knowledge, experience, and information (that of self and others) on complex and conflicting factors bearing on action or potential action. Such an account of integrity seeks to encompass the moral complexity and conflict of the professional environment, and the need for compromises in professional practice. In addition, it accepts that humans are social beings who must respect and…Read more
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74Flourishing in Health CareHealth Care Analysis 24 (2): 161-173. 2016.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 th…Read more
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74The uncanny, alienation and strangeness: the entwining of political and medical metaphorMedicine, Health Care and Philosophy 14 (3): 313-322. 2011.This paper offers a critical response to Fredrik Svenaeus’ use of the Heideggerian uncanny to analyse the experience of illness. It is argued that the uncanny is part of a culture of concepts through which the condition of modernity has been analysed by philosophers, social theorists, writers and artists. All centre upon the idea of alienation, and thus not being at home in the society that should be one’s home. This association will be exploited to offer a reinterpretation of Svenaeus’ thesis a…Read more
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74Football and the Poetics of SpaceSport, Ethics and Philosophy 9 (2): 153-165. 2015.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 appreciat…Read more
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69The dominance of big pharma: power (review)Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 16 (2): 295-304. 2013.The purpose of this paper is to provide a normative model for the assessment of the exercise of power by Big Pharma. By drawing on the work of Steven Lukes, it will be argued that while Big Pharma is overtly highly regulated, so that its power is indeed restricted in the interests of patients and the general public, the industry is still able to exercise what Lukes describes as a third dimension of power. This entails concealing the conflicts of interest and grievances that Big Pharma may have w…Read more
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63Prospects for Flourishing in Contemporary Health CareHealth Care Analysis 24 (2): 101-104. 2016.This special issue of Health Care Analysis originated in an conference, held in Birmingham in 2014, and organised by the group Think about Health. We introduce the issue by briefly reviewing the understandings of the concept of ‘flourishing’, and introducing the contributory papers, before offering some reflections on the remaining issues that reflection on flourishing poses for health care provision
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62Best Interest: A Philosophical Critique (review)Health Care Analysis 16 (3): 197-207. 2008.On one conception of “best interest” there can only be one course of action in a given situation that is in a person’s best interest. In this paper we will first consider what theories of “best interest” and rational decision-making that can lead to this conclusion and explore some of the less commonly appreciated implications of these theories. We will then move on to consider what ethical theories that are compatible with such a view and explore their implications. In the second part of the pa…Read more
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60The Beauty of SportSport, Ethics and Philosophy 7 (1). 2013.(2013). The Beauty of Sport. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy: Vol. 7, Sport and Art: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Sport, pp. 100-120. doi: 10.1080/17511321.2013.761886
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55Sport and PhilosophySport, Ethics and Philosophy 7 (1). 2013.(2013). Sport and Philosophy. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy: Vol. 7, Sport and Art: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Sport, pp. 10-29. doi: 10.1080/17511321.2013.761882
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53Personal identity and the massively multiplayer online worldSport, Ethics and Philosophy 10 (1): 51-66. 2016.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 playfu…Read more
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48A Response to Nordenfelt's “The Varieties of Dignity”Health Care Analysis 12 (2): 83-89. 2004.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 ser…Read more
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42The Art of Useless SufferingMedicine, Health Care and Philosophy 10 (4): 95-405. 2007.The purpose of this paper is to explore the role that modernism in the arts might have in articulating the uselessness and incomprehensibility of physical and mental suffering. It is argued that the experience of illness is frequently resistant to interpretation, and as such, it will be suggested, to conventional forms of artistic expression and communication. Conventional narratives, and other beautiful or conventionally expressive aesthetic structures, that presuppose the possibility and desir…Read more
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41I began this essay with the question of whether sport is the sort of thing of which there can be a philosophy. Danto (1981, 55), in defending the claim that art is the sort of thing of which there...
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41Professional values, aesthetic values, and the ends of tradeMedicine, Health Care and Philosophy 14 (2): 195-201. 2011.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. Th…Read more
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41The expert patient: Illness as practiceMedicine, Health Care and Philosophy 8 (2): 165-171. 2005.Abstract.This paper responds to the Expert Patient initiative by questioning its over-reliance on instrumental forms of reasoning. It will be suggested that expertise of the patient suffering from chronic illness should not be exclusively seen in terms of a model of technical knowledge derived from the natural sciences, but should rather include an awareness of the hermeneutic skills that the patient needs in order to make sense of their illness and the impact that the illness has upon their sen…Read more
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40The Philosophy of HabermasMcgill-Queen's University Press. 2005.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…Read more
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36Sport as strategic action: A Habermasian perspectiveSport, Ethics and Philosophy 1 (1). 2007.The purpose of this paper is to explore the moral status of sport through a conceptual structure borrowed from Jürgen Habermas's philosophy and social theory. Habermas distinguishes between communicative and strategic action as two ways in which social action may be coordinated. While the former relies on the building of mutual understanding between social agents, the latter entails one agent manipulating others, as if they were mere objects to be treated instrumentally. In an initial model of s…Read more
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32The Modernism of SportSport, Ethics and Philosophy 7 (1): 121-139. 2013.In the previous chapter ‘The Beauty of Sport', I made a distinction between classical and modernist aesthetics. The classical is exemplified in eighteenthcentury art criticism and its use of the la...
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32Talking about ‘Fairness’ in Football and Politics: The Case of NavadSport, Ethics and Philosophy 14 (3): 401-414. 2020.We argue that sport in general, and association football in particular, are activities that invite spectators and players alike to talk about them. Using a Wittgensteinian approach, we argued more...
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30Enterprise association or civil association? The uk national health serviceJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 20 (6): 669-688. 1995.This paper falls into three parts. In the first part I will briefly review the current process of reform that the United Kingdom National Health Service is undergoing. Two fundamental motivations for reform, the desire for increased efficiency and for an increased responsiveness to patients' needs and preferences will be discussed in greater detail. The second part attempts to provide a perspective on the moral debate concerning health care reform by introducing the distinction between ‘civil as…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Continental Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |
Continental Philosophy |