Kyle J. Barbour

Medical assistance in dying (MAiD) has become a prominent form of end-of-life care within the Canadian health system, yet it is not without its critics. Drawing even more critical attention is the possibility of Canada expanding MAiD eligibility to persons who suffer from mental disorder as their sole underlying medical condition (MAiD MD-SUMC). Unlike physical conditions that cause pain and suffering, mental disorder has the intrinsic potential to affect one’s ability to understand and appropriately value the consequences of one’s actions and decisions. There is thus a significant risk that a patient who has requested MAiD MD-SUMC may be unable to provide valid consent due to an impaired ability to either: 1) adequately understand the consequences of receiving MAiD or 2) place that consequence within a consistent set of values. Due to the important ways in which mental disorder can affect one’s values and desires, this paper argues that we must evaluate decision-making capacity in a more holistic way that includes both cognitive and evaluative factors. My argument is based upon a presentation of the evaluative factors involved in decision-making, a demonstration that these factors may be significantly affected by mental illness, and a suggestion that we require more holistic criteria for capacity evaluation than the excessively cognitive criteria espoused by most commonly used assessment tools. Because of the interplay between these aspects of my argument and the extremely high stakes involved in MAiD assessments, I suggest that capacity evaluations (both in general and especially for MAiD requests) ought to incorporate an aspect of narrative assessment by which the patient’s values and self-understanding can be better assessed.

L’aide médicale à mourir (AMM) est devenue une forme importante de soins de fin de vie au sein du système de santé canadien, mais elle ne fait pas l’unanimité. La possibilité que le Canada élargisse l’admissibilité à l’AMM aux personnes souffrant d’un trouble mental comme seule affection médicale sous-jacente (AMM TM-SPMI) suscite encore plus de critiques. Contrairement aux conditions physiques qui causent de la douleur et de la souffrance, les troubles mentaux ont le potentiel intrinsèque d’affecter la capacité d’une personne à comprendre et à évaluer de manière appropriée les conséquences de ses actions et de ses décisions. Il existe donc un risque important qu’un patient qui a demandé l’AMM TM-SPMI ne soit pas en mesure de donner son consentement valide en raison d’une capacité réduite à : 1) comprendre adéquatement les conséquences du recours à l’AMM ou 2) replacer ces conséquences dans un ensemble cohérent de valeurs. Compte tenu de l’importance de l’influence des troubles mentaux sur les valeurs et les désirs d’une personne, le présent document soutient que nous devons évaluer la capacité décisionnelle de manière plus holistique, en tenant compte à la fois des facteurs cognitifs et évaluatifs. Mon argument repose sur une présentation des facteurs évaluatifs impliqués dans la prise de décision, une démonstration que ces facteurs peuvent être considérablement affectés par la maladie mentale, et une suggestion selon laquelle nous avons besoin de critères plus holistiques pour l’évaluation de la capacité que les critères excessivement cognitifs préconisés par les outils d’évaluation les plus couramment utilisés. En raison de l’interaction entre ces aspects de mon argumentation et les enjeux extrêmement importants liés aux évaluations de l’AMM, je suggère que les évaluations de la capacité (en général et en particulier pour les demandes d’AMM) intègrent un aspect d’évaluation narrative permettant de mieux évaluer les valeurs et la compréhension de soi du patient.

Jean-Luc Marion’s account of the saturated phenomenon has come under criticism from a variety of positions, most importantly the “hermeneutic critique” which claims that Marion does not account for the way in which the very appearing of phenomena are dependent upon interpretation. While appreciative of Marion’s ingenuity in conceiving the saturated phenomenon and the rigour of his phenomenological investigation, I agree with the hermeneutic critique that Marion has sidelined the fundamental role that subjectivity has in the constitution of experience. However, despite my endorsement of the hermeneutic critique, I do not believe that its proponents go far enough in bringing forth the implicit conclusion of the critique. In this article, I will argue that the saturated phenomenon generates a contradiction that Marion has not successfully grappled with: either the phenomenon appears and is not saturated, or else it is saturated and does not appear.

In this essay, I argue for a reinterpretation of F. H. Bradley's theory of feeling based on the underemphasized influence of Hegel's phenomenology on Bradley's philosophy. While traditional interpretations of Bradleyan feeling often understand it to have strong metaphysical connotations, I argue that such interpretations result in an important distortion of the overall structure of Bradley's thought. Contra the metaphysical interpretation, I argue that Bradley's account of feeling can only be properly understood by interpreting his theory in light of his own explicit attributions of the theory to Hegel. By taking Bradley at his word that feeling truly is derived from Hegel, I argue that we are better able to understand the overall structure of Bradley's thought and the way in which he belongs to the neo-Hegelian tradition of philosophy. Through explaining the debt that Bradley owes to Hegel regarding feeling, an important source of disagreement between Bradley and Hegel will become apparent, namely, the ability for feeling to be subsumed within thought, thereby differentiating Bradley's and Hegel's ultimate characterizations of reality.

Through reappraising F.H. Bradley’s debt to Hegel, this dissertation offers a novel account of Bradley’s thought which emphasizes its epistemological, phenomenological, and metaphysical structure, thereby clarifying the overall argument that Bradley makes in favour of his variation of absolute idealism and bolstering the strength of his development of orthodox Hegelianism. Yet, by reading Bradley’s work through this Hegelian lens, a dilemma appears: 1) because his philosophy is rooted within fundamentally Hegelian principles, we cannot separate Bradley’s work from Hegel’s; 2) Bradley does diverge from Hegel’s system in ways which mean that his thought is not merely identical with that of Hegel. Against both heads of this dilemma, I conclude that because of the simultaneously affirmative and critical stance that he takes towards Hegel’s system, Bradley must be understood as a Neo-Hegelian philosopher. This dissertation concludes that through emphasizing logical rigour, phenomenological examination of the qualitative aspect of immediate experience, and by rendering explicit the conclusions necessitated by Hegel’s principles which are merely implicit within Hegel’s own writings, F.H. Bradley’s philosophy offers an improved version of Hegel’s system.

In this essay, I argue that Hegel's Absolute must be understood to be transcendent in the sense of being both immanent within the world and exceeding it. This account of transcendence invariably turns on Hegel's inheritance of the Christian tradition and, in particular, the metaphysics espoused through Christian Platonism. To support my argument I will examine the methodological immanentism of Hegel's phenomenology to show that such immanentism, while demanded by any phenomenology, is not necessarily imported into his metaphysics. I will then examine Hegel's Logic to show that the dialectic which his thought relies upon compels the finite subject to recognise that all finite things, including themselves, are grounded within the Absolute Idea. I will then examine whether we must understand the Absolute Idea as immanent or whether there is room to conceive of it as transcendent. I conclude the essay by showing that the sense of transcendence as found within Nicene Christianity provides an understanding of transcendence that is not only compatible with Hegel's thought but actually allows us to make better sense of his system than the immanentist interpretation of it.

In this essay, I argue that F.H. Bradley’s controversial theory of “degrees of truth and reality” is the logical development of Hegel’s own theory of truth when it is placed within the metaphysical system of the Science of Logic. Despite Bradley’s own claim that with regards to the theory of degrees of truth and reality he is indebted even more than anywhere else to Hegel, this connection has been little examined in the secondary literature. Through a careful examination of both Bradley’s works and the structure of Hegel’s logic, it will become clear that Bradley’s development of the theory is the only logical conclusion that the consistent Hegelian can make. This essay has clear ramifications for our understanding of Bradley’s philosophy and, through uncovering the logical connections that led Bradley to develop the theory, I reveal an important implication of Hegel’s thought that has been entirely overlooked.