Coercive Care asks probing and challenging questions regarding the use of coercion in health care and the social services. The book combines philosophical analysis with comparative studies of social policy and law in a large number of industrialized countries.

Coercive Care asks probing and challenging questions regarding the use of coercion in health care and the social services. The book combines philosophical analysis with comparative studies of social policy and law in a large number of industrialized countries.

Is world government the answer to pressing global issues such as war, global injustices and environmental problems? Torbjorn Tannsjo presents the case for this idea. The notion of a sovereign world government has been defended in the past by philosophers such as Bertrand Russell and A.C. Ewing, but has been eclipsed by less radical ideas to do with peaceful cooperation between sovereign states or, at most, through systems of shared sovereignty. Tannsjo argues that such solutions cannot be effective; moreover he argues, in response to philosophers such as Kant and Rawls, that not only is a world government necessary if we want to solve pressing global problems, it is desirable in its own right. Short, simple to read, and focusing on the key arguments, Global Democracy is intended for anyone who wants to start to think about political solutions to global problems, putting them into a perspective that deserves to be taken seriously. Global Democracy now features a new preface written by the author in 2014. The author's royalties on sales of this book are being donated to Oxfam.

This is an introduction to moral theory for new students of ethics. How can we find true or reasonable moral principles to live our everyday lives by? Torbjorn Tannsjo presents 7 radically different moral theories, each of which attempts to provide the ultimate answer to the question of what we ought to do and why. Tannsjo carefully describes each theory, showing how it works in practice, critically assessing it and putting it into its historical perspective. It covers 7 moral theories: utilitarianism, egoism, deontological ethics, the ethics of rights, virtue ethics, feminist ethics, environmental or ecological ethics. It shows how each theory works in practice using the famous 'trolley' thought experiment. It looks at the influence of neuroscience and psychology on the formation of our moral intuitions. New For This Edition: a new section on population ethics has been added to the chapter on utilitarianism; discusses the impact of recent findings in social psychology on virtue ethics; and new, clearer applications of the trolley cases.

When and why is it right to kill? When and why is it wrong? Torbjoern Tannsjoe examines three theories on the ethics of killing in this book: deontology, a libertarian moral rights theory, and utilitarianism. The implications of each theory are worked out for different kinds of killing: trolley-cases, murder, capital punishment, suicide, assisted death, abortion, killing in war, and the killing of animals. These implications are confronted with our intuitions in relation to them, and our moral intuitions are examined in turn. Only those intuitions that survive an understanding of how we have come to hold them are seen as 'considered' intuitions. The idea is that the theory that can best explain the content of our considered intuitions gains inductive support from them. We must transcend our narrow cultural horizons and avoid certain cognitive mistakes in order to hold considered intuitions. In this volume, suitable for courses in ethics and applied ethics, Tannsjoe argues that in the final analysis utilitarianism can best account for, and explain, our considered intuitions about all these kinds of killing.