Public policy surrounding the hotly debated issue of physician-assisted suicide is examined in detail. You ll find an analysis of the current legal standing and practice of physician-assisted suicide in several countries. Authors discuss the ethical principles underlying its legal and professional regulation. Personal narratives provide important first-hand accounts from professionals who have been involved in end-of-life issues for many years.

Responsibility for future generations is easily postulated in the abstract but it is much more difficult to set it to work in the concrete. It requires some changes in individual and institutional attitudes that are in opposition to what has been called the "systems variables" of industrial society: individual freedom, consumerism, and equality. The Politics of Sustainability from Philosophical Perspectives seeks to examine the motivational and institutional obstacles standing in the way of a consistent politics of sustainability and to look for strategies to overcome them. It argues that though there have been significant changes in individual and especially collective attitudes to growth, intergenerational solidarity and nature preservation, it is far from certain whether these will be sufficient to encourage politicians into giving sustainable policies priority over other legitimate concerns. Having a philosophical approach as its main focus, the volume is at the same time interdisciplinary in combining political, psychological, ecological and economic analyses. This book will be a contribution to the joint effort to meet the theoretical and practical challenges posed by climate change and other impending global perils and will be of interest to students of environmental studies, applied ethics and environmental psychology.

In Naturalness, Dieter Birnbacher delves into an argument common in everyday thinking and ethics-the argument of naturalness. This argument suggests that what is natural is in some ways superior to what is artificial, due to repeated positive connotations associated with the natural. This book presents both a phenomenology and a critique. For the former, Naturalness reviews the role of naturalistic arguments in various domains of everyday language and reasoning as well as in political and ethical debates, especially regarding controversial issues in preservation. For the latter, it critically discusses the persuasiveness of naturalness, both intellectually and morally, and how it is currently no more than an expression of conservatism and resistance to change in basic orientations.

Public policy surrounding the hotly debated issue of physician-assisted suicide is examined in detail. You'll find an analysis of the current legal standing and practice of physician-assisted suicide in several countries. Authors discuss the ethical principles underlying its legal and professional regulation. Personal narratives provide important first-hand accounts from professionals who have been involved in end-of-life issues for many years.

Responsibility for future generations is easily postulated in the abstract but it is much more difficult to set it to work in the concrete. It requires some changes in individual and institutional attitudes that are in opposition to what has been called the "systems variables" of industrial society: individual freedom, consumerism, and equality. The Politics of Sustainability from Philosophical Perspectives seeks to examine the motivational and institutional obstacles standing in the way of a consistent politics of sustainability and to look for strategies to overcome them. It argues that though there have been significant changes in individual and especially collective attitudes to growth, intergenerational solidarity and nature preservation, it is far from certain whether these will be sufficient to encourage politicians into giving sustainable policies priority over other legitimate concerns. Having a philosophical approach as its main focus, the volume is at the same time interdisciplinary in combining political, psychological, ecological and economic analyses. This book will be a contribution to the joint effort to meet the theoretical and practical challenges posed by climate change and other impending global perils and will be of interest to students of environmental studies, applied ethics and environmental psychology.

The term negative causality denotes a highly controversial problem in metaphysics: Can negative entities such as the absence or the non-occurrence of certain events be causes or causal factors? This question is situated at the intersection of a series of fundamental questions that transcend disciplinary boundaries, questions concerning not only the nature of causality, actions, and events, but also the relationship between causality and moral and legal responsibility. This book is intended for philosophers, legal theorists, and theorists of science."

Analytical Introduction to Ethics is the second volume in the series of a oeanalytical introductionsa to the disciplines of philosophy. It gives an overview of the problems in moral philosophy and of the ethical answers toquestions of essence, functions, and content of morality.

"Naturlichkeit" ist in der Alltagsmoral weiterhin ein ausgesprochen positiv beladener Begriff. Eine gewichtige Rolle spielt er uberall da, wo naturwuchsige Ablaufe durch den technischen Fortschritt menschlicher Steuerung zuganglich werden, etwa in der Reproduktionsmedizin, der Genetik und der modernen Landwirtschaft. Das Buch fragt nach Grunden und Motiven zur Privilegierung des (relativ) Naturlichen gegenuber dem (relativ) Kunstlichen und geht dessen ideengeschichtlichen Wurzeln nach. Pluspunkte: Autor bekanntester Philosoph fur das Thema, Thematik hoch aktuell, hervorragend und einfuhrend geschrieben.