When Doing the Right Thing is Impossible

When Doing the Right Thing is Impossible PDF Author: Lisa Tessman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190657588
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Suppose that in an emergency evacuation of a hospital after a flood, not all of the patients can make it out alive. You are the doctor faced with the choice between abandoning these patients to die alone and in pain, or injecting them with a lethal dose of drugs, without consent, so that they die peacefully. Perhaps no one will be able to blame you whatever you decide, but, whichever action you choose, you will remain burdened by guilt. What happens, in cases like this, when, no matter what you do, you are destined for moral failure? What happens when there is no available means of doing the right thing? Human life is filled with such impossible moral decisions. These choices and case studies that demonstrate them form the focus of Lisa Tessman's arresting and provocative work. Many philosophers believe that there are simply no situations in which what you morally ought to do is something that you can't do, because they think that you can't be required to do something unless it's actually in your power to do it. Despite this, real life presents us daily with situations in which we feel that we have failed morally even when no right action would have been possible. Lisa Tessman boldly argues that sometimes we feel this way because we have encountered an 'impossible moral requirement.' Drawing on philosophy, empirical psychology, and evolutionary theory, When Doing the Right Thing Is Impossible explores how and why human beings have constructed moral requirements to be binding even when they are impossible to fulfill.

When Doing the Right Thing Is Impossible

When Doing the Right Thing Is Impossible PDF Author: Lisa Tessman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019065760X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Suppose that in an emergency evacuation of a hospital after a flood, not all of the patients can make it out alive. You are the doctor faced with the choice between abandoning these patients to die alone and in pain, or injecting them with a lethal dose of drugs, without consent, so that they die peacefully. Perhaps no one will be able to blame you whatever you decide, but, whichever action you choose, you will remain burdened by guilt. What happens, in cases like this, when, no matter what you do, you are destined for moral failure? What happens when there is no available means of doing the right thing? Human life is filled with such impossible moral decisions. These choices and case studies that demonstrate them form the focus of Lisa Tessman's arresting and provocative work. Many philosophers believe that there are simply no situations in which what you morally ought to do is something that you can't do, because they think that you can't be required to do something unless it's actually in your power to do it. Despite this, real life presents us daily with situations in which we feel that we have failed morally even when no right action would have been possible. Lisa Tessman boldly argues that sometimes we feel this way because we have encountered an 'impossible moral requirement.' Drawing on philosophy, empirical psychology, and evolutionary theory, When Doing the Right Thing Is Impossible explores how and why human beings have constructed moral requirements to be binding even when they are impossible to fulfill.

When Doing the Right Thing is Impossible

When Doing the Right Thing is Impossible PDF Author: Lisa Tessman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190657588
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Get Book Here

Book Description
Suppose that in an emergency evacuation of a hospital after a flood, not all of the patients can make it out alive. You are the doctor faced with the choice between abandoning these patients to die alone and in pain, or injecting them with a lethal dose of drugs, without consent, so that they die peacefully. Perhaps no one will be able to blame you whatever you decide, but, whichever action you choose, you will remain burdened by guilt. What happens, in cases like this, when, no matter what you do, you are destined for moral failure? What happens when there is no available means of doing the right thing? Human life is filled with such impossible moral decisions. These choices and case studies that demonstrate them form the focus of Lisa Tessman's arresting and provocative work. Many philosophers believe that there are simply no situations in which what you morally ought to do is something that you can't do, because they think that you can't be required to do something unless it's actually in your power to do it. Despite this, real life presents us daily with situations in which we feel that we have failed morally even when no right action would have been possible. Lisa Tessman boldly argues that sometimes we feel this way because we have encountered an 'impossible moral requirement.' Drawing on philosophy, empirical psychology, and evolutionary theory, When Doing the Right Thing Is Impossible explores how and why human beings have constructed moral requirements to be binding even when they are impossible to fulfill.

Moral Failure

Moral Failure PDF Author: Lisa Tessman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199396140
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality asks what happens when the sense that "I must" collides with the realization that "I can't." Bringing together philosophical and empirical work in moral psychology, Lisa Tessman here examines moral requirements that are non-negotiable and that contravene the principle that "ought implies can." In some cases, it is because two non-negotiable requirements conflict that one of them becomes impossible to satisfy, and yet remains binding. In other cases, performing a particular action may be non-negotiably required -- even if it is impossible -- because not performing the action is unthinkable. After offering both conceptual and empirical explanations of the experience of impossible moral requirements and the ensuing failures to fulfill them, Tessman considers what to make of such experience, and in particular, what role such experience has in the construction of value and of moral authority. According to the constructivist account that the book proposes, some moral requirements can be authoritative even when they are impossible to fulfill. Tessman points out a tendency to not acknowledge the difficulties that impossible moral requirements and unavoidable moral failures create in moral life, and traces this tendency through several different literatures, from scholarship on Holocaust testimony to discussions of ideal and nonideal theory, from theories of supererogation to debates about moral demandingness and to feminist care ethics.

Doing the Right Thing

Doing the Right Thing PDF Author: Roberta Satow, Ph.D.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781585424627
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Now in paperback, one of the first books to help navigate the profound emotional challenges of caring for elderly parents in a strained parent-child relationship.

What's Wrong with Morality?

What's Wrong with Morality? PDF Author: Charles Daniel Batson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199355541
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Most works on moral psychology consider morality an unalloyed good. Drawing primarily on social-psychological theory and research, this book looks at morality as a problem. The problem is that we often fail live up to our own moral standards. Why?

My Long List of Impossible Things

My Long List of Impossible Things PDF Author: Michelle Barker
Publisher: Annick Press
ISBN: 1773213660
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
A brilliant historical YA that asks: how do you choose between survival and doing the right thing? The arrival of the Soviet Army in Germany at the end of World War II sends sixteen-year-old Katja and her family into turmoil. The fighting has stopped, but German society is in collapse, resulting in tremendous hardship. With their father gone and few resources available to them, Katja and her sister are forced to flee their home, reassured by their mother that if they can just reach a distant friend in a town far away, things will get better. But their harrowing journey brings danger and violence, and Katja needs to summon all her strength to build a new life, just as she’s questioning everything she thought she knew about her country. Katja’s bravery and defiance help her deal with the emotional and societal upheaval. But how can she stay true to herself and protect the people she loves when each decision has such far-reaching consequences? Acclaimed writerMichelle Barker’s new novel explores the chaos and destruction of the Second World War from a perspective rarely examined in YA fiction—the implications of the Soviet occupation on a German population grappling with the horrors of Nazism and its aftermath.

Fate and Faith after Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy

Fate and Faith after Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy PDF Author: Peter S. Dillard
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532662351
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
In this groundbreaking new work, Dillard makes a powerful case for bringing contemporary Christian theology into critical dialogue with Martin Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event). Following his initial receptivity to theology in his early writings, Heidegger becomes increasingly agnostic and even atheistic in the 1930s until the sudden resurgence of religious discourse in Contributions. Dillard shows that there are good reasons for Heidegger's striking reversal. Key philosophical concepts from Contributions enable Heidegger to overcome earlier theological conundrums left unresolved in his earlier engagements with themes in St. Paul and Luther, while the need to make a fateful decision regarding "the last god" prevents the central philosophical task of Contributions from collapsing into empty tautology or relapsing into objectionable metaphysics. Nevertheless, Heidegger leaves us in the predicament of having no clear idea of how we are to make the crucial decision about divinity. After considering several unsuccessful proposals for escaping the dilemma, Dillard develops a christological solution based on Heidegger's engagement with the poetry of Georg Trakl. The resulting theological perspective is defended from some possible criticisms and situated within the broader context of contemporary postmetaphysical Heideggerian theology.

Moral Conflicts of Organ Retrieval: A Case for Constructive Pluralism

Moral Conflicts of Organ Retrieval: A Case for Constructive Pluralism PDF Author: Charles C. Hinkley II
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004409572
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
In this revised edition of Moral Conflicts of Organ Retrieval: A Case for Constructive Pluralism, Charles Hinkley elaborates on his moral philosophy of constructive pluralism and updates the literature on organ retrieval strategies. Hinkley challenges a deeply entrenched moral triad: 1) moral values are comparable; 2) the weighing metaphor helps us conceptualize decisions regarding conflicting values; and 3) there is a single best discoverable response to a moral decision. This book offers an alternative—cases of incomparability, a constructing or making metaphor, and multiple permissible responses to some moral questions. Constructive pluralism has important implications for organ transplantation, health, and ethics.

How to End a War

How to End a War PDF Author: Graham Parsons
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108998623
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
How and when should we end a war? What place should the pathways to a war's end have in war planning and decision-making? This volume treats the topic of ending war as part and parcel of how wars begin and how they are fought – a unique, complex problem, worthy of its own conversation. New essays by leading thinkers and practitioners in the fields of philosophical ethics, international relations, and military law reflect on the problem and show that it is imperative that we address not only the resolution of war, but how and if a war as waged can accommodate a future peace. The essays collectively solidify the topic and underline its centrality to the future of military ethics, strategy, and war.

The Nicomachean Ethics

The Nicomachean Ethics PDF Author: Aristotle
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141395249
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
One of the most important philosophical works of all time, in a new Penguin Classics translation by Adam Beresford 'Right and wrong is a human thing' What does it mean to be a good person? Aristotle's famous series of lectures on ethical topics ranges over fundamental questions about good and bad character; pleasure and self-control; moral wisdom and the foundations of right and wrong; friendship and love in all their forms - all set against a rich and humane conception of what makes for a flourishing life. Adam Beresford's freshly researched translation presents many of Aristotle's key terms and idioms in standard English for the first time, and faithfully preserves the unvarnished style of the original.