Human Lives: Critical Essays on Consequentialist Bioethics

by David S. Oderberg (Editor)

Human Critical Essays on Consequentialist Bioethics is a collection of original papers by philosophers from Britain, the USA and Australia. The aim of the book is to redress the imbalance in moral philosophy created by the dominance of consequentialism, the view that the criterion of morality is the maximization of good effects over bad, without regard for basic right or wrong. This approach has become the orthodoxy over the last few decades, particularly in the field of bioethics, where moral theory is applied to matters of life and death. The essays in Human Lives critically examine the assumptions and arguments of consequentialism, reviving in the process important concepts such as rights, justice, innocence, natural integrity, flourishing, the virtues, and the fundamental value of human life.

244 pages, Hardcover

First published November 8, 1996

About the author

Professor David Simon Oderberg (born 1963) is an Australian philosopher of metaphysics and ethics based in Britain since 1987. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading.