Nietzsche occasionally referred to his substantive ethical position as “immoralism,”1 but gave only a vague impression of just what this position amounts to. The strategy of this paper will be to determine how to be an immoralist by identifying what is affirmed in Nietzsche’s negation of morality. That is, I wish to consider aspects of the critique of morality not to show that morality is wrong – that is not my goal here – but to identify what Nietzsche’s substantive ethical (...) position is. I hope to show two things: that Nietzsche characterizes his immoralist position as an extension of rather than as an antithesis to a moralist one, and that Nietzsche offers a teleological position different from any of the familiar ones. (shrink)

MacIntyre characterises liberal societies as suffering distinctive, structural forms of malaise: they are a ‘disaster’, a ‘moral calamity’, sites of ‘barbarism and darkness’. I argue that, whilst we well understand why MacIntyre thinks liberalism is false, it is unclear why this falsity should imply such moral catastrophe. I begin by motivating the question and distinguishing it from the classic liberal-communitarian debates (§§1-2). In particular, I highlight liberalism’s ability to offer ‘workarounds’, accommodating at least some of MacIntyre’s commitments and so forestalling (...) the prospect of moral disaster. I then introduce two arguments which supply the missing premises, in each case juxtaposing MacIntyre with other critics of liberalism. First, I argue that liberalism’s conception of the private sphere systematically marginalizes MacIntyre’s vision of pedagogy (§3). I compare the argument and the attendant conception of privacy with Adorno’s (§4). In §5, I introduce the second premise: I argue that liberalism espouses a conception of maturity that actively undermines MacIntyre’s model of development, subverting liberal ‘workarounds’. I contrast this claim with recent attacks on liberalism by Deneen. I close with some methodological implications: MacIntyre’s case against liberalism should be seen as a form of external, not immanent, critique. (shrink)

This paper measures the effectiveness of a professional ethics course using the MacIntyrean Philosophical Approach which incorporates virtues, narrative, tradition, and community. There has been limited empirical work using this framework in which the emphasis has been on ‘thick descriptions’ created through narrative, mainly the case methodology. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no attempt to quantify the constructs of the MPA which is one of the contributions of our paper. Our approach is the first to use (...) a mixed method approach in applying the MPA and utilizes ten virtues captured in the Moral Competency Inventory, developed by Lennick et al., to measure virtues at the personal and social levels. Data were collected from eighty-nine students and analyzed using various multivariate techniques including Exploratory Factor Analysis, MANOVA and Structural Equation Modeling. The results were also triangulated with self-reflective essays that were analysed using content analysis. The findings showed that students’ virtues were higher after exposure to the MPA which confirmed that it had a significant and positive impact on the delivery of the professional ethics course. (shrink)

This thesis discusses implications of framing bioethical concerns in international legal discourse. It starts from the observation that legal approaches to questions of bioethical relevance have become dominant frameworks for addressing many bioethical concerns at the international level. In particular, the UN General Assembly has long attempted to regulate human cloning processes through an international Convention. Similarly, UNESCO and the Council of Europe have both addressed a variety of bioethically relevant issues, such as the processing of human genetic data, the (...) ethics of research or organ transplantation within international legal standards. It is in the context of this strong connection between international law, international legal discourse and bioethics that this thesis seeks to analyse what exactly happens when issues of bioethical relevance are discussed within such a framework, how this affects the way bioethical issues are conceptualized, conceived of and dealt with, and, ultimately, how well-suited or successful international legal discourse is in its attempt to resolve current bioethical questions. Following the methodological approach of discourse theory, this thesis bases its analysis on the assumption that where and when international legal standards, as manifestations of an international legal discourse, serve as framework for bioethical debate that also somewhat defines how bioethically relevant issues are approached, thought of and dealt with within that framework, that it somewhat determines what methods are used to resolve such issues and that it somewhat limits the range of conceivable and viable solutions to these issue. The thesis thereby does not aim to demonise or abrogate legal approaches to bioethics and it does not understand the implications discussed in this thesis to be necessarily good or bad. To the contrary, it will be shown that legal approaches to bioethics can and have contributed to the development of the field in several important ways. Yet, this thesis also shows that it is worthwhile to closely examine implications that follow from a specific legal approach to bioethical issues as these implications are not always easily perceived. Given the important, and often dominant or near exclusive role of international law and legal discourse in the area of bioethics as well as the former's strong influence on bioethical debates as a whole, the implications of addressing questions of bioethical relevance within an international legal discourse should at least be understood and acknowledged, a contribution that this thesis aims to make. Moreover, only if these implications are understood is it possible to ask whether engaging in that type of discourse is at all a valuable enterprise and whether or not international legal standards directly addressed to questions of bioethical relevance constitute a suitable means to effectively address questions in the area of bioethics. (shrink)