Two clusters of essays in this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy provide a critical gaze through which to explore central moral, phenomenological, ontological, and political concerns regarding human moral agency and personal responsibility. The first cluster challenges common assumptions in bioethics regarding the voluntariness of human actions. The second set turns the debate towards morally responsible choice within the requirements of distributive justice. The force of their collective analysis leaves us with a well-founded basis critically to approach (...) any account of bioethics or health policy that is insufficiently attentive to the central challenges of human freedom and responsible free choice. (shrink)

In this thesis, I will argue that in cases of surrogate decision making, proxies better respect an incompetent person’s autonomy when using the current values approach only in very specific cases where the loss of competence has rendered someone an entirely new person. In all other cases, I believe that the counterfactual view provides a better basis for respecting an incompetent person’s autonomy.