The foundation for a system of morals, this 1749 work is a landmark of moral and political thought. Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.

Cadaver organs should be automatically availableThe shortage of donor organs and tissue for transplantation constitutes an acute emergency which demands radical rethinking of our policies and radical measures. While estimates vary and are difficult to arrive at there is no doubt that the donor organ shortage costs literally hundreds of thousands of lives every year. “In the world as a whole there are an estimated 700 000 patients on dialysis . . .. In India alone 100 000 new patients present (...) with kidney failure each year” . Almost “three million Americans suffer from congestive heart failure . . . deaths related to this condition are estimated at 250 000 each year . . . 27 000 patients die annually from liver disease . . .. In Western Europe as a whole 40 000 patients await a kidney but only . . . 10 000 kidneys”1 become available. Nobody knows how many people fail to make it onto the waiting lists and fail to register in the statistics. “As of 24th November 2002 in the United Kingdom 667 people have donated organs, 2055 people have received transplants, and 5615 people are still awaiting transplants.”2Conscious of the terrible and unnecessary tragedy that figures like these represent I have been advocating for more than 20 years now some radical measures to stem this appalling waste of human life. The measure which is the subject of Hamer and Rivlin’s paper 3 concerns the automatic availability of all cadaver organs—a measure, which I first advocated publicly in 1983.4THE AUTOMATIC AVAILABILITY OF DONOR ORGANSWe need to begin by being clear about just what it is I propose and why. At the moment in the United Kingdom we …. (shrink)

The ethics of post-mortem organ retention and use is widely debated in bioethics and law. However, the fundamental ethical issues have often been inadequately treated. According to one argument, dead bodies are no longer “persons”. Given the great benefits dead bodies offer to human kind, they should be automatically treated as public property: when the person dies, the body becomes a public thing . This paper articulates the ethical issues involved in organ and tissue retention and use, both in the (...) case in which the deceased’s wishes are known and in the case in which the wishes are not known. It contends that a dead body is not a republic. The state should maximise availability of organs and tissues by inviting or requiring citizens to make an informed and responsible choice on the matter. (shrink)

It helps ordinary citizens evaluate their options and their responsibility for global institutional factors, and it challenges social scientists to address the causes of poverty and hunger that act across borders.The present volume ...

Qu'est-ce que la philosophie aujourd'hui? De quoi se nourrit-elle? Peut-elle s'enraciner autrement que dans une réflexion sur ce que les sciences, les techniques, les arts apportent à la modernité? Erudit imaginatif, esprit acéré et styliste inspiré, François Dagognet réussit ici une synthèse dense, qui entrecroise brillamment médecine, chimie, sciences de la vie, biologie, art, techniques, cherchant surtout à rendre le lecteur attentif à ce que la philosophie classique a toujours dénié : la richesse créative de la matière. Plus soucieuse des (...) surfaces et des matières molles que des solides et des " substances ", l'analyse culmine en un éloge de l'artifice et des procédés de synthèse qui créent images et plastiques plus qu'ils ne reproduisent un réel stable, donné une fois pour toutes. A travers la réflexion de ce " matériologue ", le nouveau, le multiple se révèlent et se relisent, objets d'une curiosité joyeuse, et soucieuse de se dire en un style allègre. Un ouvrage rare, fort, œuvre d'un esprit paradoxal, résolument moderne. (shrink)