A Philosophical Disease: Bioethics, Culture, and Identity

by Elliott,Carl

• ISBN13: 9780415919395
• ISBN10: 0415919398
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-11-18
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Drawing on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and novelists such as Walker Percy, Paul Auster and Graham Greene,A Philosophical Diseasebrings to the bioethical discussion larger philosophical questions about the sense and significance of human life. Carl Elliott moves beyond the standard menu of bioethical issues to explore the relationship of illness to identity, and of mental illness to spiritual illness. He also examines the treatment of children born with ambiguous genitalia, the claims of Deaf culture, and the morality of self-sacrifice. This book focuses on a different sensibility in bioethics; how we use concepts, and how they relate to our own particular social institutions.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi	(4)
Introduction: Writing Morality	xv
Chapter 1 Notes of a Philosophical Scut Monkey: The Bureaucracy of Medical Ethics	1	(24)
Chapter 2 You Are What You Are Afflicted By: Pathology, Authenticity and Identity	25	(24)
Chapter 3 Lost at the Mall; or, The Use of Prozac in a Time of Normal Nihilism	49	(26)
Chapter 4 Puppet-Masters and Personality Disorders: Psychopathology, Determinism and Responsibility	75	(16)
Chapter 5 Nothing Matters: Depression and Competence in Clinical Research	91	(12)
Chapter 6 What's Wrong with Living Heart Transplantation?	103	(18)
Chapter 7 The Point of the Story: Narrative, Meaning and Final Justification	121	(20)
Chapter 8 A General Antitheory of Bioethics	141	(24)
Notes	165	(20)
Index	185