Abortion and moral context : human beings in a moral community
In this dissertation, I urge that ethical discussions of abortion remain dissatisfying in large part because they conduct the debate in terms of the contested concept of the âperson.â Building on the reflections of MacIntyre, I will argue that the loss of ethical context to which he refers has also meant that we have come to view âpersonsâ and human beings as individual, independent units, abstracted from their relations with others. Philosophers have sought to analyse and elevate the concept of âpersonâ; competing conceptions of personhood have pursued the specific individual qualities that grounds a being's claim to having a morally significant life. This predilection of the personhood literature has often severely limited the abortion dialogue and prevented richer and varied understandings of our layered nature from emerging. I contend that the deadlock, to which Ruth Macklin refers, within the personhood dialogue means that we need to broaden our moral vocabulary and give a much more central place to the notion of the socialised human being. Rather than place personhood at the heart of the debate, I would suggest we should emphasise our relationships and our membership in an already-existing
Mackintosh, Elizabeth Karen
Abortion and moral context : human beings in a moral community. In this dissertation, I urge that ethical discussions of abortion remain dissatisfying in large part because they conduct the debate in terms of the contested concept of the âperson.â Building on the reflections of MacIntyre, I will argue that the loss of ethical context to which he refers has also meant that we have come to view âpersonsâ and human beings as individual, independent units, abstracted from their relations with others. Philosophers have sought to analyse and elevate the concept of âpersonâ; competing conceptions of personhood have pursued the specific individual qualities that grounds a being's claim to having a morally significant life. This predilection of the personhood literature has often severely limited the abortion dialogue and prevented richer and varied understandings of our layered nature from emerging. I contend that the deadlock, to which Ruth Macklin refers, within the personhood dialogue means that we need to broaden our moral vocabulary and give a much more central place to the notion of the socialised human being. Rather than place personhood at the heart of the debate, I would suggest we should emphasise our relationships and our membership in an already-existing
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