Abstract
The unfinished nature of Beauchamp and Childress’s account of the common morality after 34 years and seven editions raises questions about what is lacking, specifically in the way they carry out their project, more generally in the presuppositions of the classical liberal tradition on which they rely. Their wide-ranging review of ethical theories has not provided a method by which to move beyond a hypothetical approach to justification or, on a practical level regarding values conflict, beyond a questionable appeal to consensus. My major purpose in this paper is to introduce the thought of Bernard Lonergan as offering a way toward such a methodological breakthrough. In the first section, I consider Beauchamp and Childress’s defense of their theory of the common morality. In the second, I relate a persisting vacillation in their argument regarding the relative importance of reason and experience to a similar tension in classical liberal theory. In the third, I consider aspects of Lonergan’s generalized empirical method as a way to address problems that surface in the first two sections of the paper: (1) the structural relation of reason and experience in human action; and (2) the importance of theory for practice in terms of what Lonergan calls “common sense” and “general bias.”
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Notes
The same wording occurs in all subsequent editions, 4–7th [1, p. 107; 2, p. 104; 7, p. 126; 8, p. 64] (same emphasis in editions 4 and 5). While Beauchamp and Childress acknowledge positive obligations flowing from “respect for autonomy,” they no longer refer to “respect for persons” after the second edition (1983).
But see their criticism of Gert’s position at [1, pp. 396–397].
Beauchamp and Childress make no reference to this article in the sixth edition (2009).
As noted above, they discounted this option in the third edition (1989) [6, p. 9].
The facts under consideration speak against DeGrazia’s claim that pluralistic consensus itself is an adequate basis for theory [13].
The terms good and value no longer appear in the index after the second edition (1983), although derivative terms, such as good faith error and value of life, appear in some editions. The second is also the last edition in which the authors refer to persons as objects of respect under the heading of autonomy.
For a theory of health science and practice based on Lonergan’s philosophy, see [21].
Lonergan’s account of cognitional structure and objectivity takes up the first 13 chapters of Insight [16]. He discusses the level of decision in chapter 18 of Insight and chapter 2 of Method in Theology [17]. His 1964 essay, “Cognitional Structure,” provides an excellent summary account of the unified structure of these levels [22].
“[T]he foundation of the process is not the logic of the system, it is people performing the operations of insight, judgement and understanding at each step along the way” [27, pp. 64–65].
Like Dewey, Lonergan does not subscribe to a “spectator theory of knowledge”; see [28].
Also in Greek on title page, citing Aristotle [29, 431b2].
Aristotle makes a similar observation about the nonrational part of the human soul: “For this part and this capacity more than others seem to be active in sleep, and here the good and the bad person are least distinct; hence happy people are said to be no better off than miserable people for half their lives” [31, 1102b5-8].
Lonergan spends the first eleven chapters of Insight [16] working out his account of insight and providing multiple examples that are meant to be exercises for one’s own appropriation that one does in fact have insights, and further, that these insights underlie the expression of what we know or surmise or enact. This culminates in chapter eleven with an invitation to self-appropriation of oneself as a knower who integrates experiencing, understanding, and judging in the act of self-knowledge. Short of such exercise of personal learning at some time present or past on the part of a reader, trying to make sense of Lonergan’s teaching is like learning to manipulate math symbols without understanding what is really going on.
Breaking away from Aristotelian physics, Galileo explained motion by relating distance and time to one another in his study of moving objects, independent of his sense of the objects’ weight or “natural” position.
In the seventh edition (2013), the authors simply acknowledge that the rationale for HIV screening is “even stronger” since it stands to benefit the health of the individual as well as risk of transmission to others. They no longer use the terms “selective,” “universal,” “voluntary,” or “compulsory” in their analysis of public health surveillance [1, pp. 314–316].
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Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank Patrick Byrne for his expert guidance in the study of Lonergan and at all stages in writing this paper. He also wishes to thank JLA Garcia for his careful analysis of multiple drafts and both Anne Kane and Paul Lauritzen for their helpful comments on recent drafts of the paper.
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Daly, P. Common sense and the common morality in theory and practice. Theor Med Bioeth 35, 187–203 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-014-9282-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-014-9282-8