Reading Engelhardt pp 189-203 | Cite as
The Foundations of The Foundations of Bioethics: Engelhardt’s Kantian Underpinnings
Abstract
In these days of post-modernism and anti-essentialism actualized within the context of the relatively recent appreciation of the supposed failure of the Enlightenment Project, it is rare to hear terms like “rights,” “guarantees” and “freedom.” Surprisingly, these very terms are used by Tristram Engelhardt, a most contemporary thinker. Not so surprisingly, these very same terms are used by Immanuel Kant. In what follows, I show how it is that Engelhardt employs the above terms as the criterion for what he advocates as the foundation of bioethics. In doing so, I demonstrate that Engelhardt’s foundation for bioethics, as a morality of mutual respect, is strikingly similar not only in its consequences, but in its basis, to Kant’s civil commonwealth—a society based on right. Finally, after assessing the similarities between Kant and Engelhardt, I address their crucial difference. This difference consists primarily of Kant’s recognition that for there to be peace instead of merely the cessation of war, the move to a content-rich ethic must be made. Whether or not this move can be made successfully brings us to face the role of hope, or its glaring absence, in the foundations of bioethics and ethics alike.1
Keywords
Moral Agent Rational Authority Mutual Respect Moral Vision Moral LifePreview
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Notes
- 2.See H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., “Health Care Reform: A Study in Moral Malfeasance,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, (October, 1994): 501–516.Google Scholar
- 3.The position asserting the relativity of moral terms, semantic or otherwise, is not new. The position has roots in as various of sources as Nietzsche (see especially Beyond Good and Evit) and Wittgenstein (see especially On Certainty). For an excellent discussion of the specifically semantic relativity of moral and other crucial philosophical issues see Paul Moser, Philosophy After Objectivity, especially Chapter Four, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 4.See Kant, “Towards Perpetual Peace, a Philosophical Sketch” contained in the collection Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, translated by Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1983). (KgS Band 8, 341; Humphrey, 107ff).Google Scholar
- 5.H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., The Foundations of Bioethics (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 4.Google Scholar
- 6.Engelhardt, Foundations (1986), 4.Google Scholar
- 7.Engelhardt makes this point specifically on page three of The Foundations of Bioethics. By no means do I wish to present this view as outlandish by the use of scare quotes. This view is held by others, not the least of which is Alasdair MacIntyre, see After Virtue (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) especially Chapter Four. My use of scare quotes is only a means to highlight that these terms are semantically relative and were never meaningful to those who were not included in the language game in which they took effect.Google Scholar
- 8.Engelhardt, “A Study,” 510.Google Scholar
- 9.Engelhardt, Foundations, 3.Google Scholar
- 10.Engelhardt, Foundations, 41. Furthermore, through this assertion Engelhardt demonstrates how he too falls prey to the way in which moral assertions are unable to be defended except by means of question begging (i.e. the conditions for a procedural ethic would be “disclosable in the very nature of ethics itself.” The very nature of ethics has yet to be satisfactorily determined (italics mine).Google Scholar
- 11.Engelhardt, Foundations, 41.Google Scholar
- 12.Engelhardt, Foundations, 41.Google Scholar
- 13.Engelhardt, Foundations, 41–42. Although the parallels between Engelhardt’s and Kant’s system will be treated later in the paper, it is of interest to note the similarities between the above passage and the following passages in Kant: see “Perpetual Peace,” 350 (112) and “On the Proverb that may be True in Theory, but is of No Practical Use,” contained in the collection Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, translated by Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing) 1983. (KgS, Band 8, 290; Humphrey, 72).Google Scholar
- 14.Engelhardt, Foundations, 42.Google Scholar
- 15.Engelhardt, Foundations, 43.Google Scholar
- 16.Engelhardt, “Health Care Reform,” 508, in which he cites The Foundations of Bioethics, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
- 17.Engelhardt, Foundations, 49.Google Scholar
- 19.Engelhardt, Foundations, 69.Google Scholar
- 21.Kant, “On the Proverb that may be True in Theory,” 290(72).Google Scholar
- 22.Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue, translated by Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 1991. (KgS, Band 6, 230; Gregor 56).Google Scholar
- 23.Kant, Doctrine of Virtue, 312 (Gregor, 124).Google Scholar
- 24.Kant, “On the Proverb that may be True in Theory,” 298(78).Google Scholar
- 25.Here Kant explains: “Hence an ethical commonwealth can be thought of only as a people... under laws of virtue.” See Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, translated by Greene and Hudson (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960). B(KgS, Band 8, 99; Greene and Hudson, 91).Google Scholar
- 26.Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 96(8).Google Scholar
- 27.Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 94(86).Google Scholar
- 28.Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 105.Google Scholar
- 29.Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, 106.Google Scholar
- 30.Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 105.Google Scholar
- 31.Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 106.Google Scholar
- 32.Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 132.Google Scholar
- 33.With regard to Kant’s presentation of moral conversion, see Book Three of Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone.Google Scholar
- 34.Pindar, Fragment 214.Google Scholar