Our Vocabularies, Our Selves

David Rothman has noted that at least some of success of bioethics movement this country can be attributed to fortuitous timing. In an age of great concern with civil rights, bioethicists had much in common with new roster of rights agitators who were appearing on American scene.(1) It is, therefore, no surprise that rights talk should have dominated bioethics world, but such an emphasis has problems and dangers. In a powerful attack on uses to which rights language is put our society, Mary Ann Glendon has written that its simple American form [by contrast, she means, with rights language Western European societies], language of rights is language of no compromise. The winner takes all and loser has to get out of town. The conversation is over.(2) Glendon is only one of a number of thinkers who have argued recent years that we have mistakenly isolated rights from responsibilities, to detriment of our common life. I, at least, would not deny that they have a legitimate concern. When our moral language shirvels and narrows to point where we can discuss disputed issues only language of rights, we are impoverished important ways. However essential that language may be, it is insufficient for everything we need to say. That I have a right to do something does not mean that it is right thing to do, nor even that I have any good reason to do it. To Judith Jarvis Thomson's now famous distinction between what a pregnant woman has a right to do and what it would be decent of her to do, Philip Abbott quite properly responded: Who would want to live a society which everyone was positively indecent to another and at same time positively scrupulous respecting another's rights?(3) And, although bioethicists have seldom mused about connections, it is striking that commitment within bioethical community to language of rights and autonomy has taken place over two decades which political theorists--who are more inclined to remember that language of rights West was first developed to discuss way unlimited rights are given up by those who enter civil society--have debated whether American founding is best characterized as liberal or republican.(4) We can recognize truth communitarian critiques of rights talk, however, without denying that such talk plays an essential role bioethical reflection. Thus, for example, Beauchamp and Childress distinguish between of autonomous person and principle of for autonomy. We may need principle even if we think ideal a mistaken understanding of our humanity. And, fact, when a principle of respect for autonomy is criticized by those who prefer to balance and weigh different values search of social harmony or consensus, we lose much of bite of moral reflection as we transform bioethics into public policy. Stephen Toulmin, for instance, wants us to avoid the cult of absolute principles, which cult expresses, evidently, not our concern for wellbeing of others but our immature quest for certainty. He argues that ethics is not well served by appeal to principle. Moral wisdom is exercised not by those who stick by a single principle come what may, absolutely and without exception, but rather by those who understand that, long run, no principle--however absolute--can avoid running up against another equally absolute principle; and by those who have experience and discrimination needed to balance conflicting considerations most humane way. The best we can hope for is that good-hearted, clear-headed will triangulate their way across complex terrain of moral life and problems.(5) Alas, good-hearted people sometimes find themselves standing at selection ramps balancing conflicting considerations, and [a]ny account of morality which does not allow for fact that my death may be required of me at any moment is thereby an inadequate account

Sociology · Ethics in medical practice · Legal Systems and Judicial Processes · Psychology

• Philosophers and the Abortion Question

  Open Access•Philip Abbott•Political Theory•1978

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• Republicanism

  Daniel T Rodgers•Journal of American History•1992

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