H. Tristram Engelhardt

Mental illness : law and public policy

Section I / The Concept of Mental Illness and the Law.- The Concept of Mental Illness: A Philosophical Examination.- Legal Conceptions of Mental Illness.- Section II / Criminal and Civil Liability of the Mentally Ill.- Minds on Trial.- Mental Abnormality, Personal Responsibility, and Tort Liability.- Section III / Involuntary Civil Commitment of the Mentally Ill.- Paternalistic Grounds for Involuntary Civil Commitment: A Utilitarian Perspective.- Involuntary Civil Commitment: The Moral Issues.- Section IV / Thomas Szaszs Proposals: A Reconstruction and Defense.- Critical Use of Utilitarian Arguments: Szasz on Paternalism.- Section V / Critical Commentaries.- Function of Mental Health Codes in Relation to the Criminal Justice System.- The Diminished Moral Status of the Mentally Ill.- A Concern for Hardening of the Categories.- Involuntary Civil Commitment: Concerning the Grounds of Ethics.- Notes on Contributors.- Index 251.

Fashioning an Ethic for Life and Death in a Post-Modern Society

n The question is explored of whether the state may stop competent individuals from being voluntarily euthanatized, now that the states power is justified by reason instead of divine right. The challenge of determining a moral and political agenda which reason would endorse is analyzed in relation to the philosophical question: who may effectively constrain others so as to impose a particular view of the good life and the good death? And why? The right to euthanasia is established negatively in a pluralist, secular society not because we agree that it is good, but because where there is no justification for state authority to intervene coercively, individuals are morally free to act.n

Ethical issues in diagnosis.

The ways in which ethical issues arise in making clinical judgments are briefly discussed. By showing the topography of the role of value judgments in medical diagnostics it is suggested why clinical medicine remains inextricably a value-infected science.The ways in which ethical issues arise in making clinical judgments are briefly discussed. By showing the topography of the role of value judgments in medical diagnostics it is suggested why clinical medicine remains inextricably a value-infected science.

The counsels of finitude

I N THIS paper, I will contend that death is a natural event in the course of human life. If I am correct, there is something strange if not perverse in the very notion that an argument such as mine need be given. There is hardly any event as universal as death. How could such an ingredient element of human history be regarded as anything but natural? What would be the need of arguing that death is natural? What would be at issue in such a dispute? What sort of problem is in need of solution? The issue is a somewhat vague one-a set of loosely bound presuppositions of modern western culture which lead to an implicit cultural judgment: that death is unnatural. Western thinkers have developed a way of seeing the condition of individual men such that their death is not only regretted, but seen as adventitious. It is as if men were naturally immortal and death an accidental entry into human history. Such an appreciation of death makes it an event to be denied and opposed at all costs, rather than anticipated and articulated in ones anticipation of the future, as ingredient to human life, providing in part for the shape and character of life. First, I want to make clear that I do not intend to propose an argument against individual immortality, except to suggest that an argument for immortality cannot succeed. Yet, even if one cannot demonstrate immortality, its possibility is not excluded. I do, though, hope to suggest that immortality would be gratuitous, by the grace of God, not of human nature. However, this paper will not offer arguments, at least not in any strict sense. My attempt, rather, will be to sketch the lineaments of a view of man in terms of which death can be seen as natural. I will suggest that such a view can allow us to deal better with our finitude, to live better with death and our own dying, hoping to show, thereby, the plausibility of taking counsel from our finitude.