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Articles

The Gentle and Easy Death

Piers Benn on the ethics of euthanasia.

For a long period earlier in the present century, the study of moral philosophy was widely thought to be irrelevant to the ethical concerns of everyday life. The task of the philosopher was not to defend ‘first-order’ (normative) ethical positions, but to investigate (for example) the nature of moral language and the logic of obligation. Philosophers were not supposed to have any special moral competence.

It is likely that many interested laymen think that moral philosophy is still like this. Those major philosophers who became known to the educated public, such as the late A.

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