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Heart and Head: Black Theology—Past, Present, and Future
by D. HopkinsFaith, hope, and love embody the black theology of liberation, a movement created by a group of African- American pastors in the 1960s who felt that Christ's gospel held a special message of liberation for African- Americans, and for all oppressed people. Beginning with an intimate introduction, Hopkins writes of his mother's death, when he was nine, and reveals that his father's love for the poor influenced him to become a Minister and to pursue a life of service which required 'a compassionate intellect and an intellectual compassion. Hopkins asserts that in this post-Civil Rights, post-affirmative action era, that all people, regardless of race, must join together in forging a new common wealth. Offering a detailed perspective on a new racial, gender, and economic democracy in the United States, Hopkins illustrates that black theology can be the key to personal and global liberation.
Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind: What Mental Abnormalities Can Teach Us About Religions
by George Graham Robert N. McCauleyA man with schizophrenia believes that God is instructing him through the public address system in a bus station. A nun falls into a decades-long depression because she believes that God refuses to answer her prayers. A neighborhood parishioner is bedeviled with anxiety because he believes that a certain religious ritual must be repeated, repeated, and repeated lest God punish him. To what extent are such manifestations of religious thinking analogous to mental disorder? Does mental dysfunction bring an individual closer to religious experience or thought? Hearing Voices and Other Unusual Experiences explores these questions using the tools of the cognitive science of religion and the philosophy of psychopathology. Robert McCauley and George Graham emphasize underlying cognitive continuities between familiar features of religiosity, of mental disorders, and of everyday thinking and action. They contend that much religious thought and behavior can be explained as the cultural activation of our natural cognitive systems, which address matters that are essential to human survival: hazard precautions, agency detection, language processing, and theory of mind. Those systems produce responses to cultural stimuli that may mimic features of cognition and conduct associated with mental disorders, but which are sometimes coded as "religious" depending on the context. The authors examine hallucinations of the voice of God and of other supernatural agents, spiritual depression often described as a "dark night of the soul," religious scrupulosity and compulsiveness, and challenges to theistic cognition that Autistic Spectrum Disorder poses. Their approach promises to shed light on both mental abnormalities and religiosity.
Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind: What Mental Abnormalities Can Teach Us About Religions
by Robert N. McCauley George GrahamA man with schizophrenia believes that God is instructing him through the public address system in a bus station. A nun falls into a decades-long depression because she believes that God refuses to answer her prayers. A neighborhood parishioner is bedeviled with anxiety because he believes that a certain religious ritual must be repeated, repeated, and repeated lest God punish him. To what extent are such manifestations of religious thinking analogous to mental disorder? Does mental dysfunction bring an individual closer to religious experience or thought? Hearing Voices and Other Unusual Experiences explores these questions using the tools of the cognitive science of religion and the philosophy of psychopathology. Robert McCauley and George Graham emphasize underlying cognitive continuities between familiar features of religiosity, of mental disorders, and of everyday thinking and action. They contend that much religious thought and behavior can be explained as the cultural activation of our natural cognitive systems, which address matters that are essential to human survival: hazard precautions, agency detection, language processing, and theory of mind. Those systems produce responses to cultural stimuli that may mimic features of cognition and conduct associated with mental disorders, but which are sometimes coded as "religious" depending on the context. The authors examine hallucinations of the voice of God and of other supernatural agents, spiritual depression often described as a "dark night of the soul," religious scrupulosity and compulsiveness, and challenges to theistic cognition that Autistic Spectrum Disorder poses. Their approach promises to shed light on both mental abnormalities and religiosity.
Hearing Visions and Seeing Voices: Psychological Aspects of Biblical Concepts and Personalities
by Gerrit Glas Moshe Halevi Spero Peter J. Verhagen Herman M. Van PraagThis book’s aim is to enrich and deepen our psychological understanding of biblical concepts and personalities. The book contains masterful analysis of biblical personalities, such as Job, Jeremiah, Paul, and Jesus. It may help theologians to contextualize their discipline by bringing it into contact with contemporary psychological and existential issues and tensions, both at an individual and a societal level.
Hearing the Voices of Children: Social Policy for a New Century
by Christine Hallett Alan ProutHearing the Voices of Children provides a fresh perspective on social policy. At the heart of the book is the emergence of 'children's voices' and the implications of this for social policy. The authors argue that children's voices should be heard much more strongly in the process of policy formation at all levels. Although there is growing support for this idea, it is not without opposition, and the authors themselves make many critical points about the current attempts to put it into practice.The book is divided into four main themes: hearing children's voices; discourses of childhood; children and services; and resources for children. Childhood experts from the UK, Scandinavia, Germany and Australia, examine how assumptions and models about childhood and discuss ways in which children's voices might become more influential in shaping policy. There are many obstacles to overcome, but the contributors to this volume show that children's participation is possible, and needed, if services are to be improved.This book is essential reading for students and academics in the field of childhood studies, sociology, social policy and education. It will also be of interest to practitioners in the social, child and youth services.
Hearing the Voices of Children: Social Policy for a New Century (Future Of Childhood Ser.)
by Christine Hallett Alan ProutHearing the Voices of Children provides a fresh perspective on social policy. At the heart of the book is the emergence of 'children's voices' and the implications of this for social policy. The authors argue that children's voices should be heard much more strongly in the process of policy formation at all levels. Although there is growing support for this idea, it is not without opposition, and the authors themselves make many critical points about the current attempts to put it into practice.The book is divided into four main themes: hearing children's voices; discourses of childhood; children and services; and resources for children. Childhood experts from the UK, Scandinavia, Germany and Australia, examine how assumptions and models about childhood and discuss ways in which children's voices might become more influential in shaping policy. There are many obstacles to overcome, but the contributors to this volume show that children's participation is possible, and needed, if services are to be improved.This book is essential reading for students and academics in the field of childhood studies, sociology, social policy and education. It will also be of interest to practitioners in the social, child and youth services.
HEARING THE CRIMEAN WAR C: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense
by Gavin WilliamsWhat does sound, whether preserved or lost, tell us about nineteenth-century wartime? Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense pursues this question through the many territories affected by the Crimean War, including Britain, France, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Dagestan, Chechnya, and Crimea. Examining the experience of listeners and the politics of archiving sound, it reveals the close interplay between nineteenth-century geographies of empire and the media through which wartime sounds became audible--or failed to do so. The volume explores the dynamics of sound both in violent encounters on the battlefield and in the experience of listeners far-removed from theaters of war, each essay interrogating the Crimean War's sonic archive in order to address a broad set of issues in musicology, ethnomusicology, literary studies, the history of the senses and sound studies.
Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense
What does sound, whether preserved or lost, tell us about nineteenth-century wartime? Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense pursues this question through the many territories affected by the Crimean War, including Britain, France, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Dagestan, Chechnya, and Crimea. Examining the experience of listeners and the politics of archiving sound, it reveals the close interplay between nineteenth-century geographies of empire and the media through which wartime sounds became audible--or failed to do so. The volume explores the dynamics of sound both in violent encounters on the battlefield and in the experience of listeners far-removed from theaters of war, each essay interrogating the Crimean War's sonic archive in order to address a broad set of issues in musicology, ethnomusicology, literary studies, the history of the senses and sound studies.
Hearing Maskanda: Musical Epistemologies in South Africa
by Barbara TitusHearing Maskanda outlines how people make sense of their world through practicing and hearing maskanda music in South Africa. Having emerged in response to the experience of forced labour migration in the early 20th century, maskanda continues to straddle a wide range of cultural and musical universes. Maskanda musicians reground ideas, (hi)stories, norms, speech and beliefs that have been uprooted in centuries of colonial and apartheid rule by using specific musical textures, vocalities and idioms. With an autoethnographic approach of how she came to understand and participate in maskanda, Titus indicates some instances where her acts of knowledge formation confronted, bridged or invaded those of other maskanda participants. Thus, the book not only aims to demonstrate the epistemic importance of music and aurality but also the performative and creative dimension of academic epistemic approaches such as ethnography, historiography and music analysis, that aim towards conceptualization and (visual) representation. In doing so, the book unearths the colonialist potential of knowledge formation at large and disrupts modes of thinking and (academic) research that are globally normative.
Hearing Maskanda: Musical Epistemologies in South Africa
by Barbara TitusHearing Maskanda outlines how people make sense of their world through practicing and hearing maskanda music in South Africa. Having emerged in response to the experience of forced labour migration in the early 20th century, maskanda continues to straddle a wide range of cultural and musical universes. Maskanda musicians reground ideas, (hi)stories, norms, speech and beliefs that have been uprooted in centuries of colonial and apartheid rule by using specific musical textures, vocalities and idioms. With an autoethnographic approach of how she came to understand and participate in maskanda, Titus indicates some instances where her acts of knowledge formation confronted, bridged or invaded those of other maskanda participants. Thus, the book not only aims to demonstrate the epistemic importance of music and aurality but also the performative and creative dimension of academic epistemic approaches such as ethnography, historiography and music analysis, that aim towards conceptualization and (visual) representation. In doing so, the book unearths the colonialist potential of knowledge formation at large and disrupts modes of thinking and (academic) research that are globally normative.
Hearing Double: Jazz, Ontology, Auditory Culture
by Brian KaneWhen we talk about a jazz "standard" we usually mean one of the many songs that jazz musicians repeatedly play as part of their core repertoire. But unlike musical works in the tradition of so-called classical music, standards--whether plucked from the "Great American Songbook" or from recordings by other jazz musicians--are always being transformed in performance. They are rearranged and improvised upon, given new chords and altered melodies. These transformations might be small and seemingly unimportant, or they might be radical revisions. Which raises the question: across all of these various performances, what gives a standard its identity? In Hearing Double author Brian Kane answers that question by offering a new theory of musical works that can account for the unique challenges presented by standards. Building from the bottom up--from the actual practices of jazz musicians toward their philosophical implications--he gives a comprehensive theory of how a standard can undergo radical musical transformations yet remain identifiable. Through an analysis of the historical and cultural conditions under which standards came to prominence he shows how popular music from the 1930s to the 1960s was circulated and distributed and provides new insight into why the era of the standard emerged when it did. In addition, Kane addresses the aesthetic significance of standards and describes a special mode of listening that standards require. According to Kane, we effectively "hear double"--hearing an ideal song in our minds at the same time as we hear the live performance with our ears. Filled with case studies and music analysis, Hearing Double will draw the reader's attention to unheard aspects of jazz performance as well as unrecognized philosophical, social, and cultural dimensions of the jazz repertoire.
Hearing Double: Jazz, Ontology, Auditory Culture
by Brian KaneWhen we talk about a jazz "standard" we usually mean one of the many songs that jazz musicians repeatedly play as part of their core repertoire. But unlike musical works in the tradition of so-called classical music, standards--whether plucked from the "Great American Songbook" or from recordings by other jazz musicians--are always being transformed in performance. They are rearranged and improvised upon, given new chords and altered melodies. These transformations might be small and seemingly unimportant, or they might be radical revisions. Which raises the question: across all of these various performances, what gives a standard its identity? In Hearing Double author Brian Kane answers that question by offering a new theory of musical works that can account for the unique challenges presented by standards. Building from the bottom up--from the actual practices of jazz musicians toward their philosophical implications--he gives a comprehensive theory of how a standard can undergo radical musical transformations yet remain identifiable. Through an analysis of the historical and cultural conditions under which standards came to prominence he shows how popular music from the 1930s to the 1960s was circulated and distributed and provides new insight into why the era of the standard emerged when it did. In addition, Kane addresses the aesthetic significance of standards and describes a special mode of listening that standards require. According to Kane, we effectively "hear double"--hearing an ideal song in our minds at the same time as we hear the live performance with our ears. Filled with case studies and music analysis, Hearing Double will draw the reader's attention to unheard aspects of jazz performance as well as unrecognized philosophical, social, and cultural dimensions of the jazz repertoire.
Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach
by Anne Barnhill Matteo BonottiWho gets to decide what it means to live a healthy lifestyle, and how important a healthy lifestyle is to a good life? As more governments make preventing obesity and diet-related illness a priority, it's become more important to consider the ethics and acceptability of their efforts. When it comes to laws and policies that promote healthy eating--such as special taxes on sugary drinks and the banning of food deemed unhealthy--critics argue that these policies are paternalistic, and that they limit individual autonomy over food choices. In Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach, Anne Barnhill and Matteo Bonotti show that both paternalistic justifications for healthy eating efforts and anti-paternalistic arguments against them can be grounded in perfectionist views that overly prioritize some values over others. The authors therefore propose a more inclusive, public reason approach to healthy eating policy that will be appealing to those who take pluralism and cultural diversity seriously, by providing a framework through which different kinds of values, including but not limited to autonomy and health, can be factored into the public justification for healthy eating efforts. Additionally, the book adopts a 'farm to fork' approach to the ethics of healthy eating efforts: it engages with theories and debates in political philosophy, considers the implications of different theoretical positions for healthy eating efforts, and then develops a concrete tool for assessing policies that will be of interest to both scholars and policymakers. As well as offering a novel normative analysis of healthy eating policy, the authors offer a new theoretical framework that will be applicable to a wide range of public policy scenarios.
Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach
by Anne Barnhill Matteo BonottiWho gets to decide what it means to live a healthy lifestyle, and how important a healthy lifestyle is to a good life? As more governments make preventing obesity and diet-related illness a priority, it's become more important to consider the ethics and acceptability of their efforts. When it comes to laws and policies that promote healthy eating--such as special taxes on sugary drinks and the banning of food deemed unhealthy--critics argue that these policies are paternalistic, and that they limit individual autonomy over food choices. In Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach, Anne Barnhill and Matteo Bonotti show that both paternalistic justifications for healthy eating efforts and anti-paternalistic arguments against them can be grounded in perfectionist views that overly prioritize some values over others. The authors therefore propose a more inclusive, public reason approach to healthy eating policy that will be appealing to those who take pluralism and cultural diversity seriously, by providing a framework through which different kinds of values, including but not limited to autonomy and health, can be factored into the public justification for healthy eating efforts. Additionally, the book adopts a 'farm to fork' approach to the ethics of healthy eating efforts: it engages with theories and debates in political philosophy, considers the implications of different theoretical positions for healthy eating efforts, and then develops a concrete tool for assessing policies that will be of interest to both scholars and policymakers. As well as offering a novel normative analysis of healthy eating policy, the authors offer a new theoretical framework that will be applicable to a wide range of public policy scenarios.
Healthy American Families: A Progressive Alternative to the Religious Right
by John H. ScanzoniThis fascinating book compares progressive and more religiously conservative views and their differing impacts on the health of families.Rejecting the definition of family promulgated by the Religious Right, Healthy American Families: A Progressive Alternative to the Religious Right offers an innovative approach to understanding 21st-century families. Proactive rather than reactive, it explores the ways families have changed over the past 200 years and builds on that to elucidate the larger forces that continue to redefine male and female roles and the shape of the modern family unit. Part one of the book shows that the Religious Right's claim that a Golden Age of Families existed when our country began is fallacious. Instead families have been changing since the days of the Puritans. Part two picks up the threads to show how, in the wake of those changes, most of today's families are "healthier" than families at the time of our country's founding. Healthy families, the book asserts, spring from a blend of "conservative" ideals (responsibility and accountability) and "liberal" ideals (innovation and change). The result is "responsible change" that benefits both the individual and society.
Healthcare Ethics on Film: A Guide for Medical Educators
by M. Sara RosenthalThis book is a companion to Clinical Ethics on Film and deals specifically with the myriad of healthcare ethics dilemmas. While Clinical Ethics on Film focuses on bedside ethics dilemmas that affect the healthcare provider-patient relationship, Healthcare Ethics on Film provides a wider lens on ethics dilemmas that interfere with healthcare delivery, such as healthcare access, discrimination, organizational ethics, or resource allocation. The book features detailed and comprehensive chapters on the Tuskegee Study, AIDS, medical assistance in dying, the U.S. healthcare system, reproductive justice, transplant ethics, pandemic ethics and more. Healthcare Ethics on Film is the perfect tool for remote or live teaching. It’s designed for medical educators and healthcare professionals teaching any aspect of bioethics, healthcare ethics or the health sciences, including medical humanities, history of medicine and health law. It is also useful to the crossover market of film buffs and other readers involved in healthcare or bioethics.
Healthcare Ethics, Law and Professionalism: Essays on the Works of Alastair V. Campbell (Biomedical Law and Ethics Library)
by Voo Teck Chuan Richard Huxtable Nicola PeartHealthcare Ethics, Law and Professionalism: Essays on the Works of Alastair V. Campbell features 15 original essays on bioethics, and healthcare ethics specifically. The volume is in honour of Professor Alastair V. Campbell, who was the founding editor of the internationally renowned Journal of Medical Ethics, and the founding director of three internationally leading centres in bioethics, in Otago, New Zealand, Bristol, UK, and Singapore. Campbell was trained in theology and philosophy and throughout his career worked with colleagues from various disciplines, including law and various branches of healthcare. The diversity of topics and depth of contributors’ insights reflect the breadth and impact of Campbell’s philosophical work and policy contributions to healthcare ethics. Throughout his long academic career, Campbell’s emphasis on healthcare ethics being practice-oriented, yet driven by critical reflection, has shaped the field in vital ways. The chapters are authored by leading scholars in healthcare ethics and law. Directly engaging with Campbell’s work and influence, the essays discuss essential questions in healthcare ethics relating to its methodology and teaching, its intersection with law and policy, medical professionalism, religion, and its translation in different cultural settings. Chapters also grapple with specific enduring topics, such as the doctor-patient relationship, justice in health and biomedical research, and treatment of the human body and the dead.
Healthcare Ethics, Law and Professionalism: Essays on the Works of Alastair V. Campbell (Biomedical Law and Ethics Library)
by Voo Teck Chuan Richard Huxtable Nicola PeartHealthcare Ethics, Law and Professionalism: Essays on the Works of Alastair V. Campbell features 15 original essays on bioethics, and healthcare ethics specifically. The volume is in honour of Professor Alastair V. Campbell, who was the founding editor of the internationally renowned Journal of Medical Ethics, and the founding director of three internationally leading centres in bioethics, in Otago, New Zealand, Bristol, UK, and Singapore. Campbell was trained in theology and philosophy and throughout his career worked with colleagues from various disciplines, including law and various branches of healthcare. The diversity of topics and depth of contributors’ insights reflect the breadth and impact of Campbell’s philosophical work and policy contributions to healthcare ethics. Throughout his long academic career, Campbell’s emphasis on healthcare ethics being practice-oriented, yet driven by critical reflection, has shaped the field in vital ways. The chapters are authored by leading scholars in healthcare ethics and law. Directly engaging with Campbell’s work and influence, the essays discuss essential questions in healthcare ethics relating to its methodology and teaching, its intersection with law and policy, medical professionalism, religion, and its translation in different cultural settings. Chapters also grapple with specific enduring topics, such as the doctor-patient relationship, justice in health and biomedical research, and treatment of the human body and the dead.
Healthcare as a Universal Human Right: Sustainability in Global Health
by Rui NunesThis important book outlines how, despite varying levels of global socio-economic development, governments around the world can guarantee their citizens’ fundamental right to basic healthcare. Ground in the philosophical position that healthcare is an essential element to human dignity, the book moves beyond this theoretical principle to offer policy makers a basis for health policies based on public accountability and social responsiveness. Also emphasizing the importance of global co-operation, particularly in the area of health promotion and communication, it addresses, too, the issue of financial sustainability, suggesting robust mechanisms of economic and social regulation. New opportunities created by e-health, evidence-based data and artificial intelligence are all highlighted and discussed, as is the issue of patient rights. Students and researchers across bioethics, public health and medical sociology will find this book fascinating reading, as will policy makers in the field.
Healthcare as a Universal Human Right: Sustainability in Global Health
by Rui NunesThis important book outlines how, despite varying levels of global socio-economic development, governments around the world can guarantee their citizens’ fundamental right to basic healthcare. Ground in the philosophical position that healthcare is an essential element to human dignity, the book moves beyond this theoretical principle to offer policy makers a basis for health policies based on public accountability and social responsiveness. Also emphasizing the importance of global co-operation, particularly in the area of health promotion and communication, it addresses, too, the issue of financial sustainability, suggesting robust mechanisms of economic and social regulation. New opportunities created by e-health, evidence-based data and artificial intelligence are all highlighted and discussed, as is the issue of patient rights. Students and researchers across bioethics, public health and medical sociology will find this book fascinating reading, as will policy makers in the field.
Health Problems: Philosophical Puzzles about the Nature of Health
by Elizabeth BarnesHealth is weird. Health is weird in a way that resists simple explanations or elegant theorizing. This book is a philosophical explanation of that weirdness, and an argument that grappling with the distinctive weirdness of health can give us insight into how we might approach difficult questions about social reality. After examining extant theories of health - and finding them lacking - the book explores some particularly intractable puzzles about the nature of health, places where we often feel pulled in multiple directions or have reason to say conflicting things. On the basis of these puzzles, the book then defends a stance called ameliorative skepticism. Although health is real, there is, on this view, no way of giving a coherent, explanatorily adequate answer to the question “what is health?” Yet adopting this skeptical stance can, it is argued, help us to better understand the role that health plays in our lives, and the work that we need a theory of health to do.
Health Problems: Philosophical Puzzles about the Nature of Health
by Elizabeth BarnesHealth is weird. Health is weird in a way that resists simple explanations or elegant theorizing. This book is a philosophical explanation of that weirdness, and an argument that grappling with the distinctive weirdness of health can give us insight into how we might approach difficult questions about social reality. After examining extant theories of health - and finding them lacking - the book explores some particularly intractable puzzles about the nature of health, places where we often feel pulled in multiple directions or have reason to say conflicting things. On the basis of these puzzles, the book then defends a stance called ameliorative skepticism. Although health is real, there is, on this view, no way of giving a coherent, explanatorily adequate answer to the question “what is health?” Yet adopting this skeptical stance can, it is argued, help us to better understand the role that health plays in our lives, and the work that we need a theory of health to do.
Health, Luck, and Justice
by Shlomi Segall"Luck egalitarianism"--the idea that justice requires correcting disadvantages resulting from brute luck--has gained ground in recent years and is now the main rival to John Rawls's theory of distributive justice. Health, Luck, and Justice is the first attempt to systematically apply luck egalitarianism to the just distribution of health and health care. Challenging Rawlsian approaches to health policy, Shlomi Segall develops an account of just health that is sensitive to considerations of luck and personal responsibility, arguing that people's health and the health care they receive are just only when society works to neutralize the effects of bad luck. Combining philosophical analysis with a discussion of real-life public health issues, Health, Luck, and Justice addresses key questions: What is owed to patients who are in some way responsible for their own medical conditions? Could inequalities in health and life expectancy be just even when they are solely determined by the "natural lottery" of genes and other such factors? And is it just to allow political borders to affect the quality of health care and the distribution of health? Is it right, on the one hand, to break up national health care systems in multicultural societies? And, on the other hand, should our obligation to curb disparities in health extend beyond the nation-state? By focusing on the ways health is affected by the moral arbitrariness of luck, Health, Luck, and Justice provides an important new perspective on the ethics of national and international health policy.
Health, Luck, and Justice
by Shlomi Segall"Luck egalitarianism"--the idea that justice requires correcting disadvantages resulting from brute luck--has gained ground in recent years and is now the main rival to John Rawls's theory of distributive justice. Health, Luck, and Justice is the first attempt to systematically apply luck egalitarianism to the just distribution of health and health care. Challenging Rawlsian approaches to health policy, Shlomi Segall develops an account of just health that is sensitive to considerations of luck and personal responsibility, arguing that people's health and the health care they receive are just only when society works to neutralize the effects of bad luck. Combining philosophical analysis with a discussion of real-life public health issues, Health, Luck, and Justice addresses key questions: What is owed to patients who are in some way responsible for their own medical conditions? Could inequalities in health and life expectancy be just even when they are solely determined by the "natural lottery" of genes and other such factors? And is it just to allow political borders to affect the quality of health care and the distribution of health? Is it right, on the one hand, to break up national health care systems in multicultural societies? And, on the other hand, should our obligation to curb disparities in health extend beyond the nation-state? By focusing on the ways health is affected by the moral arbitrariness of luck, Health, Luck, and Justice provides an important new perspective on the ethics of national and international health policy.
Health, Luck, and Justice
by Shlomi Segall"Luck egalitarianism"--the idea that justice requires correcting disadvantages resulting from brute luck--has gained ground in recent years and is now the main rival to John Rawls's theory of distributive justice. Health, Luck, and Justice is the first attempt to systematically apply luck egalitarianism to the just distribution of health and health care. Challenging Rawlsian approaches to health policy, Shlomi Segall develops an account of just health that is sensitive to considerations of luck and personal responsibility, arguing that people's health and the health care they receive are just only when society works to neutralize the effects of bad luck. Combining philosophical analysis with a discussion of real-life public health issues, Health, Luck, and Justice addresses key questions: What is owed to patients who are in some way responsible for their own medical conditions? Could inequalities in health and life expectancy be just even when they are solely determined by the "natural lottery" of genes and other such factors? And is it just to allow political borders to affect the quality of health care and the distribution of health? Is it right, on the one hand, to break up national health care systems in multicultural societies? And, on the other hand, should our obligation to curb disparities in health extend beyond the nation-state? By focusing on the ways health is affected by the moral arbitrariness of luck, Health, Luck, and Justice provides an important new perspective on the ethics of national and international health policy.