Just Life

Mary C. Rawlinson is professor and chair of philosophy at Stony Brook University.

Just Life expands the surprisingly narrow scope of the dominant frameworks in bioethics, and, more importantly, identifies new questions for the field. Rawlinson's insistence on seeing the commitments entailed by an ethics of life-especially attention to women, and to the earth-leads her to delve much deeper into the history of Western philosophy than most theorists in bioethics dare. -- Ellen K. Feder, American University Rawlinson has made here a very significant contribution that will hopefully lead to a reappraisal of where feminist-and by derivation all-bioethics should be going. -- Margrit Shildrick, Linkoping University and York University This is a powerful and erudite reading of some of the key figures in the history of political thought, whose relevance and limits remain strong even today. Mary C. Rawlinson provides a feminist critique of and alternative to prevailing models of politics and ethics by insisting on the centrality and irreducibility of differences of all kinds, but most especially sexual difference in understanding life and its social and natural connections and possibilities. -- Elizabeth Grosz, author of Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth In this original approach to bioethics, philosophy, and feminism, Rawlinson ranges over the history of philosophy and provides fresh interpretations of Antigone and Ismene, Demeter and Persephone. She imaginatively combines theoretical discussions with concrete phenomenological discussions of eating as an ethical issue and the working lives of women. Throughout her discussions are thought-provoking, imaginative, and illuminating. -- Richard J. Bernstein, New School for Social Research This reorientation of ethics from rights to generativity provides a valuable resource in working toward eliminating those institutions, laws, and practices that threaten the generativity of women and nature. Hypatia

• Preface: On the Necessity of Universals in Philosophy and Bioethics Acknowledgments Introduction: Our Time-Man, Money, Media I. Critique of Rights 1. State of Nature! Property, Propriety, and the Rights of Man 2. Capitalized Bodies: Bioethics, Biopower, and the Practice of Freedom II. Refiguring Ethics 3. Antigone and Ismene: Hard Heads, Hard Hearts, and the Claim of the Right 4. Demeter and Persephone, "Unies Sous le Meme Manteau" III. Livable Futures 5. Eating at the Heart of Ethics 6. A Working Life IV. Sovereign Bodies: Politics of Wonder or the Right to Be Joyful Notes Bibliography Index