Marshall Cohen – författare

During its first two years of publication, Philosophy & Public Affairs contributed to the public debate on abortion a set of remarkable and brilliant articles which examine the basic philosophical issues posed by this controversial subject: whether the fetus is a person, whether it has a right to life, whether a woman has a right to decide what happens in and to her body, whether there is an ethical connection between abortion and infanticide, whether there is any point after conception where it is possible to draw the line beyond which killing is impermissible. These five essays, together here for the first time in a single volume, offer radically differing points of view; they provide the best sustained discussion of these philosophical issues available anywhere.Contents: Judith Jarvis Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion"; Roger Wertheimer, "Understanding the Abortion Argument"; Michael Tooley, "Abortion and Infanticide"; John Finnis, "The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion"; and Judith Jarvis Thomson, "Rights and Deaths."

This remarkably rich collection of articles focuses on moral questions about war. The essays, originally published in Philosophy & Public Affairs, cover a wide range of topics from several points of view by writers from the fields of political science, philosophy, and law. The discussion of war and moral responsibility falls into three general categories: problems of political and military choice, problems about the relation of an individual to the actions of his government, and more abstract ethical questions as well. The first category includes questions about the ethical and legal aspects of war crimes and the laws of war; about the source of moral restrictions on military methods or goals; and about differences in suitability of conduct which may depend on differences in the nature of the opponent. The second category includes questions about the conditions for responsibility of individual soldiers and civilian officials for war crimes, and about the proper attitude of a government toward potential conscripts who reject its military policies. The third category includes disputes between absolutist, deontological, and utilitarian ethical theories, and deals with questions about the existence of insoluble moral dilemmas.

The problem of justifying legal punishment has been at the heart of legal and social philosophy from the very earliest recorded philosophical texts. However, despite several hundred years of debate, philosophers have not reached agreement about how legal punishment can be morally justified. That is the central issue addressed by the contributors to this volume. All of the essays collected here have been published in the highly respected journal Philosophy & Public Affairs. Taken together, they offer not only significant proposals for improving established theories of punishment and compelling arguments against long-held positions, but also ori-ginal and important answers to the question, "How is punishment to be justified?" Part I of this collection, "Justifications of Punishment," examines how any practice of punishment can be morally justified. Contributors include Jeffrie G. Murphy, Alan H. Goldman, Warren Quinn, C. S. Nino, and Jean Hampton. The papers in Part II, "Problems of Punishment," address more specific issues arising in established theories. The authors are Martha C. Nussbaum, Michael Davis, and A. John Simmons. In the final section, "Capital Punishment," contributors discuss the justifiability of capital punishment, one of the most debated philosophical topics of this century. Essayists include David A. Conway, Jeffrey H. Reiman, Stephen Nathanson, and Ernest van den Haag.