A "Handbook" for Many Hands

Abstract

If you can call this a handbook with a straight face, you are either heavily into Germanic academic tradition, or you have big, strong hands. Its a tome. Its also a fine and extraordinarily helpful collection of thirty essays. Editor Bonnie Steinbock included both estab lished and less known scholars, and the result works. I cannot assess every essay, but I'd like to single out a few for comment. John Arras's chapter, The Way We Rea son Now: Reflective Equilibrium in Bioethics, focuses on wide reflective equilibrium. Wide reflective equilibri um boils down to a coherence theory of justification, he argues. But reliance on coherence runs into trouble when con fronted with corrupt coherence. And stressing coherence has certainly not produced consensus, as some had hoped it would. Reflective equilibrium, Arras concludes, is a helpful but unattainable regulative ideal for discussion in bioethics. It is no guarantor of moral truth, and we cannot assume it will re solve disagreement. Narrow reflective equilibrium can be remarkably helpful in the context of certain cases; theory is not a waste of time, but we don't have to have it straight in order to argue well about specific issues. Some readers of this review will al