Private Conscience Research Articles

Private consciences and public reasons

Private consciences and public reasons

A New Liberal Identity?

Book reviewed in this article: Private Consciences and Public Reasons. By Kent Greenawalt.

Late Modern

The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848. By Paul W. Schroeder Science and Sensibility: Gender and Scientific Enquiry, 1780–1945. Edited by Marina Benjamin The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789–1820s. By Isser Woloch The Invention of the Modern Republic. Edited by Biancamaria Fontana Freiheit, Eigentum und kerne Gleichheit. Die Transformation der englischen politischen Kultur und die Anfange des modemen Konservatismus 1791–1812. By Michael Weinzieri Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century. By W. F. Bynum Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture 1840–1914. By David Feldman Mazzini. By Denis Mack Smith The Making of Victorian Sexuality. By Michael Mason The Coachmen of Nineteenth‐Century Paris: Service Workers and Class Consciousness. By Nicholas Papayanis Women, Work, and Politics: Belgium 1830–1914. By Patricia Penn Hilden Scenes of Seduction: Prostitution, Hysteria, and Reading Difference in Nineteenth‐Century France. By Jann Matlock Feminism, Socialism, and French Romanticism. By Claire Goldberg Moses and Leslie Wabl Rabine Feminisms off the Belle Epoque: A Historical and Literary Anthology. Edited By Jennifer Waelti‐Walters and Steven C. Hanse European Imperialism, 1860–1914. By Andrew Porter Politics, Peoples and Government. By Rodney Barker Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics. By Peter T. Marsh Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline In Modern Britain. By David Cannadine Nationalism and Unionism: Conflict in Ireland 1885–1921. Edited by Peter Collins Government, Industry and Rearmament in Russia, 1900–1914. The Last Argument of Tsarism. By Peter Gatrell Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia. By Olga Semyonova Tisel After the Victorians: Private Conscience and Public Duty in Modern Britain. Essays in Memory of John Ctive. Edited by Susan Pedersen and Peter Mandler Time, Family and Community: Perspectives on Family and Community History. Edited by Michael Drake The History of the University of Oxford, Volume VIII: The Twentieth Century. Edited by Brian Harrison Health and Society in Twentieth‐Century Britain. By Helen Jones Politicians, Diplomacy and War in Modem British History. By Keith Robbins Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army's Art of Attack 1916–18. By Paddy Griffith Between Mutiny and Obedience: The Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division during World War I. By Leonard V. Smith Soviet Foreign Policy 1917–91: A Retrospective. Edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky Civilisation Without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917–27. By Mary Louise Roberts Women's Rights and Women's Lives in France 1944–68. By Claire Duchen The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution. By Zeev Sternhell, with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri The Past in French History. By Robert Gildea Private Property, Government Requisition and the Constitution, 1914–27. By G. R. Rubin The Rise and Decline of the British Motor Industry. By Roy Church Outwitting the Gestapo. By Lucie Aubrac The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. By Stefan Kiihl Behind the Battle: Intelligence in the War with Germany, 1939–45. By Ralph Bennett Holocaust Project: From Darkness Into Light. By Judy Chicago Letters from Prison. By Antonio Gramsci. Edited by Frank Rosengarten. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal Churchill: An Unruly Life. By Norman Rose Attlee's Labour Governments 1945–51. By Robert Pearce Macmillan. By John Turner Jean Monnet: The First Statesman of Interdependence. By Francois Duchene Russia and World War III. By M. Laskiewicz

After the victorians: private conscience and public duty in modern britain

After the victorians: private conscience and public duty in modern britain

Three ethically justified indications for selective termination in multifetal pregnancy: a practical and comprehensive management strategy.

The authors provide an ethical justification for three indications for performing selective termination of multi-fetal pregnancies. These indications are (1) achieving a pregnancy that results in a live birth or one or more infants with minimal neonatal morbidity and mortality, (2) achieving a pregnancy that results in a live birth of one or more infants without antenatally detected anomalies, and (3) achieving a pregnancy that results in a singleton live birth. This ethical justification is based on two basic approaches to obstetric ethics that emphasize that these indications must be established on the basis of informed consent. The authors underscore the importance of matters of private conscience and demonstrate the consistency of ethical justification with existing public policy in the United States.

:Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England

:<i>Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England</i>

Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England

Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England

Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England. Essays Presented to G.E. Aylmer, edited by John Morrill, Paul Slack, and Daniel Woolf

<i>Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England. Essays Presented to G.E. Aylmer</i>, edited by John Morrill, Paul Slack, and Daniel Woolf

Religious grounds in liberal politics

I. Introduction Since this essay is drawn from the draft of a book entitled Private Consciences and Public Reasons,[1] putting the essay in context and explaining how it relates to criminal justice ethics may aid the reader to see its relevance. A number of theorists of liberal democracy have urged that officials, and perhaps citizens, should not rely on certain kinds of grounds for the making of political judgments and political arguments. In other words, some or all people should exercise a kind of self-restraint, declining to rely on grounds that might appropriately affect their actions in personal life. Some proposed principles of restraint are cast in terms of intuitive (as opposed to reasoned) grounds and in terms of comprehensive grounds (broad philosophies of life). Such principles include many, or all, religious grounds; and the history of religious conflict in Western Europe and the growth of toleration and liberal democracy out of that conflict inform all the principles. But these principles are not cast directly in terms of religious bases of judgment. Other principles are cast in this way, and in this essay, I address the idea that officials and citizens should refrain from relying on religious grounds in particular. The underlying claim is that such reliance is contrary to fundamental premises of religious liberty and of separation of church and state, or is particularly threatening to social life. The basic problem whether people should refrain from relying on religious grounds is one of political philosophy. Consideration of this problem might itself begin from some particular comprehensive view, such as Roman Catholicism or traditional Marxism; but my analysis here is meant to stand relatively free of competing religious premises and views about the good life. It does assume the validity of basic premises of liberal democracy, including most importantly religious liberty. Although what I say is not framed particularly in terms of acceptable premises for criminal laws, it does apply to those premises. Often the output of political deliberations is a prohibition supported by a criminal sanction: a law, say, against having a late abortion, engaging in homosexual acts, or hunting certain animals. Part of my inquiry is whether religious bases of judgment appropriately underlie such prohibitions. Many theorists treat liberal democracies as a general class, assuming that a principle of self-restraint good for one is good for all. Much of my book is directed at that assumption. I argue that much depends on the present composition of society and its values, illumined by history. In what follows here, I make remarks that reflect this claim, but I do not explicitly defend it. II. What Is Reliance on a Religious Ground Before exploring the arguments for a principle of self-restraint as to religion, I need first to explain what amounts to reliance on a religious ground. This involves brief comment on: religious grounds as opposed to other grounds; reliance at the time of decision as contrasted with mere causal influence; religious support for chains of common reason; and reliance on religious premises as compared with reliance on religiously influenced culture and religious symbols. A principle that one should not employ religious premises in political decision and argument would obviously cover the following excerpt from an imaginary speech given by a legislator, Leslie, against regulation of factory farming: The Book of Genesis clearly states that animals are for the benefit of human beings. Factory farming benefits human beings; God has told us that we need not worry about effects on animals. Even when a ground for judgment lacks explicit religious content, it can involve reliance on religion if a religious basis underlies it or motivates it. Thus, if someone opposing legally permitted suicide says, No one has a right to take his own life, this is a religious ground if the speaker believes the ground can only be supported by belief in God. …

Book Reviews

Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England: Essays Presented to G. E. Aylmer. Edited by JOHN MORRILL, PAUL SLACK and DANIEL WOOLF. (Oxford: Clarendon P., 1993; pp. ix + 347. £35). RONALD HUTTON RONALD HUTTON University of Bristol Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume CVIII, Issue CCCCXXIX, October 1993, Pages 983–984, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/CVIII.CCCCXXIX.983 Published: 01 October 1993

Selective termination to a singleton pregnancy is ethically justified.

Consensus presently opposes selective termination of a multifetal pregnancy to a singleton. We reject this consensus because the arguments made in defense of it are deficient. We show that these arguments rely on the indefensible assumption that the previable fetus possesses independent moral status. We conclude that, since selective termination of a multifetal pregnancy of any order to a singleton is ethically justifiable, a pregnant woman's request for selective termination to a singleton from twins or a higher-order multiple gestation should be respected and implemented. Physicians who object to selective termination to a singleton in private conscience should not feel compelled to perform the procedure but are obligated to make an appropriate referral.

Does obstetric ethics have any role in the obstetrician's response to the abortion controversy?

We defend the view that the obstetrician's response to the abortion controversy cannot be based on accounts of the independent moral status of the fetus, because all such accounts are irresolvably disputable. That response, however, can be based on an account of the dependent moral status of the fetus. For such an account the central question is, When is the fetus a patient? Viable fetuses are patients. Nonviable third-trimester fetuses are not patients. Previable fetuses are patients solely as a function of the woman's autonomous decision to confer such status. The abortion of a viable fetus is, with few exceptions, never ethically justified, because it is a patient. The abortion of nonviable third-trimester fetuses (i.e., premature termination of pregnancy) is justified when the pregnant women consents to it. Abortion of the previable fetus is justifiable when the pregnant women consents to it. We distinguish between professional and private conscience. We identify the limits of the former and the legitimate role of the latter, especially in the area of religious beliefs. Finally, we address the implications of our view for residency training programs. The most important of these implications is that requiring all residents to perform abortions is ethically unjustifiable.

Does obstetric ethics have any role in the obstetrician's response to the abortion controversy?

We defend the view that the obstetrician's response to the abortion controversy cannot be based on accounts of the independent moral status of the fetus, because all such accounts are irresolvably disputable. That response, however, can be based on an account of the dependent moral status of the fetus. For such an account the central question is, "When is the fetus a patient?" Viable fetuses are patients. Nonviable third-trimester fetuses are not patients. Previable fetuses are patients solely as a function of the woman's autonomous decision to confer such status. The abortion of a viable fetus is, with few exceptions, never ethically justified, because it is a patient. The abortion of nonviable third-trimester fetuses (i.e., premature termination of pregnancy) is justified when the pregnant woman consents to it. Abortion of the previable fetus is justifiable when the pregnant woman consents to it. We distinguish between professional and private conscience. We identify the limits of the former and the legitimate role of the latter, especially in the area of religious beliefs. Finally, we address the implications of our view for residency training programs. The most important of these implications is that requiring all residents to perform abortions is ethically unjustifiable.

Honour among the Pastons: Gender and integrity in fifteenth-century English provincial society

The concepts of honour and shame are frequently used as analytical tools for understanding the workings of late-medieval English society. This paper argues, however, that historians tend to attribute too narrow a concept of honour to fifteenth-century provincial society. Chivalric honour, with its classic accoutrements of war, tournament and pride of blood may not have been of great importance to provincial gentry such as the Pastons. On the contrary, judging by their letters, the forum of honour for these people lay in their quotidien relationships with tenants, servants, clients and fellow magistrates; and their means of attaining honour were likely to be legal, peaceful and mundane. This system allowed women to achieve actively a greater share of honour than would easily fall to them in the chivalric system, and placed more emphasis on the developing role of an individual's private conscience, as against his/her public shame. In turn, the notion of conscience, particularly, could be used to subvert the very basis of the honour of chivalry and lineage.

Bioethics in pluralist societies.

BIOETHICS IN PLURAUST SOCIETIES H. TRISTRAM ENGELHARDT, JR.* I. Introduction The last 2 decades have been marked by a growing interest in bioethics . This is not to say that there was not an active interest in such issues prior to this time. There is a long history of Roman Catholic and Jewish concerns with contraception, sterilization, and the care of dying individuals, to name only a few topics [1-3]. Indeed, die current literature in bioethics was in great measure spawned by die contributions of Protestant theologians such as Paul Ramsey, Joseph Fletcher, and Harmon Smith [4-6]. Furthermore, Christian and Jewish religious thinkers continue to contribute in significant ways to this literature. However, even in the contributions ofthese dieologians, one finds much reflection on bioethics which is not in the genre of Judeo-Christian religious thought in sensu stricto but which falls more in the genre of philosophy. In fact, the field of bioethics has involved the development of a secular philosophical bioethics, that is, a bioethics not direcdy dependent on particular religious convictions. Secular ways ofunderstanding sexuality, contraception, abortion, and die definition of death have been drawn from new biomedical and bioethical approaches and viewpoints. They are already shaping our lives and our culture. Bioethics has evolved in a pluralist context spanning nations and cultural groups within nations. It has developed not as a Christian or Judeo-Christian medical ethics but as a part of our cultural traditions that attempts to transcend the idiosyncrasies of our culture: philosophy and the other secular humanities. These traditions have recent roots in the Enlightenment and more profound roots in our pagan past. That past engendered our concept ofphilosophy as an attempt to understand the nature of man and of the human condition on the basis of reason An earlier version of tins paper was presented as die Will Judy Lecture at Juniata College, Huntington, Pennsylvania, March 25, 1981. ?Joseph and Rose Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Center for Bioethics, Georgetown University , Washington, D.C. 20057.© 1982 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0031-5982/83/2601-0315$01.00 64 I H. Tristram Engelhardt,Jr. ¦ Bioethics in Pluralist Societies and generally demonstrable facts about man, without reliance on a particular revelation or a particular culture. Secular bioethics now possesses an importance which it could not have had in the past. First and foremost, in the past, the interests of religion had not been placed by public policy within the broader concerns of maintaining a peaceable community. What I sketch here are the consequences of a commitment to a peaceable community that is not totalitarian in the ways of Khomeini's Iran, the Soviet Union, or Christian states under die Inquisition. A commitment to the peaceable community involves a commitment to framing an understanding of how a society will deport itself in conditions when one view of the good life, or of the nature of man, will not be imposed by force on all. Beyond and before the commitment to the peaceable community are some of its roots in the flow of history. Our communities have become more explicidy heterogeneous, including vocal non-Christians, atheists, homosexuals, and others who in various ways exempt themselves from the dominant orthodoxies of the Christian West. Furthermore, the "Christian" West has become but one of the many traditions on a planet populated by Muslims, atheist Communists, Hindus, Buddhists, and others who do not share traditional Christian cultural commitments. These other cultures have also been touched by die lure of a peaceable community and frightened by the heterodoxies it allows. They, too, are finding their own communities in various degrees explicitly and stridendy pluralistic. Moreover, they, as we, are in a world that is pluralistic in its roots and commitments. They have suffered, as we have, from the future shock engendered by the successful technological revolutions of this century. The passage into a starkly secular world is a painful one for all those who believe in a religion or in the beauty and power of their particular culture. Such believers are faced with the difficult prospect of living always within two worlds: that of their private conscience and diat of public morality. The distance between these...

ETHICAL ISSUES FROM AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract The moral problems of modern man are increasingly complicated. These are no more limited to the problems of interpersonal relations, of the relations with other individuals who, after the noble principles of Decalogue, must not be killed, robbed, slandered, or deceived. For our modern sense of morality, the moral problems are not limited to an individual's relations to any law - divine or human - to any social norms, to his own internal categorical imperative, to his private conscience or by fidelity to himself. All these things are included in our morality but they are only a part of it. The other part of it is connected with the fact of our participation in social events. Human morality of our times is generally felt more and more as a problem of man's responsibility for his world, because he himself is seen as an integral part of it, and as an active participant in its events. It is the duty of everybody to participate in social life and to have his own responsibility for it. A morality of tho...

Ethical Issues from an International Perspective

Abstract The moral problems of modern man are increasingly complicated. These are no more limited to the problems of interpersonal relations, of the relations with other individuals who, after the noble principles of Decalogue, must not be killed, robbed, slandered, or deceived. For our modern sense of morality, the moral problems are not limited to an individual's relations to any law - divine or human - to any social norms, to his own internal categorical imperative, to his private conscience or by fidelity to himself. All these things are included in our morality but they are only a part of it. The other part of it is connected with the fact of our participation in social events. Human morality of our times is generally felt more and more as a problem of man's responsibility for his world, because he himself is seen as an integral part of it, and as an active participant in its events. It is the duty of everybody to participate in social life and to have his own responsibility for it. A morality of tho...

Book Review: Private Conscience and Public Law: The American Experience

Book Review: Private Conscience and Public Law: The American Experience

What is the Point of Being a Roman Catholic?

‘A clean, well-lighted place’—the phrase occurs readily enough to anyone visiting Holland today and it has its own modulation when thought of in connection with contemporary Dutch Catholicism. Here, if anywhere, we can see translated into coherent and consistent practice much of the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, and it is hardly necessary to say that the notion of a Church as a whole seriously attempting to embody that spirit and not just paying lip- service to it cannot be other than impressive. A visit to Holland provides an opportunity to see some of the ‘progressive’ theological thinking in the Church ‘in action’, as it were—thinking which made us conscious certainly of ‘the well-lighted place’, but also, and more unexpectedly, of the shadows which fell across it.Two propositions central to modern theological thinking are the importance of establishing a view of faith as a personal commitment and recognition of the pluriform cultures in which we live. And so it is not surprising to find these assumptions shaping contemporary Dutch Catholicism.With regard to the first, in almost every conversation we had, words like ‘authenticity’, ‘maturity’, and ‘personal commitment’ occurred with unfailing regularity. Celibacy, to take the most obvious and topical issue, was felt to be significant only if it was a freely-chosen, maturely-pondered vocation. The individual had to accept it as the only mode of life in which his personal and social fulfilment could be envisaged. Celibacy as an obligatory pre-requisite for the priesthood or, at the least, intimately bound up with its meaning and function, was seen as a legalistic intrusion into the private conscience of the person concerned.

Some Paradoxes of Private Conscience as a Poltical Guide

Previous articleNext article No AccessDiscussionSome Paradoxes of Private Conscience as a Poltical GuideWilliam EarleWilliam Earle Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 80, Number 4Jul., 1970 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/291784 Views: 2Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Eyal Press Moral Courage: A Sociological Perspective, Society 55, no.22 (Feb 2018): 181–192.https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-018-0231-4Jeffrey White Understanding and Augmenting Human Morality: An Introduction to the ACTWith Model of Conscience, (Jan 2010): 607–621.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15223-8_34Leigh Kathryn Jenco Thoreau's Critique of Democracy, The Review of Politics 65, no.0303 (Aug 2009): 355.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034670500038286