Jonathan Glover Essay

Jonathan Glover (born 1941) is a British philosopher known for his studies on ethics. He was educated at Tonbridge School, later going on to star Christi College, Oxford. He was a fellow and tutor in philosophy at New College, Oxford. He currently teaches ethics at Kings College London. Glover is a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution in the United States.Glovers book Causing Death and Saving Lives, initiatory make in 1977, addresses practical moral questions about life and demise decisions in the areas of abortion, infanticide, suicide, euthanasia, choices between people, capital punishment, and war. His approach is broadly consequentialist, though he gives significant weight to questions of individual autonomy, the Kantian notion that we ought to treat opposite(a) people as ends in themselves rather than merely as means.He criticises the idea that mere consciousness or life itself are per se valuable these states matter, he argues, bec ause they are pre-requisites for other things that are valuable and plant for a life worth living. There is, then, no absolute sanctitude of human life. 1 He criticises the principle of double effect2 and the acts and omissions doctrine,3 the notion that there is a huge moral difference between killing someone and by design letting them die.In his discussion of real cases of moral decisions about killing he draws on insights from history and literature as well as philosophy. Throughout, the emphasis is on the consequences of moral choices for those affected, rather than on abstract principles employ impersonally. In Humanity A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, published in 1999, Glover considers the psychological factors that predispose us to commit barbaric acts, and suggests how man-made moral traditions and the cultivation of moral imagination can work to limit us from a ruth littlely selfish treatment of others.Gaining greater consciousness of the monsters within u s, he argues, is part of the process of caging and containing them. 4 He examines the various types of brutality that were perpetrated in the 20th century, including Nazi genocide, communist mass killings under Stalin, Mao, and political leader Pot, and more recent slaughter in Bosnia and Rwanda, and examines what sort of bulwarks there could be against them. He allows that religion has provided bulwarks, which are getting eroded. He identifies three types of bulwark.The cardinal more dependable are sympathy and respect for human dignity. The less dependable tercet is Moral Identity I belong to a kind of person who would not do that sort of thing. This third is less dependable because notions of moral identity can themselves be warped, as was done by the Nazis. 5 In The End of Faith, Sam Harris quotes Glover as express Our entanglements with people close to us erode simple self-interest. Husbands, wives, lovers, parents, children and friends all confound the boundaries of self ish concern.Francis Bacon rightly said that people with children have given hostages to fortune. Inescapably, other forms of friendship and love hold us hostage too peg self-interest is destabilized. citation needed In 1989 the European Commission hired Glover to head a panel on embryo research in Europe. 6 He is marital to Vivette Glover, a prominent neuroscientist. Jonathan is father to three and grandfather to one (father to Ruth, Daniel and David Glover and grandfather to Samuel Glover).