Issues
Issue 55: May/June 2006
EDITORIAL
The Stuff of Life
by Rick Lewis
NEWS
News: May/June 2006
Peter Strawson dies • 14th Philosophy Olympics • Pope endorses erotic love • Philosophy President not Philosopher King — News reports by Sue Roberts in London and John Ruddy in New York
BIOETHICS
Bioethics Now
Jeffrey Spike explains the place of medical ethics within bioethics and in relation to philosophy.
Lessons (Not) Learned
Robert Card on the ethics of medical care at the end of life.
On Altruistic Living Kidney Donation
Kidney specialist Mahendra Govani recommends a particular variety of evolved ethical behaviour.
Three Guys with Failing Organs vs One Guy with Good Organs
Michael Voytinsky finds another take on a classic utilitarian dilemma.
Xenotransplantation: For and Against
by Ololade Olakanmi and Laura Purdy
ARTICLES
Birthday Special: John Stuart Mill
Peter Cave of his own free will lists 21 things – and more – that you probably didn’t know about John Stuart Mill.
Leo Strauss: Tributes And Reflections
William Bluhm and Alfred Geier offer non-neo-con views on their old teacher.
The Notebook
Katherine Power explores the advantage of having an extended mind.
CROSSWORD
Crossword
Our ninth cryptic crossword cleverly composed (as is customary) by the convivially cunning Deiradiotes.
INTERVIEWS
Baroness Mary Warnock
Baroness Mary Warnock is one of Britain’s leading moral philosophers and has also chaired several official commissions of enquiry, including the Committee on Human Fertility and Embryology in the 1980s. She’s currently writing a book in response to Lord Joffe’s Bill, ‘Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill’. Rick Lewis interviewed her at the House of Lords.
LETTERS
Letters
Russian Responses • The Sartre Continues • A Dream Letter • Autonomous Writing • Missing Virtues • Good Breeding? • Revisions And Improvements • Deductive Inductive Reasoning • Infinite Ignorance • Open Ended
COLUMNS
Dear Socrates
Having returned from the turn of the Fourth Century B.C. to the turn of the Twenty-First A.D., Socrates has eagerly signed on as a Philosophy Now columnist so that he may continue to carry out his divinely-inspired dialogic mission.
Forward to Methusaleh
Tim Madigan hopes to not die before he gets old.
Stop Think
by Joel Marks
Is Ethics a Science?
Our philosophical science correspondent Massimo Pigliucci asks.
REVIEWS
After Theory by Terry Eagleton
Abdelkader Aoudjit discusses Terry Eagleton’s take on what comes after postmodernism.
Choosing Children by Jonathan Glover
John Lanigan considers problems Jonathan Glover has with Choosing Children.
Seven Samurai
See a cinematic classic from a post-Hegelian perspective. Danny O’Donnell reviews Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.
FICTION
The Placebo Effect
A short story by Emrys Westacott about drugs, money and bioethics.