Moral philosophers like Martha Nussbaum, Philippa Foot, and Michael Weber argue for what I call the “Neo-Stoic Reading” of Nietzsche, which includes two claims: first, Nietzsche allegedly recommends the relentless pursuit of self-interest at the expense of other persons; second, he denies empathy any major role in the ethical life. I will argue that the Neo-Stoic view misses an important unifying theme in Nietzsche’s ethics and his criticism of morality—his investment in the value of honor—and that Nietzsche’s ethical recommendations involving empathy and even altruism can be better understood by situating them within an historical tradition of honor-based ethics.

Dignity is the concept most commonly associated with the biotechnological revolution, and almost always used by conservatives in ethics and politics to justify constraining research into novel biotechnologies like cloning, genetic enhancement and life extension. At the same time, dignity is often criticised as inadequate to play such a fundamental role in future-facing bioethics. This thesis is a work at the intersection of applied ethics and politics, and seeks to address two main questions: whether dignity is a useless, hopelessly vague concept, and whether dignity is an inherently political, specifically conservative concept. This problem will be addressed by analysing the concept of dignity as it is found in bioethics policy and in everyday life. Using this conceptual analysis, a structure will be identified that both liberal and conservatives have in common meaning that dignity is not hopelessly vague. Despite having analogous structures, the argument in this thesis shows that the liberal and conservative conceptions of dignity are intractable and both support different positions in many arguments. The implication of this is that dignity will not be useful in building a consensus around policies in future-facing bioethics.

<p>The concept of dignity has beeen one of the ambiguous concepts in biomedical ethics. Thus the ambiguous nature of this concept has been extended to what it means to die with dignity. This research work is an investigation into the complexity in the understanding of "dying with dignity" in Applied Ethics.</p>

The concept of dignity has beeen one of the ambiguous concepts in biomedical ethics. Thus the ambiguous nature of this concept has been extended to what it means to die with dignity. This research work is an investigation into the complexity in the understanding of "dying with dignity" in Applied Ethics.

The aim of the study was to investigate how a community motivates and ensures the implementation of its values and how this document affected personnel of meaning, vision and daily operations. The study was based on semi-structured interviews, in which nine respondents were interviewed in a city in southern Sweden. Interviews dealt with three different themes, all concerned organization or set of values. The analysis was based partly on how organizations and institutions build up and maintain their legitimacy. The analysis was also explained by the new institutional theory and its concepts isomorphism. In conclusion, the study shows that the concept of value system is very subjective and means different things depending on which profession you belong to. The study also showed that officials of the municipality indicate that the values discussed continuously in operation. This picture did not fit at all agree with the care assistants who considered values almost never discussed. The study also showed that the implementation was not as successful as desired, then no time for reflection was. The study showed that the reason that there was an opportunity to reflect due to the time and resources were too scarce. Throughout officials related concepts in the study more to an organizational plan, when care assistants instead relate everything to the actual meeting with the care recipient. Instead of using values as a benchmark they instead used of the "inner compass" that consists of subjective norms and values.

I argue here that the practice of penal torture is not intrinsically wrongful. A common objection against the practice of penal torture is that there is something about penal torture that makes it wrongful, while this is not the case for other modes of punishment. I call this claim the asymmetry thesis. One way to defend this position is to claim that penal torture is intrinsically wrongful. It is the claim I argue against here. I discuss and reject three versions this claim. I first address a version that is based on the idea that penal torture, unlike other modes of punishment, is intrinsically wrong because it is inhuman. I then address a version grounded on the claim that, because penal torture is an assault upon the defenseless, it is morally impermissible. Finally, I discuss a version that concerns the idea that penal torture attacks human dignity and undermine agency.

This dissertation explores poor retail food access in low-income, class-segregated communities through a social justice lens. Disadvantaged communities with poor food access—often called ‘food deserts’—have received ample scholarly attention, however the problem has yet to be analyzed from a normative, critical perspective. For this research, I use the case study of two communities in Kingston, Ontario’s North End, whose retail food geography changed significantly between 2006 and 2009. Critical political economy is my primary theoretical framework. I conducted forty-two qualitative interviews with key informants, four focus groups (three with low-income North Kingston residents and one with elderly Kingston residents), two door-to-door surveys in Rideau Heights, archival research, and I attended public meetings around a grocery store closure in the North End. I advance several research findings based on my results. Most broadly, I argue that the food desert problem represents capital’s ability to shape the ‘everyday geographies’ of simple, mundane activities like food shopping through the manipulation of the urban built environment. As such, capital is able to distribute the costs and burdens of food procurement in ways that reproduce class relations and class contempt to suite the dynamics of capitalist accumulation. I propose three interpretations of poor retail food access as a social injustice: (1) poor access represents the unequal and disproportionate allocation of burdens and costs of food acquisition on those with the fewest resources to mitigate these costs; (2) class disparity is inherently supported by urban governance systems that protect the interests of capital, therefore scaled-up retail capital is not accountable to residents of communities or their non-economic needs or wishes; and (3) the consolidated retail food geography of North American cities deprives low-income people of freedom, choice and dignity that is often embodied in the act of enjoying a ‘normal’ middle-class shopping experience. In the transition to a post-capitalist retail food geography, therefore, activists should abandon a romantic notion that low-income people should drive the change by somehow adopting a more agrarian lifestyle or lead the food system re-localization agenda – change driven by desperation rather than personal values. / Thesis (Ph.D, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2010-09-23 16:02:39.366

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Virginia, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 131-143). Also available online through Digital Dissertations.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 272-289) Also available in print.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 209-215). Also available in print.