Tag: John Rawls – Philosophy

Martin Carcieri

Physician-Assisted Suicide and Beyond: What Would Rawls Do?

Marty Carcieri

January 5, 2014

Martin Carcieri
Martin Carcieri

Physician-Assisted Suicide, even for the terminally ill, is legal in only four U.S. States. Yet there are now proposals in the U.S. and abroad to extend the right to die (i.e., to obtain and consume a reliable lethal dose of barbiturates) even further: 1) to those over 70 years of age, and 2) to those whose longtime spouses are near death and who wish to die with them. How would these proposals fare under the principles of justice articulated and defended by John Rawls, the most influential political theorist of our time? Friend of SVH Martin Carcieri will present his application of Rawlsian principles to one of the most urgent public policy issues of our time.

Martin Carcieri is an Associate Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University, where he teaches courses and seminars on Constitutional Law and Political Theory. He holds a J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California, and has published twenty-five journal articles and book chapters.

To learn more before the presentation on Sunday, you can read the handout.

 

 

Martin Carcieri

John Rawls and Humanism

Martin Carcieri

 October 6, 2013

Martin Carcieri
Martin Carcieri

John Rawls is the most influential Anglo-American political theorist of the past three centuries. In bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Rawls in 1999, Bill Clinton noted that he had put our liberties on a brilliant new foundation. That foundation is a refined version of the social contract as developed by early modern thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. It is of particular interest for Humanists since it provides an objective but workable basis for politics and ethics. It is neither objective, that is, in the sense of some transcendental foundation like God or Nature, nor purely subjective, with the nihilist dead end to which that leads. It is a contract, the basic terms of which, Rawls argues, we would (and do) accept as the basis of our politics and ethics. Besides presenting the basic method and principles for which Rawls argues, Carcieri will also present Rawls’ famous theory of civil disobedience, which builds upon the work of Thoreau, Gandhi, King, and others.

Martin Carcieri is an Associate Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University, where he teaches courses and seminars on Constitutional Law and Political Theory. He holds a J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California, and has published twenty-five journal articles and book chapters.

Click here to view the Handout for this fascinating and informative talk.