Why am I passionate about this?
Raphael Cohen-Almagor, DPhil, St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, is Professor of Politics, Olof Palme Visiting Professor, Lund University, Founding Director of the Middle East Study Centre, University of Hull, and Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Raphael taught, inter alia, at Oxford (UK), Jerusalem, Haifa (Israel), UCLA, Johns Hopkins (USA), and Nirma University (India). With more than 300 publications, Raphael has published extensively in the field of political philosophy, including Liberal Democracy and the Limits of Tolerance; Challenges to Democracy; The Right to Die with Dignity; The Scope of Tolerance; Confronting the Internet's Dark Side; Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism, and The Republic, Secularism and Security: France versus the Burqa and the Niqab.
Raphael's book list on medical ethics and end-of-life
Why did Raphael love this book?
In 1991, Dworkin taught at Oxford a seminar titled “Abortion, Euthanasia and Dementia”.
Until then, I never paid too much attention to these subjects, not more than any lay person with general knowledge. I attended the seminar simply because Dworkin delivered it.
This was the most interesting and thought-provoking seminar I have ever attended in my life. It opened my interest in medical ethics, a field that is still one of my preoccupations.
Dworkin was writing at that time Life’s Dominion. Each week he would circulate a chapter of his book, to be discussed in the following week.
We were some twelve students in class; each of us read and commented on the chapters. There was a very lively exchange and fierce debates.
Again, while I disagreed with some of Dworkin’s arguments, I could not but appreciate the force of his reasoning. After that seminar, I decided to embark…
1 author picked Life's Dominion as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Internationally renowned lawyer and philosopher Ronald Dworkin addresses the crucially related acts of abortion and euthanasia in a brilliantly original book that examines their meaning in a nation that prizes both life and individual liberty. From Roe v. Wade to the legal battle over the death of Nancy Cruzan, no issues have opened greater rifts in American society than those of abortion and euthanasia.
At the heart of Life's Dominion is Dworkin's inquest into why abortion and euthanasia provoke such controversy. Do these acts violate some fundamental "right to life"? Or are the objections against them based on the belief…
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