Chapter 12: Ethical Theories, Moral Principles, and Medical Decisions
The discussion of ethical theories is generally indebted to Richard B. Brandt, Ethical Theory (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1959) and William K. Frankena, Ethics, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-
Hall 1973), as well as to Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing To Do? (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2009)
Rawls’s theory is presented in A Theory of Justice, original edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1971). The principles are quoted from p. 203; “natural duties” are discussed on pp. 340–
350. Our statement of the theory is indebted to Norman Daniels’s introduction to Reading Rawls (New York:
Basic Books, 1976). The first criticism is one made by Thomas Nagel, “Rawls on Justice” (Daniels, pp. 1-
16) and Ronald Dworkin, “The Original Position” (Daniels, pp. 16–53). The second criticism is urged by R.
M. Hare, “Rawls’s Theory of Justice” (Daniels, pp. 81–108) and David Lyons, “Nature and Soundness of
the Contract and Coherence Arguments” (Daniels, pp. 141–169). Further discussion draws on Rawls’s
Political Liberalism, 1st ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
For Aquinas’s view on natural law see his Summa Theologica, Part II (First Part), vol. 6, translated
by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1914). For his
views on natural law and law in general, see vol. 8, “Treatise on Law.” For an interpretation of Aquinas, see
Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 2, part 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1962), pp. 126 – 131, to
The discussion of the capabilities approach draws on Martha Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011); Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability,
Nationality, Species Membership (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Amartya Sen,
Development As Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); as well as Rosalind Dixon and Martha
Nussbaum, “Abortion, Dignity and a Capabilities Approach,” Chicago Public Law and Legal Theory Working
Paper No. 345, University of Chicago, March 2011.
The account of virtue ethics is indebted to Louis P. Pojman, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong,
2nd ed. (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1995), 166–181. See also Alasdair
McIntyre, After Virtue (University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), the book that revived current discussions of
virtue ethics, and Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), a collection of essays by a
virtue ethicist who addresses problems in medical ethics.
For the earliest work in care ethics, see Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1982); for its philosophical development, see Annette Bair, Postures of the Mind
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985). Also see Nell Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach