On Wed, 04 Apr 2001 14:47:56 -0000 "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
writes:
> Is this a serious question about Marxist medical ethics, Leo? Milton
> Fisk
> has a new book out on medical ethics, arguing for national health
> care.
> Richard Schmitt has several books developing Marxist conceptions of
> human
> nature. I asked Yoshie the same question, but in fact there is good
> Marxist
> work at precisely the level you pitched the question. The authors I
>
> mentioned are only good examples. What is lacking is a general
> ethical
> theory that might rival utilitarianism or Kantianism. At the level
> of
> specific problems and applied ethics, Marxists have been active
> without a
> general theory.
>
> --jks
>
At the level of general theory, Marxists have tended to draw either implicitly or explicitly upon either the utilitarian or the Kantian traditions. Thus, Kautsky when writing about ethics tended to draw upon utilitarianism, whereas the Austro-Marxists (i.e. Otto Bauer, Max Adler) tended to draw upon neo-Kantianism. Herbert Marcuse, commended J.S. Mill's brand of utilitarianism. More recently, RG Peffer in his *Marxism and Social Justice* attempted to present a kind of Rawlsian Marxism - Rawls of course being a kind of neo-Kantian. Some Marxist writers have attempted to transcend the utilitarian-Kantian debate by pointing out that Marx's own implicit ethical position seemed to have been Aristotelian in character, and these writers have attempted to articulate what they see as Marx's Aristotelianism.
Jim Farmelant ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.