Reading Engelhardt: Essays on the Thought of H.Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.

This volume consists of 14 chapters selected from papers presented at the conference Ethics, Medicine and Health Care: An Appraisal of the Thought of H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. along with a response to those chapters by Engelhardt. The chapters direct primary attention to various aspects of Engelhardt’s philosophy of medicine and bioethics as presented in The Foundations of Bioethics and Bioethics and Secular Humanism: The Search for a Common Morality . Among the topics treated are the economics of health care and the medical profession, the libertarian and communitarian aspects of Engelhardt’s thought, the moral status of children, abortion, the moral foundations for a health care system, feminism and clinical epistemology, and the relation between secular and religious moralities. In response to the various challenges posed by the authors, Engelhardt considers the implications of the failure of the modern philosophical project, the role of reason in ethics, and the resolution of conflict among communities that do not share the same moral vision.