Human Rights and Natural Law: An Analysis of the Consensus Gentium and its Implications for Bioethics
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Author(s)
Primary Supervisor
Caton, Hiram
Other Supervisors
Overduin, Daniel
Year published
1993
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This work represents an attempt to see what measure of agreement exists on human values in the face of the radical disagreement in moral philosophy on fundamental human values, and a further attempt to see what would be the implications of these findings for bioethics. The thesis begins with looking firstly at the values that human beings appear to hold in the world community. Attention is paid to the range of human rights declarations, codes and statements of medical ethics, and beliefs of religious traditions. The methodology employed rejects an assessment of these documents in terms of dominant moral philosophies, seeking ...
View more >This work represents an attempt to see what measure of agreement exists on human values in the face of the radical disagreement in moral philosophy on fundamental human values, and a further attempt to see what would be the implications of these findings for bioethics. The thesis begins with looking firstly at the values that human beings appear to hold in the world community. Attention is paid to the range of human rights declarations, codes and statements of medical ethics, and beliefs of religious traditions. The methodology employed rejects an assessment of these documents in terms of dominant moral philosophies, seeking simply to identify the values held, their ubiquity in history, and the current attachment to those values. Those values are expressed in the twentieth century predominantly in terms of human rights. Chapter I discovers evidence of a consensus gentium on fundamental human values such as the right to life and the right to a reasonable standard of health care.
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View more >This work represents an attempt to see what measure of agreement exists on human values in the face of the radical disagreement in moral philosophy on fundamental human values, and a further attempt to see what would be the implications of these findings for bioethics. The thesis begins with looking firstly at the values that human beings appear to hold in the world community. Attention is paid to the range of human rights declarations, codes and statements of medical ethics, and beliefs of religious traditions. The methodology employed rejects an assessment of these documents in terms of dominant moral philosophies, seeking simply to identify the values held, their ubiquity in history, and the current attachment to those values. Those values are expressed in the twentieth century predominantly in terms of human rights. Chapter I discovers evidence of a consensus gentium on fundamental human values such as the right to life and the right to a reasonable standard of health care.
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Thesis Type
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Degree Program
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School
School of Humanities
Copyright Statement
The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise.
Item Access Status
Public
Subject
Natural Law
Human rights
Bioethics
Right to life
Right to healthcare