Contemporary Ethical Issues

Philosophy professor Walter G Jeffko explores a series of contemporary ethical problems from a personalistic perspective influenced by the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray (1891-1976). Professor Jeffko utilizes key elements of Macmurray's thought in developing his own viewpoint; and he relates Macmurray's ideas to those of a wide variety of important philosophers, ethicists, and behavioral scientists. In the opening chapter Jeffko develops a personalistic anthropological and ethical theory within a framework that views the person a relational and rational agent, reason as the standard of value, and the principle of community as the supreme ethical standard.In successive chapters, this theory is applied to the issues of suicide, abortion, euthanasia (including assisted suicide), the death penalty, privacy (including private property and capitalism), the moral treatment of animals, and affirmative action. Jeffko connects ethics with logic in a lucid style that blends scholarship with readability. This is a fresh and absorbing examination of the key ethical dilemmas of our time.