Decidere per chi non può

For centuries, the philosophical thought has questioned notions such as "person", "value" and "quality" of life, "rights", "suffering", "life", "death"; but the problems that have arisen in recent decades due to the application of life-prolonging technologies have led to a rethinking of the philosophical and everyday meanings and uses of these notions. This book intends to be a reflection on some aspects of the debate on the moral lawfulness of non-voluntary euthanasia, through a critical discussion of the main philosophical notions used by bioethics

Carattere e situazioni: le recenti critiche dell’etica della virtù basate sulla psicologia sociale

Recent trends in empirical social psychology showed that situational factors affect human behaviour more than character traits do. Relying on these data, some philosophers (notably Gilbert Harman and John Doris) argued that moral philosophy should abandon the Aristotelian concept of character or ground virtue ethics on narrow socially sustained character traits. This paper argues that these criticisms are unsound because they misconstrue Aristotelian virtue ethics and the role of character traits in moral reasoning