BBC Everyday Ethics: Assisted Suicide - Right or Wrong?

On this weeks' Everyday Ethics - David Cameron launches an attack on absent fathers, but is his raw language counter-productive? It was one of the most disturbing TV programmes most viewers will have seen for quite some time. This week, the BBC broadcast a documentary about assisted dying, presented by Sir Terry Pratchett, who has Alzheimers, in which we watched the suicide of Peter Smedley. Was it right to do so? And what are the implications from this film?

Conditions of Identity: A Study in Identity and Survival

Addressing many topics in epistemology and metaphysics, this treatise sets out a new theory of the unity of objects, and discusses personal identity, the metaphysics of possible worlds, the continuity in space time, and the nature of philosophical theorizing.

Assisted Death in Europe and America: Four Regimes and Their Lessons

Advances in medical treatment now enable physicians to prolong life to a previously unknown extent, however in many instances these new techniques mean not the saving of life but prolonging the act of dying. In the eyes of many, medical technology has run out of control and contributes to unnecessary suffering. Hence the demand has arisen that patients should be entitled to choose death when pain and physical and mental deterioration have destroyed the possibility of a dignified and meaningful life and that their doctors should help them to realize this endeavor.

Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome

The careers of two popular second-century rhetorical virtuosos offer Maud Gleason fascinating insights into the ways ancient Romans constructed masculinity during a time marked by anxiety over manly deportment. Declamation was an exhilarating art form for the Greeks and bilingual Romans of the Second Sophistic movement, and its best practitioners would travel the empire performing in front of enraptured audiences.

The Press Effect

Was the 2000 presidential campaign merely a contest between Pinocchio and Dumbo? And did Dumbo miraculously turn into Abraham Lincoln after the events of September 11? In fact, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman argue in The Press Effect, these stereotypes, while containing some elements of the truth, represent the failure of the press and the citizenry to engage the most important part of our political process in a critical fashion.