Beyond Price: Essays on Birth and Death

J. David Velleman

Oct 2015 · Open Book Publishers

About this ebook

In nine lively essays, bioethicist J. David Velleman challenges the prevailing consensus about assisted suicide and reproductive technology, articulating an original approach to the ethics of creating and ending human lives. He argues that assistance in dying is appropriate only at the point where talk of suicide is not, and he raises moral objections to  anonymous donor conception. In their place, Velleman champions a morality of valuing personhood over happiness in making end-of-life decisions, and respecting the personhood of future children in making decisions about procreation. These controversial views are defended with philosophical rigor while remaining accessible to the general reader. Written over Velleman's 30 years of undergraduate teaching in bioethics, the essays have never before been collected and made available to a non-academic audience. They will open new lines of debate on issues of intense public interest.

About the author

J. David Velleman is a professor of philosophy and bioethics at New York University. He is a fellow the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a past recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His most recent books are Konrad Morgen: The Conscience of a Nazi Judge (co-authored with Herlinde Pauer-Studer, Palgrave, 2015) and Foundations for Moral Relativism (Open Book Publishers, 2014).