The Sanctity/Quality of Lifeand the Ethics of Respect for Persons
The Sanctity/Quality of Lifeand the Ethics of Respect for Persons

Summary/Abstract: It is often argued that scientific developments in the area of biomedicine callfor new ethical paradigms. Given the inadequacies of the traditional“sanctity-of-life ethics” (SLE), many have argued for a quality-of-life ethics(QLE), based on a non-speciesistic theory of the value of life. In this paper, Iclaim that QLE cannot account for the normativity of moral judgments,which can be explained only within the context of a theory of practicalrationality: the peculiarity of moral normativity calls for an ethics based onrespect for rational creatures. I then go on to argue that the ethics of respectfor persons (ERP) is not equivalent to SLE; that it can ground the moralprotection of human “marginal cases”; that it does not rely on a scientificallyimplausible notion of human nature; and that it is not vulnerable to thecharge of speciesism. Lastly, I suggest that ERP is a strictly philosophicalinterpretation of the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, and that is a betterinterpretation than SLE. If these assertions are correct, then the necessity ofa new moral paradigm is seriously undermined.

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