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Deconstructing Dignity: A Critique of the Right-To-Die Debate
Contributor(s): Shershow, Scott Cutler (Author)
ISBN: 022608812X     ISBN-13: 9780226088129
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
OUR PRICE:   $40.85  
Product Type: Hardcover
Published: January 2014
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Philosophy | Ethics & Moral Philosophy
- Philosophy | Movements - Deconstruction
- Philosophy | Social
Dewey: 179.7
LCCN: 2013017717
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 6.4" W x 9" (1.00 lbs) 216 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
The right-to-die debate has gone on for centuries, playing out most recently as a spectacle of protest surrounding figures such as Terry Schiavo. In Deconstructing Dignity, Scott Cutler Shershow offers a powerful new way of thinking about it philosophically. Focusing on the concepts of human dignity and the sanctity of life, he employs Derridean deconstruction to uncover self-contradictory and damaging assumptions that underlie both sides of the debate.

Shershow examines texts from Cicero's De Officiis to Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals to court decisions and religious declarations. Through them he reveals how arguments both supporting and denying the right to die undermine their own unconditional concepts of human dignity and the sanctity of life with a hidden conditional logic, one often tied to practical economic concerns and the scarcity or unequal distribution of medical resources. He goes on to examine the exceptional case of self-sacrifice, closing with a vision of a society--one whose conditions we are far from meeting--in which the debate can finally be resolved. A sophisticated analysis of a heated topic, Deconstructing Dignity is also a masterful example of deconstructionist methods at work.

Contributor Bio(s): Shershow, Scott Cutler: - Scott Cutler Shershow is professor of English at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Puppets and "Popular" Culture and Laughing Matters: The Paradox of Comedy. He is also coeditor of Marxist Shakespeares.