For abortion I wouldn’t argue a fetus is a part of society. If you deny it care then I have no problem with that. If you deny a child care though that’s neglect and we as a society should step in to ensure that child gets a good upbringing. Same with child support, if we’re going for the full libertarian personal freedom principle then a deadbeat dad has no obligation to his children and should be free to abandon them. His actions aren’t directly physically harming the child so he should be able to do what he wants.
Abandoning your child is shunting your responsibilities and putting real costs on society .
anyone who argues that position is on the slippery slope to supporting slavery.
Do you recognize any case where societal duty trumps bodily autonomy or is that always a slippery slope to slavery?
I think that moral view is too value hierarchical and Deontological, reliant on rules, such as bodily autonomy always trumps societal duty.
While this is true in a lot of cases, such as drug use and abortion, there are some cases where it isn’t. One of them pertaining directly to slavery is the civil war. How does Lincoln end slavery without violating the bodily autonomy of millions of men to fight a war with the south? If we follow the rule that bodily autonomy trumps societal duty then a draft can never be justified, and then the north loses the war and my ancestors are enslaved for way longer then they needed to be.
Of course a draft is not always justified, we shouldn’t be violating the bodily autonomy of millions of men to fight communists in vietnam. This is where deontology fails as the ethics of something like a draft are based more on the specifities of the case rather then any general rule or hierarchy of values.
This is where a more dialectical approach to ethics is valuable. We can recognize the values of bodily autonomy and societal duty in tension. They are in conversation and sometimes one is more relevant to the situation while other times the other value is.
So in the case of suicide we can look at the harm it’s doing to society against the value of bodily autonomy. If that person has no societal value or obligations, say a retired person, then sure there bodily autonomy can be more important and they should be able to kill themselves. But if there value to society and there dependents and obligations are greater then I say there can be cases where societal duty trumps bodily autonomy.
For abortion I wouldn’t argue a fetus is a part of society. If you deny it care then I have no problem with that. If you deny a child care though that’s neglect and we as a society should step in to ensure that child gets a good upbringing. Same with child support, if we’re going for the full libertarian personal freedom principle then a deadbeat dad has no obligation to his children and should be free to abandon them. His actions aren’t directly physically harming the child so he should be able to do what he wants.
Abandoning your child is shunting your responsibilities and putting real costs on society .
Do you recognize any case where societal duty trumps bodily autonomy or is that always a slippery slope to slavery?
I think that moral view is too value hierarchical and Deontological, reliant on rules, such as bodily autonomy always trumps societal duty.
While this is true in a lot of cases, such as drug use and abortion, there are some cases where it isn’t. One of them pertaining directly to slavery is the civil war. How does Lincoln end slavery without violating the bodily autonomy of millions of men to fight a war with the south? If we follow the rule that bodily autonomy trumps societal duty then a draft can never be justified, and then the north loses the war and my ancestors are enslaved for way longer then they needed to be.
Of course a draft is not always justified, we shouldn’t be violating the bodily autonomy of millions of men to fight communists in vietnam. This is where deontology fails as the ethics of something like a draft are based more on the specifities of the case rather then any general rule or hierarchy of values.
This is where a more dialectical approach to ethics is valuable. We can recognize the values of bodily autonomy and societal duty in tension. They are in conversation and sometimes one is more relevant to the situation while other times the other value is.
So in the case of suicide we can look at the harm it’s doing to society against the value of bodily autonomy. If that person has no societal value or obligations, say a retired person, then sure there bodily autonomy can be more important and they should be able to kill themselves. But if there value to society and there dependents and obligations are greater then I say there can be cases where societal duty trumps bodily autonomy.