Table of Contents
The Under Fire Series
General Editor: Jeffrey A. Schaler
VOLUME 1
Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics
VOLUME 2
Howard Gardner Under Fire: The Rebel Psychologist Faces His Critics
VOLUME 3
Peter Singer Under Fire: The Moral Iconoclast Faces His Critics
To Sonia Schaler Haynes
And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then?
Luke 3:10
BILLY: Tolstoy asked the same question. He wrote a book with that title. He got so upset about the poverty in Moscow that he went one night into the poorest section and just gave away all his money. You could do that now. Five American dollars would be a fortune to one of these people.
GUY: Wouldnt do any good, just be a drop in the ocean.
BILLY: Ahh, thats the same conclusion Tolstoy came to. I disagree.
GUY: Oh, whats your solution?
BILLY: Well, I support the view that you just dont think about the major issues. You do whatever you can about the misery thats in front of you. Add your light to the sum of light. You think thats naive, dont you?
GUY: Yep.
BILLY: Its all right, most journalists do.
GUY: We cant afford to get involved.
C.J. Koch, The Year of Living Dangerously (1978)
About the Authors
RICHARD J. ARNESON is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and Institute for Law and Philosophy, School of Law, University of San Diego. He has written several essays that aim to integrate an appropriate account of personal responsibility and sensible notions of individual well-being into an egalitarian theory of distributive justice. He also writes about the strengths and weaknesses of act consequentialism as compared to rival doctrines. He has published close to one hundred essays on topics in moral and political philosophy.
BERYL LIEFF BENDERLY is a prize-winning journalist and author. Her hundreds of articles have appeared in national magazines ranging from Glamour to Scientific American, in newspapers including the New York Times and Washington Post, and on major websites. She is also the author or co-author of eight adult trade books.
TYLER COWEN is Holbert C. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University. He is author of eight books and numerous articles, in the fields of both economics and philosophy. His pieces have appeared in numerous journals including American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Ethics, and Philosophy and Public Affairs. He co-writes a blog at www.marginalrevolution.com and he is currently researching a book on the foundations of a free society.
STEPHEN DRAKE is a person with invisible disabilities that are related to a brain injury he experienced at birth and is a survivor of a doctors recommendation of passive euthanasia. Prior to working with Not Dead Yet (NDY), he worked with the Facilitated Communication Institute and Center on Human Policy at Syracuse University. He has been active in Not Dead Yet since 1996, and in 1999 started work as NDYs research analyst. Hes a frequent contributor to national disability magazines and has been honored by national TASH and the Arc of Illinois, for his work on behalf on NDY. Describing himself as a recovering academic, he has published articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as national newspapers and disability publications. In 1999 he helped to organize a large protest at Princeton University over the hiring of Peter Singer. He writes commentary on the NDY blog at notdeadyetnewscommentary .blogspot.com.
MARCUS DWELL holds a chair in philosophical ethics at the Department of Philosophy at Utrecht University. He is research director of the Ethics Institute of Utrecht University, director of the Netherlands Research School for Practical Philosophy and director of the Leiden-Utrecht Research Institute, ZENO. From 1993 until 2001 he was academic coordinator of the Interdepartmental Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities at the University of Tbingen. His research interests include bioethics (especially the ethics of genetics and environmental ethics) and basic questions of moral philosophy (foundations of individual rights and human dignity) and the relation between ethics and aesthetics. He is Editor-in-Chief of the book series, Ethics and Applied Philosophy.
DAVID RUSSELL FAGELSON is an associate professor of law and society at American Universitys School of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Justice As Integrity: Tolerance and the Moral Momentum of Law (2005). Before he joined the faculty at American University, Fagelson was a Research Associate and Director for Law and Governance at the IRIS Center, University of Maryland, where he advised US, multilateral, and foreign government officials and members of nascent civil society in former-Communist countries making the transition to market oriented and constitutional democracies, where his work focused on the enforcement of rights.
R. G. FREY is Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and Senior Research Fellow in the Social Philosophy and Policy Center there. He is the author and editor of numerous books and articles in normative and applied ethics, including animal ethics.
HARRY J. GENSLER, S.J., is Professor of Philosophy at John Carroll University, Cleveland. He has strong interests in logic, ethics, and where these two areas come together. His authored books in logic include Introduction to Logic; Historical Dictionary of Logic; and Gdels Theorem Simplified. His authored books in ethics are Formal Ethics; Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction; and Historical Dictionary of Ethics. He also co-edited, with James C. Swindal, The Sheed and Ward Anthology of Catholic Philosophy. His personal Web site at jcu.edu/philosophy/gensler reveals strong interests in computers and in backpacking.
MICHAEL HUEMER received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1998 and is presently associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the author of Skepticism and the Veil of Perception and Ethical Intuitionism, as well as numerous academic articles in ethics, epistemology, and other areas.
HARRIET MCBRYDE JOHNSON practiced law in Charleston, South Carolina, for twenty years. Her solo practice emphasized benefits and civil rights claims of poor and working people with disabilities. She was active in the disability rights movement for thirty years. Her memoir, Too Late to Die Young: Nearly True Tales from a Life, was published in 2005. In 2006, she published Accidents of Nature, a novel about growing up with disabilities. Johnson drew national attention for her opposition to the charity mentality and the pity-based tactics of the annual Jerry Lewis muscular dystrophy telethon. She protested the Jerry Lewis telethon for nearly twenty years. South Carolina State Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal stated that Johnson was a fierce advocate for the disabled, a nationally revered attorney and a titanic figure in state legal history. Johnson died on June 4th, 2008.
