The back cover text of Els van Wijngaarden’s dissertation Ready to give up on life goes as follows. Older people who consider their lives to be ‘completed’, who suffer from the prospect of having to live on and therefore prefer a self-chosen death: it’s not a new issue. What is relatively new, though, is the current Dutch debate about whether we should legalize, facilitate and institutionalize assisted dying in such cases. Continue reading Elderly people, ‘completed lives’, and ‘assisted dying’
Beneath the surface of the liberal Netherlands
BBC Newsnight reporter Gabriel Gatehouse leaves for Amsterdam. The national elections are coming. Reports on ruling Dutch populism puzzle him. Continue reading Beneath the surface of the liberal Netherlands
Empirically grounded ethics of care
Ethics of care – with its emphasis on care instead of fairness, relationships instead of rules, conflicting responsibilities instead of competing rights, contextual and narrative thinking instead of formal and abstract thinking – originates in the empirical research of Carol Gilligan and her co-workers. Continue reading Empirically grounded ethics of care
The Netherlands, a tiny country in disarray
The Netherlands could easily act as a dissolver of parliamentary democracy.
Elections in Europe: episode 1, The Netherlands.
On March 15, 2017, Dutch voters come to the polls to elect a new parliament. Dutch care ethicist Frans Vosman gives his view on the political situation of this tiny unruly country. Continue reading The Netherlands, a tiny country in disarray
Interview Kari Greenswag
Kari Greenswag (Los Angeles, USA) has finished her PhD at the department of Philosophy of the University of Sydney (Australia) in 2016. Her doctoral thesis is called “Globalizing the Ethics of Care: Policy, Transformation, and Judgment”. The burning issues she examines in her thesis are the increasing inequality in the world, the continued marginalization of women, and more broadly the growing crisis of care. Greenswag argues that the ethics of care should be considered an important lens through which to view complex international moral and political contexts. Continue reading Interview Kari Greenswag
Interdependence revised: co-creation as new pathway
Persons who depend to a large degree on daily care from others, like residents of a nursing home, are at great risk of being hurt in their uniqueness. One important source for reducing this risk to a minimum offers nurses’ daily and concrete care. That care can preserve someone’s identity. If so, nurses’ care can be described as preservative care. Continue reading Interdependence revised: co-creation as new pathway