Social Philosophy Today

The aim of this paper is to outline a novel rationale for the negligence standard of liability in tort law. On this view, the negligence standard has a causal character which is seldom recognized, but which was recognized by Aristotle, who first formulated the standard. The proposed rationale is extracted from its Aristotelian roots and presented as an alternative to the two others which have been discussed in recent years, both of which are widely regarded as flawed.

The rapid spread of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and its causative agent, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), has posed people with difficult ethical questions. Philosophically, one of the most interesting problems is whether or not there is a right to remain in ignorance about one's own HIV infection.Being informed about a positive HIV test result has caused many people anguish and led some to suicidal thoughts. On these grounds a prima facte right not to know could be constructed. Paternalistic arguments have been put forward to refute the alleged right, but these arguments are invalid, as is shown in the paper.However, by a utilitarian argument it can be shown that the prima facie right to remain in ignorance is overridden by other people's rights not to be infected. With certain qualifications, even a non-voluntary testing programme for HIV is justifiable.

Philosophers sometimes think that philosophical ethics can be utilized in solving practical queries such as the abortion issue. They are most probably right, in principle. But they often tend to over-emphasize the importance of moral theories at the expense of the obvious diversity of ethics in practice. Practical or applied ethics cannot be reduced to the mere application of ready-made theories to practical problems.In the abortion issue the theoretical attitude leads many philosophers to think that there is one and only one right solution in the matter. In the present paper it is argued that there are, in fact, many 'right-consistent and intuitive-solutions for this and for any other practical issue. Whether or not a solution will, ultimately, be the right one for us, is a matter of the intuitive acceptability of the rules the solution implies for our practical life as a whole.