1       Introduction: Treating Bioethics        1
2       Religion, Superstition, and Medicine    16
3       Patient Multiplicity, Medical Rituals, and Good Dying: Some
Wittgensteinian Observations    33
4       "Unlike Calculating Rules"? Clinical Judgment, Formalized Decision
Making, and Wittgenstein        48
5       Wittgenstein's Startling Claim: Consciousness and the Persistent
Vegetative State        70
6       Attitudes, Souls, and Persons: Children with Severe Neurological
Impairment      89
7       Why Wittgenstein's Philosophy Should Not Prevent Us from Taking
Animals Seriously       103
8       Injustice and Animals   118
9       Bioethics, Wisdom, and Expertise        149
10      Wittgensteinian Lessons on Moral Particularism  161
11      Wittgenstein: Personality, Philosophy, Ethics   181


Synopsis
Slow Cures and Bad Philosophers uses insights from the philosophy of Ludwig
Wittgenstein to rethink bioethics. Although Wittgenstein produced little
formal writing on ethics, this volume shows that, in fact, ethical issues
permeate the entirety of his work. The scholars whom Carl Elliott has
assembled in this volume pay particular attention to Wittgenstein's concern
with the thick context of moral problems, his suspicion of theory, and his
belief in description as the real aim of philosophy. Their aim is not to
examine Wittgenstein's personal moral convictions but rather to explore how
a deep engagement with his work can illuminate some of the problems that
medicine and biological science present.
As Elliott explains in his introduction, Wittgenstein's philosophy runs
against the grain of most contemporary bioethics scholarship, which all too
often ignores the context in which moral problems are situated and pays
little attention to narrative, ethnography, and clinical case studies in
rendering bioethical judgements. Such anonymous, impersonal, rule-writing
directives in which health care workers are advised how to behave is what
this volume intends to counteract. Instead, contributors stress the value of
focusing on the concrete particulars of moral problems and write in the
spirit of Wittgenstein's belief that philosophy should be useful. Specific
topics include the concept of "good dying," the nature of clinical decision
making, the treatment of neurologically damaged patients, the moral
treatment of animals, and the challenges of moral particularism.

(All of above from Barnes and Noble web site)

Russell T. Daley

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Shelley Tremain [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Friday, April 26, 2002 1:46 AM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: Slow Cures and Bad Philosophers
>
> Ann (or anyone else who has this book),
>
> I would appreciate it if you posted the Table of Contents for the book.
> Thanks in advance,
> Shelley Tremain
>
> > Garry, Ann wrote:
> >
> > Back to the question about methodology:
> >
> > I just found this book-on, as one would suspect, Wittgenstinian
> > methods in bioethics.  I've looked only briefly at this anthology, but
> > it looks interesting.
> >
> > Slow Cures and Bad Philosophers, ed. Carl Elliott. Duke U.P. 2001.
> >
> > Ann Garry