In this chapter I argue that self-defense is permissible against an unjust attack, but that any lethal harm must be, in Aquinas’s phrase, praeter intentionem, outside the intention of the defender. I argue that public authorities must also not intend death, but that because of the nature of the political task, public officials are capacitated to use force to a greater extent and in greater measure than are private individuals.

Human enhancement aims to make people ‘better than well’ by interventions in the human genome. I canvas four moral arguments against this – from (1) autonomy, (2) dignity, (3) inequality and (4) mastery – concluding that none is probative. Argument (1) overestimates the cost to autonomy of genetic technologies and underestimates the degree to which ordinary moral training is heteronomous. Argument (2) drives too sharp a wedge between the natural and the artefactual and thereby ignores the extent to which we already treat the body as a site of ameliorative intervention. Argument (3) invokes the spectre of a ‘genetic underclass’ that is ‘gene-poor’, but I argue that this can be guarded against by education and government policy. Argument (4) tends to rest on persuasive description and on consequentialist claims that are empirically weakly supported. I end by mounting my own, formal, argument against human enhancement. This holds that it collapses into transhumanism, this being an ultimately incoherent project, one that abandons the idea of human nature and with it any criteria for determining what it is to be ‘better than well’. Finally, I corroborate this argument from incoherence by unpacking a paper by Groll and Lott.

I begin by narrowing down the realm of human ‘production’, the requirements it places on our faculties and why humans are essentially productive animals. I then move on to three philosophical accounts of human productivity: those of Aristotle, Marx and Gwen Bradford respectively. Aristotle’s account is marred by class prejudice, Marx’s by a hyper-focus on the conditions rather than the results of ‘labour’, and Bradford’s by an over-formal analysis of production that has too little to say about products. By contrast, I propose a comprehensive account that has substantive things to say about producers, processes of production and products. My account distinguishes two productive ‘poles’, namely: (1) those powers engaged in the producer (productive ‘inputs’); and (2) those powers engaged in the consumer (productive ‘outputs’). Production is good overall to the degree it protects and promotes the perfection of both producers’ and consumers’ powers. I round off Chapter 9 by tackling the ‘anti-work’ critique, arguing that it fails to show work as such is a bad. Indeed, production remains perfective of humans in virtue of their productive nature.

The current practice of disability studies largely groups itself according to various “models” of disability, such as the “medical,” “social,” “identity,” and “minority.” While insightful, each is incomplete: some focus on the medical component of disability, others on its social implications, and yet others on its personal significance. The present chapter proposes an account of disability grounded in Thomistic anthropology. In this system, an individual is a human being insofar as he or she possesses a particular kind of essence or nature. Given this nature, a person has certain natural abilities that, if certain other requisite conditions are met, allow the person to perform typical operations. Disability – and the closely related term “impairment” – concerns inabilities to perform given activities and various consequent inequities that may arise. The “Thomistic model” proposed aims to incorporate insights from prevailing models of disability and, thus, to enrich contemporary disability studies through the application of Thomistic philosophy.

St. Thomas and Thomists hold that the ground for having basic rights (including the right to life) is being a person. And a person can be defined as: an individual substance of a rational nature. This chapter sets out and defends this position, including its application to the beginning of human life, issues at the end of life, and capital punishment and killing in war. I argue that St. Thomas’s principles for determining when human life begins are correct, and that when applied to the embryological facts known today, show that human beings begin at fertilization. I set out St. Thomas’s position on capital punishment (where he holds that a human being can lose his inherent dignity) and discuss both criticisms and defenses of this position by later Thomists, indicating the centrality for this issue of the notions of dignity, the common good, and punishment.

Introducing the book’s third essential part on ‘property’, this chapter sets out Alter-Native Constitutionalism’s jurisprudential framework for constitutional and statutory interpretation informed by vernacular law and oriented towards the everyday, ordinary South African as the ‘reasonable’ person in law. It draws on ethnography and sociolinguistics, problematising the continuities in how democratic South African law treats ‘customary law’ consistently with colonial-apartheid. A SiSwati conversation with Make Ng’Gogo frames the chapter’s exploration of vernacular law’s indigenous ethical orientation, embodied in Ubu-Ntu, as it applies to guiding not only societal organisation but also land rights – emphasising human-centred values over individualistic property rights. By first examining indigenous normative relationships with land then translating their application into critique of Constitutional Court interpretive practices, the chapter advances an Alter-Native framework that represents a paradigm shift in constitutional interpretation, privileging Ubu-Ntu’s holistic world-sense. This framework advocates reinterpretation of dignity and rights under the Constitution, moving beyond Western legal principles toward a jurisprudence grounded in indigenous natural law and relational ethics. The chapter argues for South Africa’s Constitutional Court to adopt this indigenously transformative constitutional approach to interpretation, treating vernacular law as equally legitimate to European ‘common law’ and thereby making truly transformative socioeconomic outcomes more possible.

Chapter 8 explains why there has been so much enthusiasm for integrating AI into multiple dimensions of the hiring process, from resume screening to interview bots, despite these endeavors being marred by fundamental flaws, including, in some cases, integrating bias, unreliable pseudoscientific methods, and dehumanizing interactions. In addition to analyzing the incentives that have motivated companies to use flawed, innovative tools, we provide a road map for how to develop and use responsible AI upgrades in the hiring process.

This chapter discusses the idea that being ‘in transition’ towards a juridical condition impacts or shapes our duties and rights from a Kantian perspective. It analyses the implications of treating juridical duties as if they were duties of virtue, in the absence of or under imperfect juridical institutions. It argues that this introduces a problem for Kant’s account of ethical and legal obligations because respecting the dignity of those to whom a juridical duty is owed requires treating their claims as a matter of right instead of ethics. It also criticizes the way in which Kant’s theory of acquired rights in the state of nature has been reinterpreted as a theory of ‘provisionality’. Recent Kant scholarship has highlighted the ability of Kant’s legal-political theory to guide us through messy political developments in the manner of non-ideal theory. The chapter will object that the way Kant connects provisional rights and permissive laws has little to do with non-ideal theory, and follows instead from Kant’s apagogical argument for acquired rights in the state of nature.

How can ethics consultants weigh and balance patients’ physical and psychological needs when they are appear mutually exclusive? How might a disability-aware lens impact the way we address risk? A disconcerting clinical ethics consultation regarding "Jimmy" prompts reflection of these questions and our own complicity with ableism as consultants and providers. Jimmy, who was previously incarcerated, houseless, and facing mental status changes, spent months fighting four-point restraints to maintain a cervical collar meant to prevent disability and death.

The predominant paradigm of acute medical care has not integrated trauma-informed or disability aware lenses despite trauma prevalence among patients and the presence of disability for 25% of adults. The lack of these perspectives has hazardous ramifications in clinical decision making and beside care. The prevailing norm prioritizes physical and functional outcomes over identity and emotional well-being. There is a false assumption that people with disabilities have a worse quality of life than people without disability. This disability illiteracy undermines patient autonomy and the disability community. Medical professionals’ personal experience and relationship to disability can perhaps shift this perspective to a more inclusive and nuanced approach to ethical decision making A broader transformative approach to ethics consultation is needed to avoid complicity in moral harms.

Humanisation of healthcare cannot be separated from dignity in a patient-centered care model. The International Research Project for the Humanization of Intensive Care Units (Proyecto HU-CI) was initiated in 2014 with the aim of changing the current paradigm of intensive care towards a more human-centered care model. Patients, families, and professionals (everyday stakeholders) were asked to describe their ideal intensive care unit (ICU). Using their opinions, eight areas of interest to improve the culture of ICUs and change the reality of care delivery throughout the world were highlighted. These include: an open-door visitation policy, enhanced communication, a clear focus on patient well-being, presence and participation of relatives in care delivery, care for healthcare professions, recognition and prevention of the post-intensive care syndrome, humanized infrastructure, and comprehensive end-of-life care.

We return to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to emphasize the core feature of human rights: Human rights are defined, envisaged, and enshrined in international law as a universal and inalienable rights. Systematic and scientific academic research is essential for understanding where and why human rights are violated, and to be able to predict and to prevent abuse in the future. The growing body of empirical research of the academic community provides an increasingly detailed and expansive knowledge base grounded in real-world observations, shedding light on why so many individuals are denied their human rights and, consequently, their ability to live in dignity. In many places, public debates and political decisions become more polarized, playing out different groups against each other, and attempting to deny some people their basic rights and their humanity

Regulation of the beginning and end of life raises myriad medical, legal, philosophical, moral and ethical issues. It also implicates a range of rights, most notably the right to life, freedom from ill-treatment and the right to private life. This chapter considers the ways in which State regulation of abortion, withdrawal/refusal of medical treatment and assisted dying engage rights protected by the ECHR. In particular, this chapter examines when life begins for the purposes of Article 2 (right to life) and whether the right to life precludes or, indeed, requires that States enable access to assistance in dying. Domestic law is considered, demonstrating the ways in which the margin of appreciation operates to confer a significant degree of latitude on States to regulate the beginning and end of life.