Liberalisms Troubled Search For Equality

Download or read book Liberalism's Troubled Search for Equality written by Robert Patrick Jones and published by Robert P. Jones. This book was released on 2007 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debate surrounding the 1994 Oregon Death with Dignity Act, the first law to legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS) in America, revealed some surprising contradictions. Most prominently, egalitarian liberal philosophers Ronald Dworkin and John Rawls backed a constitutional right to PAS in direct opposition to many groups of disadvantaged citizens they theoretically supported. These groups argued that legalized PAS in the absence of universal access to health care would potentially coerce the disadvantaged to end their lives prematurely because of inadequate financial resources. In Liberalism's Troubled Search for Equality, Robert P. Jones asks why these concerns were dismissed by liberal philosophers and argues that this contradiction exposes a blind spot within liberal political theory.