Review: Kamm, almost over: Aging, Dying, Death

Abstract

Human mortality has been one of F.M. Kamm’s central concerns throughout her distinguished career in moral philosophy. Ever since her monumental, two-volume Morality, Mortality (1993, 1996), Kamm’s books have addressed an array of questions concerning the interpersonal morality of killing, letting die, and saving lives, with the wider aim of articulating a non-consequentialist approach to such questions. Along the way, she has become the chief exemplar of a case-heavy method of reflective equilibrium wherein moral principles are tested against cases and assessed in light of our intuitions concerning those cases, generating new (usually more nuanced or qualified) principles to be tested against ever more subtle cases, etc.