The foundations of bioethics: liberty and life with moral diversity.

For the attention that Rosemarie Tong, James Lennox, Tom Beauchamp, and Robert Sade have given to The Foundations of Bioethics I am very grateful. They have provided a careful and useful exploration of many of the ambiguities of that text. In taking account of their reflections, I will indicate how the text they have examined takes a position somewhat different from what they have assumed in the account they give. In that way, I will be able to respond to the issues they have raised as well as suggest how a different interpretation of Foundations can be sustained than the one they have offered. In that the arguments in Foundations (1986,1996) are themselves somewhat lengthy, I will not recall them at length here. Instead, I will only rehearse the positions I have taken in Foundations. The result will be to indicate that, though in general 1 have sympathy with many of the concerns raised by Tong, Lennox, Beauchamp, and Sade in many respects when they are critical of Foundations, they are addressing issues other than those addressed by that work. What they take to be points for criticism of Foundations are rather issues raised regarding positions somewhat different from those advanced in Foundations. This allows me to be grateful for their reflections, while Foundations is not directly touched by their criticisms.