@article{ref1,
title="The Diane Pretty case and the occasional impotence of justification in ethics",
journal="Ethical perspectives",
year="2004",
author="Cowley, Christopher",
volume="11",
number="4",
pages="250-258",
abstract="Most discussions in ethics argue that a certain practice or act is morally justified, with any underlying theory taken as supporting a guide to general action by aiding discovery of the objectively and singularly right thing to do. I suggest that this oversimplifies the agent's own experience of the moral dilemma, and I take the recent English case of Diane Pretty's request for assisted suicide as an example. The law refused, despite the obvious sympathy many felt for her. This only appears paradoxical, I suggest, because too much is expected of the concept of justification, and because moral understanding of a particular case is too often reduced to the legalistic search for general justificatory reasons. The starting point should be, I conclude, a full awareness of the phrase &quot;there but for the grace of God go I&quot;.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1370-0049",
doi="",
url="http://dx.doi.org/"
}