Academic

Velleman on the Gift of Life

By Lawrence Solum

J. David Velleman (New York University - Department of Philosophy) has posted The Gift of Life on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

This is the first of three papers on questions of identity, existence, and nonexistence. (The other two are Love and Nonexistence and The Identity Problem.) In this paper I draw on Seana Shiffrin's work on wrongful life to argue that human life is not a gift but a predicament, and that a biological parent's obligation to help offspring cope with that predicament cannot be contracted out to others at will.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on December 25, 2009 (boomark / email).