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Concept
Bernard Gert
Summary
Bernard Gert (gɜrt; October 16, 1934 – December 24, 2011) was a moral philosopher known primarily for his work in normative ethics, as well as in medical ethics, especially pertaining to psychology.
His work has been called "among the clearest and most comprehensive on the contemporary scene", "far more detailed and more concretely worked out" and "systematic" than competing comprehensive ethical theories. Because it avoids pitfalls associated with other dominant ethical theoretical approaches (such as deontology, utilitarianism, contractarianism, and virtue ethics), Gert's moral theory "provides what many people are looking for".
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Gert studied philosophy at Cornell University. He was a professor at Dartmouth College for fifty years, from 1959 to 2009. At the time of his death in 2011, he was the Stone Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, Emeritus at Dartmouth. He also had other adjunct and visiting appointments, including the University of Edinburgh 1974-5 and being a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution. He died in 2011 in North Carolina.
A source of notoriety among his contemporaries was that his family became a family of philosophers: his two children, Joshua and Heather, both became philosophers, and both married two other philosophers.
Gert advocates the following definition of morality:
Morality is an informal public system applying to all rational persons, governing behavior that affects others, and includes what are commonly known as the moral rules, ideals, and virtues and has the lessening of evil or harm as its goal.
According to Gert, his theory counts as a natural law theory because he holds that all moral agents must be able to understand morality in order to count as moral agents. In other words, "moral judgments can only be made about those who know what kind of behavior morality prohibits, requires, discourages, encourages, and allows."
According to Gert, harm (or "evil") is the central moral concept.
Official source
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