Gerald Dworkin (born 1937) is a professor of moral, political and legal philosophy. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The inst ...

. In 2016–17, he was Brady Distinguished Visiting Professor of Ethics and Civic Life at Northwestern University. He has written for the '' Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''.

Early life and education

Dworkin earned his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1966.

Career

Dworkin has also taught at Harvard,

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

, and the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. He has been a visiting Fellow of

All Souls College All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of t ...

(Oxford), the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies an ...

, and the

Hastings Center The Hastings Center is an independent, nonpartisan bioethics research institute and think tank based in Garrison, New York. It was instrumental in establishing the field of bioethics and is among the most prestigious bioethics and health policy i ...

. He was the Centennial Visiting Professor at the

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a public university, public research university located in London, England and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidn ...

. In 2006, he was a Distinguished Visitor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he gave a series of lectures on paternalism. Dworkin's main areas of research include the nature and justification of autonomy, paternalism in the criminal law, and the issue of which acts may legitimately be criminalized by the state. Most recently he has been working on the ethics of lying and deception. An article in ''The New York Times'' "Are these 10 Lies Justified?" which listed lies he thought permissible and asked for readers to respond if they disagreed received more than 10,000 responses. His most recent publication is on whether, and how, deception interferes with autonomy. It will appear in the Routledge Handbook on Autonomy (ed. Ben Colburn) One of Dworkin's books is a defense of

physician-assisted suicide Assisted suicide is suicide undertaken with the aid of another person. The term usually refers to physician-assisted suicide (PAS), which is suicide that is assisted by a physician or other healthcare provider. Once it is determined that the p ...

. In it, he argues that doctors who approve of withdrawing patients from life support at their request, or administering pain-relief medication that is foreseen to kill the patient, or who approve of terminal sedation, are inconsistent if they condemn physician-assisted suicide. This book has been published in

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

- and

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

-language editions. In 1976 Dworkin published, along with N.J. Block, an anthology critical of IQ research titled ''The IQ Controversy: Critical Readings.'' He has published two e-books ''Philosophy: A Commonplace Book'', Vols. 1 and 2, which are collections of aphorisms, jokes, witty comments on philosophy, and other interesting quotations.

References

1937 births University of California, Davis faculty Harvard University Department of Philosophy faculty Harvard University faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty University of Illinois Chicago faculty Living people Distinguished professors of philosophy {{US-philosopher-stub