ABSTRACT
John Finnis contributes an analysis of conditional and unconditional intentions. He says the distinction is of no importance in practice and has been a source of confusion in the law but is worth the attention of philosophers nevertheless. The collection celebrates, first, the dedicatees’ contribution to moral philosophy and, second, the encouragement given by their example to other Roman Catholic philosophers. The collection begins with a contribution from Alasdair MacIntyre, wherein he launches an attack – not his first – on moral relativism. He argues that those who live by different moralities, ‘like humankind in general’, are never relativists. The human practice of successfully or unsuccessfully defending moral systems is only intelligible if seen as one variety of the many rational activities which aim at truth. David Braine’s ‘The human and the inhuman in medicine’ is a profoundly interesting discussion of the uses and misuses of technology.
