4.8 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 8 February 2022
⏱️ 63 minutes
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This lecture was given on November 19, 2021 at the University of South Carolina. View Prof. Keown's slides here: https://tinyurl.com/yck2hbwu For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Dr. John Keown is the Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Christian Ethics in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics.He graduated in law from Cambridge and took a doctorate in law at Oxford, after which he was called to the Bar of England and Wales (Middle Temple). After a spell teaching medical and criminal law at the University of Leicester, he became the first holder of a lectureship in the law and ethics of medicine at Cambridge, where he was elected to a Fellowship at Queens' College and, later, a Senior Research Fellowship at Churchill College. In 2015 he was made a Doctor of Civil Law by the University of Oxford in recognition of his contribution to law and bioethics.He has published widely in the law and ethics of medicine, specializing in issues at the beginning and end of life. The second and heavily revised edition of his widely acclaimed book Euthanasia, Ethics and Public Policy: An Argument Against Legalisation was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018.His research has been cited by distinguished bodies worldwide, including the United States Supreme Court; the Law Lords; the House of Commons; the House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics, and the Australian Senate. In 2011 he testified as an expert witness for Canada in a leading case concerning the country’s laws against euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. He has served as a member of the Ethics Committee of the British Medical Association and has been regularly consulted, not least by legislators and the media, on legal and ethical aspects of medicine. Author of the first paper to demonstrate comprehensively that the American War for Independence failed to satisfy all (if any) of the criteria for a ‘just war’ (and was, therefore, an unjust revolution), he has also written a play based on one of the classic cases in law and bioethics: the trial of Dr. Leonard Arthur for the attempted murder of a newborn baby with Down's syndrome.
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0:00.0 | This talk is brought to you by the Tamistic Institute. |
0:02.8 | For more talks like this, visit us at tamistic institute.org. |
0:10.6 | So let's start with a note about the importance of nuclear deterrence to the United States |
0:19.1 | and to those other countries that have a nuclear arsenal. |
0:23.6 | I copied this just the other day from the US Defense Department website. |
0:28.6 | Nuclear deterrence is a top priority within the US military. |
0:32.6 | It's our single most important mission. |
0:36.6 | Nuclear deterrence is the bedrock of US national security. |
0:41.3 | Our nuclear deterrent underwrites all US military operations |
0:46.3 | and diplomacy across the grove. |
0:49.3 | It is the backstop and foundation of our national defence. So it couldn't be more clear that it is of paramount importance to national security and diplomacy. |
1:03.0 | As of 2021, the department still considers nuclear deterrent its highest priority mission. |
1:10.0 | And then at the end there, America's nuclear triad, |
1:13.9 | if you click on that link. So I'll obviously post the PowerPoint or hand it to Grace later for people |
1:19.3 | to have. It describes the immense American nuclear arsenal land sea and in the air. So I think that's the backdrop |
1:31.2 | against which we should analyze the ethics of nuclear deterrence. This is a very important |
1:38.8 | political and moral issue. And very topical you may have seen in the news just recently concerns about China having |
1:48.0 | developed these hypersonic missiles that could perhaps deliver a nuclear bomb. |
1:55.0 | And there is, of course, friction, potential friction between NATO and Russia around the Ukraine. |
2:01.9 | So we live in times in which this issue is the utmost importance. |
2:08.9 | So let me give you an outline of my presentation today. |
2:13.5 | I'm going to start with two basic ethical principles, |
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