Defining the beginning and end of life : readings on personal identity and bioethics / edited by John P. Lizza.

Baltimore, Md : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

xvii, 576 pages ; 24 cm

Selections from the Phaedo / Plato -- Selections from Meditations on first philosophy / Rene Descartes -- Selections from Personal identity : the dualist theory / Richard Swinburne -- Selections from Summa theologiae / St. Thomas Aquinas -- Terra es animata : on having a life / Gilbert Meilaender -- An argument for animalism / Eric T. Olson -- Selection from An essay concerning human understanding / John Locke -- The unimportance of identity / Derek Parfit -- Persons / P.F. Strawson -- Real selves : persons as a substantial kind / E.J. Lowe -- The ontological status of persons / Lynne Rudder Baker -- Selections from part III of Mind, self, and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist / G.H. Mead -- The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man / Clifford Geertz -- Selection from Personal being / Rom Harre -- Selection from Dementia reconsidered : the person comes first / Tom Kitwood -- Freedom of the will and the concept of a person / Harry G. Frankfurt -- Jewish perspectives on abortion / Aaron L. Mackler -- When do people begin? / Germain Grisez -- Thomism and the beginning of personhood / Jason T. Eberl -- Individuals, humans, and persons : the issue of moral status / Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer -- On the moral and legal status of abortion / Mary Anne Warren -- Ethics and embryos / Nicola Poplawski and Grant Gillett -- When does a person begin? / Lynne Rudder Baker -- The biophilosophical basis of whole-brain death / James L. Bernat -- The definition of death in Jewish law / Fred Rosner -- An unfounded diagnosis : revisiting the medical and metaphysical justifications of "brain death" / David A. Jones -- St. Thomas on the beginning and ending of human life / William A. Wallace -- The impending collapse of the whole-brain definition of death / Robert M. Veatch -- Against the stream : comments on the definition and redefinition of death / Hans Jonas -- Brain death and personal identity / Michael B. Green and Daniel Wikler -- On the definition of death / John P. Lizza -- Selection from Controversies in the determination of death : a white paper / President's Council on Bioethics.

Includes bibliographical references and index.