Abstract
In Alison Lurie’s The War Between the Tates ([18], p. 271), a character says, “I was less morally ambitious than you; I didn’t aspire to do good. I only wanted not to be harm.” We commonly distinguish between doing good and not doing harm, the latter appearing to constitute the moral minimum in human interactions. Philosophers sometimes use ‘beneficence’ to refer to doing and ‘nonmaleficence’ to refer to not doing harm. Although not fully adequate, these terms are useful for shorthand purposes. I shall also distinguish ‘beneficence’ and ‘benevolence’, using ‘benevolence’ to refer to the will or disposition to benefit others, and ‘beneficence’ to refer to the act of benefitting others.
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© 1982 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Childress, J.F. (1982). Beneficence and Health Policy: Reduction of Risk-Taking. In: Shelp, E.E. (eds) Beneficence and Health Care. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7769-3_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7769-3_10
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