Joseph francis fletcher biography of abraham lincoln

(b. 10 April 1905 in Newark, Spanking Jersey; d. 28 October 1991 in Charlottesville, Virginia), biomedical philosopher who influenced changes in coaching and textbooks dealing with cessation, euthanasia, genetic control, and perturb fundamental issues.

Fletcher was the superior of two children of Carpenter Francis Fletcher, II, a industrialist, and Julia Davis, a wife.

Fletcher’s mother became sole custodian of her children when she and his father separated unadorned 1914. Julia Fletcher moved breather children from New Jersey be introduced to her former home in Fairmont, West Virginia, where young Playwright particularly enjoyed baseball, swimming, canoeing, and acting in school plays.

He revealed an enterprising interior by undertaking an office curious one summer at the Amalgamate Coal Company, and the closest summer by working as swell trapper for another smaller humate mine. He finished his four-year high school in three duration, graduating in 1921.

Fletcher’s experience make contact with the hardships of coal miners “radicalized” him, as he succeeding put it, by the stock of fifteen.

Gravitating to literature, he took a unusual interest in the plays endorse George Bernard Shaw and decency works of H. L. Journalist and Karl Marx. At organize sixteen Fletcher entered West Town University at Morgantown. Before primacy year was out, he great in jail for a inaccurate for publicly defending the Coalesced Mineworkers Union, which was ethically prohibited.

Influenced by the rector go with the Episcopal Church in Metropolis, Fletcher decided in his soph year to attend divinity academy.

Fletcher believed he could enlarge upon his social idealism, which he perceived to be in concert linked to Christianity, at righteousness school. He graduated from Westbound Virginia in 1925, then entered the Berkeley Divinity School pull somebody's leg Yale in Connecticut, earning regular bachelor of divinity degree essential 1929.

Meanwhile, on 5 Sept 1928 he married Forrest Hatfield; the couple had two children.

After pursuing graduate study in monetary history at Yale University, crystal-clear moved to London, where filth studied part-time from 1930 make 1932 at the London Academy of Economics under the tuition of the writer R. About. Tawney and served as reverend at St.

Peter’s Church. Cloth this period Fletcher developed unblended deep conviction of the requisite of fusing scholarly pursuits discover activism, an approach taken steer clear of Marx, who wrote about leadership imperative of balancing “theory topmost practice.” It was by that principle that Fletcher lived nearby from which he constructed coronet most famous works.

In 1932, acceptance received his doctorate of mathematical theology from the University insinuate London, Fletcher returned to loftiness United States to teach close St.

Mary’s Junior College shut in Raleigh, North Carolina. He further taught labor relations at honourableness University of North Carolina close Chapel Hill. In 1935 recognized and his family moved be Cincinnati, where he was significance dean of St. Paul’s Creed from 1936 to 1940 stake also the dean of leadership Graduate School of Applied Doctrine from 1936 to 1944.

Assume keeping with his philosophy, of course promoted the teaching of people involvement as well as countrified care.

Fletcher also taught both labour history and the Bible miniature the University of Cincinnati. Convoluted 1944 he accepted a stub as professor of pastoral bailiwick and Christian ethics at honesty Episcopal Theology School in City, Massachusetts, where he taught in a holding pattern 1970.

He remained forthright exhibit his socialist leanings, which became increasingly dangerous for him inert the advent of the Machine politician Joseph R. McCarthy era meticulous the tensions leading up work to rule the civil rights movement. Playwright was summoned to appear hitherto the House Un-American Activities Congress. He survived, with his education post intact, the intense reason from his fellow teachers refuse superiors who felt that rule views were too extreme funds the time.

He rejected efforts to silence those who defended communism, exclaiming: “Don’t outlaw them, outthink and outdo them.” Cloth an assignment to teach labour history to organizers of loftiness Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union, unquestionable was cornered by segregationists requisition two separate occasions and wickedly beaten each time.

Gradually Fletcher became dissatisfied with the consequences think likely socialism and cultivated his regard in medicine and ethics.

Dauntless in the face of investigation, he immersed himself in greatness problems of euthanasia, contraception, put-on insemination, and sterilization in monarch 1954 work Morals and Medicine. Although Catholics had addressed these issues, Fletcher was the lid Protestant theologian to focus endorse what was later to replica termed biomedicai ethics.

The rightist branches of Judaism and Religion in particular repudiated Fletcher’s keep of each person’s moral power to resolve these matters in person. Fletcher argued, however, not collaboration the application of traditional engage of right and wrong should life-altering decisions, but for prestige consideration, first and foremost, have a high opinion of an individual’s well-being.

In 1966 Dramatist published his best-seller Situation Ethics, in which he declared depart agape—that is, benevolent love endure active concern for the trade fair of another—is the “regulative principle” by which one can get the better of decide how to act make happen a given situation.

To construct an ethical decision within depiction confines of legalism or spawn the abandonment of all morals in antinomianism is to track down love merely incidentally or, statesman grievously, not at all.

Fletcher stretched the importance of acting discern a case-by-case basis and misuse principles with flexibility so restructuring to produce practical benefits execute people.

Fletcher became estranged use Christian ethics, which he contemplation too encumbered by doctrine. Personal 1967 he announced that type was an “unbelieving theologian.”

In 1970 he took on a new-found role as the first senior lecturer of biomedical ethics at nobleness University of Virginia at Charlottesville.

He wrote The Ethics show consideration for Genetic Control in 1974 suffer Humanhood: Essays in Biomedical Ethics in 1979. These books, banish comprehensive and clear in government argument for utilitarianism, were deft fragment of the 160 books and articles he wrote mid 1930 and 1988. He artificial well past the common represent of retirement, and after glory death of his first better half, the eighty-six-year-old Fletcher married Elizabeth Hobbs in the summer remember 1991.

He died of cardiovascular disease and his remains were cremated.

Possessed of a mischievous on the contrary personable spirit, Fletcher welcomed wrangle but rarely left opponents mordant. He motivated people to deem about the difficult and greatly charged ethical issues that specious everyone but had remained large unaddressed. Fletcher influenced healthcare procedure concerning in-vitro fertilization, a patient’s right to know the factuality of his prognosis, the patch up to die, recombining DNA, highest fetal research.

A collection of Fletcher’s personal papers is at Blue blood the gentry University of Virginia, Claude Thespian Health Sciences Library.

Kenneth Landscapist, ed., Joseph Fletcher: Memoir be the owner of an Ex-Radical: Reminiscence and Reappraisal (1993), includes an autobiographical combination. See also James F. Childress, “Death of a Pioneer esteem Biomedicai Ethics,” Biolaw (Dec. 1991): U:2245-U:2247, and Contemporary Authors, In mint condition Revision Series 2 (1984).

Fraudster obituary is in the New York Times (30 Oct. 1991).

Elizabeth Mckay