By Mildred Z. Solomon,

Upon hearing the news of Dan Callahan’s death, one word kept appearing in my thoughts: gratitude. Gratitude for his prodigious thinking, his commitment to listening across difference, his use of accessible language to illuminate complexity, his more than 47 books that advanced the parameters of debate, and his generous mentorship of generations of scholars. Over nearly five decades, Callahan advanced new foundational ideas, offered practical wisdom, influenced international health and science policy, stimulated the creation of the interdisciplinary field of bioethics, and supported its growth across the United States and the world. Perhaps most importantly in this era of polarization and hyper-individualism, he called on us to work together to discuss vying notions of the good and build solutions to promote human flourishing.

Callahan was motivated  by a fundamental wariness of human power. He was deeply struck by the human proclivity for self-deception, especially concerning the potential for irresponsible use of such power in the life sciences and in the realm of biomedical technology. His work demonstrates a deep sense of how fundamental moral sensibility is to our humanness and how vulnerable and naked we would be—and are—in a society of merely self-interested stakeholders engaged in merely instrumental cooperation.

…continue reading ‘Daniel Callahan: In Memoriam’

Image: By Chip Porter – www.thehastingscenter.org, CC BY 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25392960

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