Required reading: a piece by Ian Parker, August 2 New Yorker, "The Gift," about Zell Kravinsky, who has given away his entire self made fortune, 45 million, and also a kidney to a stranger. He's quoted as saying, "I lay there in the hospital and I thought about all my other organs. I feel that I can do more; I burn to do more. It's a heady feeling." The final words quoted in the article: "It's not enlightenment. It's the start of a moral life."
I think that moral philosophy has to have something to say to Kravinsky, or it is just fooling around. I mean, I think that until moral philosophy grapples seriously with the possibility of Kravinsky, with the possibility that the moral life is a life of pretty much total self sacrifice, and that there isn't a plan B worth talking about, it isn't really a serious discipline.
Posted by shea0017 at August 5, 2004 11:11 AM