Medical, Legal and Ethical Definitions of Futility

What is medical futility? How do we define it? How does uncertainty about the meaning of what is futile direct us in the practical work of patient care? And how do we reconcile these questions with legal understandings of medical futility?

In this seminar, we will attempt to address these concerns through an exploration of both conceptual and practical issues of the ethics of medical futility.

Dr. Sunit Das
Division of Neurosurgery
University of Toronto

The Owl and the Rooster: Hegel’s Transformative Political Science (Cambridge 2017)

Alan Brudner
Albert Abel Professor of Law Emeritus
University of Toronto

Since 1945, there have been two waves of Anglo-American writing on Hegel’s political thought. The first defended it against works portraying Hegel as an apologist of Prussian reaction and a theorist of totalitarian nationalism. The second presented Hegel as a civic humanist critic of liberalism in the tradition of Rousseau. The first suppressed elements of Hegel’s thought that challenge liberalism’s individualistic premises; the second downplayed Hegel’s theism. This book recovers what was lost in each wave. It restores aspects of Hegel’s political thought unsettling to liberal beliefs, yet that lead to a state more liberal than Locke’s and Kant’s, which retain authoritarian elements. It also scrutinizes Hegel’s claim to have justified theism to rational insight, hence to have made it conformable to Enlightenment standards of admissible public discourse. And it seeks to show how, for Hegel, the wholeness unique to divinity is realizable among humans without concession or compromise and what role philosophy must play in its final achievement. Lastly, we are shown what form Hegel’s philosophy can take in a world not yet prepared for his science. Here is Hegel’s political thought undistorted.

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