A theoretical account of moral revolutions, illustrated by historical
cases that include the criminalization and decriminalization of abortion
and the patient rebellion against medical paternalism.
We live in an age of moral revolutions in which the once morally
outrageous has become morally acceptable, and the formerly acceptable is
now regarded as reprehensible. Attitudes toward same-sex love, for
example, and the proper role of women, have undergone paradigm shifts
over the last several decades. In this book, Robert Baker argues that
these inversions are the product of moral revolutions that follow a
pattern similar to that of the scientific revolutions analyzed by Thomas
Kuhn in his influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
After laying out the theoretical terrain, Baker develops his argument
with examples of moral reversals from the recent and distant past. He
describes the revolution, led by the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy
Bentham, that transformed the postmortem dissection of human bodies from
punitive desecration to civic virtue; the criminalization of abortion in
the nineteenth century and its decriminalization in the twentieth
century; and the invention of a new bioethics paradigm in the 1970s and
1980s, supporting a patient-led rebellion against medical paternalism.
Finally, Baker reflects on moral relativism, arguing that the acceptance
of "absolute" moral truths denies us the diversity of moral perspectives
that permit us to alter our morality in response to changing
environments.
