engleski

A Normative Justification of the Standards Involved in the Construct of Psychopathy

In this paper we address the problem of establishing the appropriate type of justification of the standards of behaviour, personality traits, and mental life that are relevant for investigating the illness status of psychopathy. Recently, Shane N. Glackin (2015), in criticising Christopher Megone’s justificatory attempt of standards relevant for psychiatric diagnosis (1998, 2000), that is inspired by Aristotelian ideas, has correctly maintained that a justification of mental illness status of certain condition should respect, within the context of a liberal democratic setting, pluralism, should not rely on the “ultimate view” of human nature. In addition, this justification should consider the perspective of those with the condition at issue. We argue that the political philosopher John Rawls (Rawls 1971) has satisfactorily and exhaustively described the reasons for respecting in public justification pluralism and avoiding appeals to ultimate views of human nature. However, we criticise George Graham’s attempt (2013) at justifying mental illness status of a condition by relying on the Rawlsian model of justification. This approach does not do justice to individual differences in the context of psychiatry. Therefore, we elaborate our type of justification, that is inspired by Gerald Gaus’s view of public justification (1996, 2011), and argue that it is compatible with a liberal democratic order, does not rely on any ultimate account of human nature, respects reasonable pluralism and offers the due respect to the perspective of those to whom it is addressed.

mental disoder ; normativism ; naturalisim ; public reason ;

nije evidentirano