Toward a Philosophy of Harm Reduction
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Toward a Philosophy of Harm Reduction Shannon Dea1 Accepted: 29 September 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In this paper, I offer a prolegomenon to the philosophy of harm reduction. I begin with an overview of the philosophical literature on both harm and harm reduction, and a brief summary of harm reduction scholarship outside of philosophy in order to make the case that philosophers have something to contribute to understanding harm reduction, and moreover that engagement with harm reduction would improve philosophical scholarship. I then proceed to survey and assess the nascent and still modest philosophy of harm reduction literature that has begun to emerge. I pay particular attention to two Canadian philosophers who have called for the expansion of harm reduction beyond the realm of so-called “vice” (that is, addiction, intoxicants and sex work). Finally, I sketch some of the most interesting and important philosophical issues that I think the philosophy of harm reduction must grapple with going forward. Keywords Philosophy · Harm reduction · Harm · Policy
Where are the Philosophers of Harm Reduction? Harm Reduction [HR] is one of the most important and controversial innovations in health and social services in the last century, and yet philosophers have remained mostly silent about it. A Web of Science search for indexed works on the topic of HR produces over 3000 hits. By contrast, Philosopher’s Index and PhilPapers in combination generate only a few dozen. The overwhelming majority of these were not written by professional philosophers.1 This inattention to the harm reduction by mainstream philosophers is especially astonishing given the broad range of philosophical research. From art to quantum mechanics, from zombies to feminism, philosophers write about just about everything else. 1 That is, scholars with Ph.Ds in philosophy or cognate disciplines, who, irrespective of their departmental homes, disseminate their work in philosophy journals and at philosophy conferences.
* Shannon Dea [email protected] 1
Department of Philosophy, University of Regina, Regina, Canada
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Health Care Analysis
Indeed, one of the topics philosophers write a great deal about is harm, which is a central concept in philosophy. There is a well-established literature on the metaphysics of harm, in which philosophers debate such matters as whether harm is a state or an event [24, 57], and of course there is much moral theorizing about harm. Gert argues that harms are more important in ethics and in life than benefits or goods; he claims that all rational beings are deeply motivated to fear and avoid five broad classes of harm: death, pain, disability, loss of freedom, and loss of pleasure [20]. Benatar adds to the list of alleged harms the harm of being born [4]. Other philosophers likewise regard potential people as subject to harm [6, 9, 63, 64], while still others argue that dead people may likewise be harmed [21, 45, 50, 55]. There has bee
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