Jonathan Glover

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Jonathan Glover is a British philosopher known for his studies on bioethics. He was born in 1941 and he was educated in Tonbridge School, later going on to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was a fellow and tutor in philosophy at New College, Oxford. He currently teaches ethics at King's College in the University of London.

In Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, published in 1999, Glover makes the case for Applied Ethics. He examines the various types of atrocity that were perpetrated in the 20th century and considers what sort of bulwarks there could be against them. He allows that religion has provided bulwarks, which are getting eroded. He identifies three types of bulwark. The two more dependable are sympathy and concern for human dignity. The less dependable third is Moral Identity: "I belong to a kind of person who would not do that sort of thing". This third is less dependable because notions of moral identity can themselves be warped, as was done by the Nazis. The book is tantalising in that it does not go on to consider how such bulwarks could be strengthened: whether it is feasible, for example, for national armies to teach soldiers that there are things they must not do no matter how grave the seeming provocation.

In 1977 he argued that to call a foetus a human person was to stretch the term beyond its natural boundaries.

In the The End of Faith, Sam Harris quotes Glover as saying: "Our entanglements with people close to us erode simple self-interest. Husbands, wives, lovers, parents, children and friends all blur the boundaries of selfish concern. Francis Bacon rightly said that people with children have given hostages to fortune. Inescapably, other forms of friendship and love hold us hostage too...Narrow self-interest is destabilized."

He is married to Vivette Glover a prominent neuroscientist. Jonathan is father to three and grandfather to one.

[edit] Writings

Choosing Children: The Ethical Dilemmas of Genetic Intervention (2006)
Humanity: A Moral History of The 20th Century (1999)
Women and Development: a study of capacities, edited with Martha Nussbaum (1995)
Utilitarianism and Its Critics (editor) (1990)
The Glover Report: The Ethics of New Reproductive Technologies, a report for the European Commission (1989)
I: The Philosophy and Psychology of Personal Identity (1988)
What Sort of People Should There Be? (1984)
Philosophy of Mind, (editor) (1979)
Causing Death and Saving Lives (1977)
Responsibility (1970)