Jonathan Glover

Jonathan Glover (born 1941) is a British philosopher known for his studies on ethics. He currently teaches ethics at King's College London. Glover is a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution in the United States.

Glover was educated at Tonbridge School, later going on to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was a fellow and tutor in philosophy at New College, Oxford.

Glover's book Causing Death and Saving Lives, first published in 1977, addresses practical moral questions about life and death decisions in the areas of abortion, infanticide, suicide, euthanasia, choices between people, capital punishment, and war. His approach is broadly consequentialist, though he gives significant weight to questions of individual autonomy, the Kantian notion that we ought to treat other people as ends in themselves rather than merely as means. He criticises the idea that mere consciousness or life itself are intrinsically valuable: these states matter, he argues, because they are pre-requisites for other things that are valuable and make for a life worth living. There is, then, no absolute sanctity of human life. He criticises the principle of double effect and the acts and omissions doctrine, the notion that there is a huge moral difference between killing someone and intentionally letting them die. In his discussion of real cases of moral decisions about killing he draws on insights from history and literature as well as philosophy. Throughout, the emphasis is on the consequences of moral choices for those affected, rather than on abstract principles applied impersonally.

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