The Philosophy of the Abortion Debate | Prof. Angela Knobel

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2022

⏱️ 64 minutes

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Summary

Prof. Knobel's presentation slides can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/2p8as75m This lecture was given on March 24, 2022 at Texas State University. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Angela Knobel is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas. She received her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 2004. From 2004 to 2020, she taught philosophy at her alma mater, the Catholic University of America. Her work focuses primarily on Aquinas’ theory of infused virtue, virtue ethics and applied ethics. Her book Aquinas and the Infused Moral Virtues is forthcoming from the University of Notre Dame Press.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This talk is brought to you by the Tamistic Institute. For more talks like this, visit us at
0:06.0	tamistic institute.org. I'll tell you a little bit about how this talk originated. I have another
0:18.1	TTI talk called Can a Feminist Be Pro Life?
0:22.6	And after giving that talk a few times, I realized that really for the discussion to be productive,
0:27.6	we actually really ought to be starting further back.
0:30.9	And just talking about the issues that are at stake in abortion itself.
0:41.8	And so I'm sure many of you have had discussions about abortion and having had them, regardless of your viewpoint, I think you probably know what a
0:49.4	difficult topic it is, especially if you're talking with someone who disagrees with you.
0:57.0	And given the strength of the emotions that come into play in the depth of the disagreement, it can seem, and has seemed to many,
1:03.9	that any rational discussion of abortion is just impossible, right? That we just have a fundamental,
1:10.1	intractable disagreement. And I don't know if
1:13.6	that's true or not. But I do think that philosophy is very helpful when it comes to talking about
1:20.8	things like abortion, because especially when emotions run high, it can help to get clear on what the questions are.
1:30.3	And philosophers on both sides of abortion, of the abortion debate, however vehemently they
1:36.3	disagree about the answers, are at least in agreement about the questions that are at stake.
1:42.3	I think that's really interesting, right? There actually is a lot of agreement about the questions that are at stake. I think that's really interesting, right?
1:44.6	There actually is a lot of an agreement about what questions we would have to solve.
1:51.2	And so my goal tonight is not to change anyone's mind about abortion, but to just explain
1:56.9	what, philosophically speaking, is disputed when people dispute the morality of abortion,
2:04.0	and to explain why different philosophers give very different answers to those questions.
2:10.0	And I think that's important knowledge to have.
2:12.8	It's not just that such knowledge helps one better understand one's own view,
	...

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