Bioethics and Three Rival Versions of the Enlightenment (original) (raw)

Tristram Engelhardt's bioethics for moral strangers takes its starting point from his diagnosis of the failure of the Enlightenment project. L. B. McCullough, in "A Critical Appraisal of Engelhardt on the 'Enlightenment Project,'" attempts to undermine Engelhardt's project by refuting that starting point and offering an alternative narrative.1 McCullough identifies two distinct Enlightenment projects and argues that only one of them-the only one that Engelhard considers-fails, whereas the second offers a promising path toward a transcultural account of morality. Engelhardt's narrative in Foundations of Bioethics does lack sufficient complexity, but McCullough's criticism and alternative fail to prove finally convincing, in part because he does not satisfactorily justify his interpretation of Engelhardt and in part because he and Engelhardt, in Foundations, make similar faulty assumptions about Enlightenment distinctives.