As the world population is rapidly aging, stakeholders must address the care of the elderly with great concern. Also, loss of dignity is often associated with aging due to dementia, mobility problems and diminished functional autonomy. However, dignity is a polysemic term that is deemed useless by some ethicists. To counter this claim, we propose four concepts to define it better and make use accurately of this notion. These are human dignity, dignity of identity, dignities of excellence and attributed dignities. Finally, we explain the importance of solicitude and human dignity in the care of the elderly. This will ensure the respect, friendship and dignity of the elderly in providing geriatric ethical care.

In this article I provide an analysis of some salient concepts of dignity. The text is a development of a work which was initiated in the year 2000 in the research programme Dignity and Older Europeans (DOE) supported by the European Union.

The programme was both theoretical and empirical. The empirical part, which was the most comprehensive, consisted of focus-group interviews with health care and social care personnel, elderly persons within health care or social care, and representatives from the general public. The interviews concerned the care of the elderly and attitudes towards the elderly. Some questions concerned how the interviewees conceived the concept of dignity and what they meant by behaviour respectful of dignity in the care of the elderly. Altogether around 1000 focus-group interviews were conducted in seven of the countries involved.

The theoretical part of the programme consisted of an analysis of the concepts of dignity based on studies of dictionary entries in six languages (English, French, Spanish, Slovakish, Polish and Swedish) as well as previous philosophical analyses of the concept.

In the theoretical part of the study there emerged four different concepts of dignity: dignity of merit, dignity of moral standing, dignity of identity and human dignity. Characterizations of these concepts have been presented and developed in several publications, for example Nordenfelt (2004) and (2009).

In the present article this analysis is taken a step further. I take as a starting point some previous studies, including Schroeder (2008), Sulmasy (2013) and my earlier ones, and propose an improvement and clarification of my earlier classification of dignities. At the same time I enlarge the analysis to concern worths in general and how these are attached to entities in general, not just human beings. The four kinds of dignities which I now propose are called: attributed dignity, dignity of inflorescence, dignity of identity and human dignity.

Dignity, usually considered an essential ethical value in healthcare, is a relatively complex, multifaceted concept. However, healthcare professionals often have only a vague idea of what it means to respect dignity when providing care, especially for persons with impaired autonomy. This article focuses on two concepts of dignity, human dignity and dignity of identity, and aims to analyse how these concepts can be applied in the care for persons with impaired autonomy and in furthering the practice of respect and protection from harm. Three vignettes were designed to illustrate typical caring situations involving patients with mild to severely impaired autonomy, including patients with cognitive impairments. In situations like these, there is a risk of the patient’s dignity being disrespected and violated. The vignettes were then analysed with respect to the two concepts of dignity to find out whether this approach can illuminate what is at stake in these situations and to provide an understanding of which measures could safeguard the dignity of these patients. The analysis showed that there are profound ethical challenges in the daily care of persons with impaired autonomy. We suggest that these two concepts of human dignity could help guide healthcare professionals to develop practical skills in person-centred, ethically grounded care, where the patient’s wishes and needs are the starting point

Är Gud annorlunda? är en lärd och tankeväckande religionsfilosofisk essä om Gudsbgreppet, Guds existens och Guds väsen. Lennart Nordenfelt granskar flera viktiga religionskritiska argument, framförda av äldre teoretiker som Bertrand Russell och Ingemar Hedenius, men också några samtida debattörer som Richard Dawkins och Daniel Dennett.

I bokens andra hälft ligger fokus på religionsteorier som avviker från de stora världsreligionernas uppfattningar. Författaren ställer sig till sist frågan: Hur kan en person med en ateistisk eller agnostisk uppfattning förhålla sig till de okonventionella teorierna?

This chapter considers the rationale for the introduction of the quality-of-life concept. Several factors have contributed to the ideological change. One of these factors is of course the technological development of medicine. Another crucial factor behind the medical discussion about quality of life was the anthropology adopted in much modern medicine. If one's life as a whole is characterized by the fact that one's most important goals are fulfilled or are in the process of becoming fulfilled, then this life is–with great probability–a life of great happiness. In public health and health care there is not only the ethical rule whereby staff shall seek to achieve the general objectives of care, health and health-related quality of life. Staff should of course show general compassion and attempt to reduce a person's suffering even if this has nothing directly to do with medicine or, in the strictest sense, nursing.

I denna bok ger Lennart Nordenfelt en bred redogörelse för Uppsalafilosofen Thorild Dahlquists (1920–2009) liv och gärning som filosof och opinionsbildare. Dahlquist hade en enastående ställning som lärare och forskarhandledare i Uppsala (delvis också i övriga Sverige) trots att han aldrig innehade någon officiell lärostol. Han tjänstgjorde som extralärare och forskarassistent på filosofiska institutionen vid Uppsala universitet i närmare 50 år. Dahlquist uppskattades mycket högt, som lärare, rådgivare och vän, av många årgångar elever liksom av kolleger vid universitetet och andra lärosäten. Dahlquists publikationer är dock fåtaliga och det är svårt att utifrån bilda sig en uppfattning om hans bidrag till svensk filosofi. Nordenfelts avsikt i denna bok är att, framför allt på basis av Dahlquists egna handskrivna texter, ge en så fyllig bild som möjligt av hans ställningstaganden i filosofiska men också politiska frågor. Dahlquist var en av de starkaste och tydligaste förkämparna för den analytiska, ”vetenskapliga”, filosofin i Sverige. I en tid då denna filosofi fått många konkurrenter på de europeiska, inklusive de svenska, universiteten kan det vara av vikt att påminna sig hur de bästa argumenten bakom den analytiska filosofin gestaltar sig. Thorild Dahlquist formulerade under sin levnad många av dessa argument.

In this paper I argue for the need of a positive, value-oriented, concept of health. I call it a holistic concept in that it involves looking upon health as having to do with the person as a whole. It is the person as a whole who is healthy or ill. Ill health is here taken to be the opposite of health. A distinctive feature of holistic health is that it is not identical with the absence of diseases or injuries. A concept of this general kind exists already in many areas in society. The most notable exponent of such a concept is the World Health Organization in its many characterizations of health and related concepts. But holistic analyses of health are advocated also by significant representatives of health care and public health and indeed by many theorists of medicine and nursing. A problem with many of these analyses, however, is that they are not carefully formulated and not presented within a strict conceptual theory. I will argue that my own proposal for a theory of health can do much of the work required. The paper has the following structure. First, I take a stand with regard to conceptual analysis and its role in determining the adequacy of definitions of health. Second, I make a brief survey of crucial characterizations of holistic health, both in policy documents and in the scholarly literature. In many of these conceptions the person’s abilities and subjective experiences come to the fore. Third, I consider the use of the term health in the standard medical encounter and in the formulation of goals of medicine. Fourth, I scrutinize some arguments concerning priorities in medicine, where a holistic concept of health plays a crucial role. Finally, I will give a brief outline of my own conceptual theory of holistic health.

This chapter presents some main interpretations of the concept of health from antiquity until today. There is an emphasis on ideas of health as a positive notion, i.e., as something over and above the absence of disease. After giving a summary of some classic intuitions about health, the chapter concentrates on contemporary attempts to analyze health in terms of well-being and ability. Starting with the famous WHO definition of health, where health is understood as complete physical, mental, social, and spiritual well-being, the chapter turns to a presentation of some scholarly analyses of health, where health is mainly analyzed in ability terms. Examples are taken mainly from the philosophical literature but also from other disciplines. It is noted that almost all definitions in the nursing and feminist literature understand health in positive terms in contrast to such naturalist definitions as present health as merely the absence of disease. The chapter further contains a discussion of health as a culture-dependent notion and makes a comparison between the concepts of human and animal health.