About

Dan Brudney is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago and also serves as the Assistant Director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. He is an Assistant Faculty member in the Divinity School. His academic background includes a PhD from Harvard University obtained in 1985, and a BA from Harvard in 1976. Since 1985, he has been teaching at the University of Chicago. His research interests encompass political philosophy, bioethics, philosophy and literature, and philosophy of religion. He writes and teaches in these areas, contributing to discussions on moral and political issues, medical ethics, and the intersection of literature and philosophy.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Philosophy
• Nursing
• Medicine
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Economics
• Positive economics
• Virology
• Epistemology
• Law and economics

Selected publications

• Substituted Judgment and The Paradigm Case Mistake

  The American Journal of Bioethics · 2025-02-17 · 9 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Substituted judgment is widely used at the bedside, but the moral value that underpins its use needs examination. I argue that this value is the value of leading an authentic life. I then argue that an authentic life has multiple axes and that patients (like all human beings) vary widely in how they score on these axes. This entails that the moral weight of the value of authenticity in bedside decision-making also varies widely. And that means that, at the bedside, substituted judgment should not be seen as a moral trump. Put differently, when a surrogate must make a bedside decision, the answer to the "What would the patient choose?" question should not be morally decisive for that decision. The answer to that question should be a part, but only a part, of a more complex decision-making process.

  PublisherDOI

• The <i>Theory</i> Rawls, the 1844 Marx, and the Market

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  In his work of 1844, Marx claims that human beings realize their nature through the joint activity of labor in a true communist society. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls calls the joint maintenance of a just society “the preeminent form of human flourishing. He says that “persons best express their nature” by maintaining just institutions. For both writers, what makes these joint activities central to the human good is the relationships they maintain among individuals who do not know of one another’s existence, relationships among distant unknowns. A necessary condition for these relationships to obtain is, in each case, a particular social ethos. If a standard left-wing critique of the market is cogent, and if the well-ordered society of Theory involves a widespread market, then the several elements in the desired social ethos of justice as fairness might be in tension with one another, might not be capable of being satisfied simultaneously. Rawls’s desired relationships might not obtain.

  PublisherDOI

• On Productivity Holism

  European Journal of Philosophy · 2022-03-28

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract NPR runs a program about entrepreneurs called, “How I Built This.” By contrast, the song “Solidarity Forever” says, “It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade/Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid.” In this article, I examine two ways to conceptualize the production of goods and services: individualistically or holistically. At issue is whose activity has significant social value. Following a thought from Elizabeth Anderson, I develop and defend a holist view of productivity. I argue that the central issue is normative: how is it best to regard the social phenomenon of extensive joint production and provision of goods and services? I begin by distinguishing different cases of joint productivity in order to focus on large scale activities. I then argue that the concept of marginal contribution does not provide a basis for viewing productivity individualistically. Overall, non‐normative arguments underdetermine the best way to regard our productive activities. I go on to present normative arguments in favor of regarding our joint productive activities holistically. I end by distinguishing four species of productivity holism and by noting issues for further research.

  PublisherDOI

• Decisional Capacity: Two Philosophical Issues

  The Journal of Clinical Ethics · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Epistemology
  • Philosophy

  In this article I note two ways in which current assessments of patients' decisional capacity rest on disputable philosophical assumptions. The first disputable assumption concerns the nature of practical reason; the second concerns patients' articulation of their preferences. I do not argue that clinical practice should be changed. Still, relying on disputable philosophical assumptions can distort the description of such practice. It would be good for philosophers and philosophically oriented clinicians to work with a philosophically accurate account of clinical practice. Moreover, every so often more accurate description might make for better practice.

  PublisherDOI

• Nostromo and Negative Longing

  Philosophy and literature · 2022-10-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Nostromo and Negative Longing Daniel Brudney What, as the upshot of this exhibition of human motive and attitude, do we feel Conrad himself to endorse? What are his positives? It is easier to say what he rejects or criticizes. —F. R. Leavis, The Great Tradition1 I Writers, playwrights, filmmakers have often seen their work as political. In this essay I discuss one way in which a narrative might be political. My proof text will be Joseph Conrad's novel Nostromo.2 Let's start by noting several ways in which a narrative might criticize the present. (1). It highlights a shortcoming, say, an injustice, of the present. (2). It shows the possibility of a different and better society, usually inhabited by people with a different and better psychology. (3). It shows nothing positive, and yet it elicits a desire for a radically different and radically better future, that is, for something very different from the present. The first option divides into: (1a) The narrative shows a particular injustice, the sort of thing that concrete institutional change might eliminate or ameliorate. There are plenty of examples of (1a): Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Jungle, the movie Dirty Pretty Things. We could debate how far particular instances are propaganda, journalism, or "literature," and what difference these categories might make. Here, I merely note that narrative is capable of pointing to, making palpable, evoking outrage at, this or that particular injustice. Narrative will rarely tell us the best way to fix the injustice ("There ought to be a law" merely begins that conversation), but it can convince us that a particular injustice exists and needs to be addressed. [End Page 369] (1b) The narrative shows what is wrong with something more general: a pervasive social institution, such as the market, imperialism (of one or another kind), some general pattern of social feeling and conduct. Many classic works do this, such as Middlemarch and Madame Bovary. Of course, precisely because such works criticize large and pervasive phenomena, they usually do not point to any specific solution. They say, "This (something fairly general) is bad." When we move to narratives that try to present better worlds, things get more complicated. We can see the issue by noting a distinction in (2) and between (2) and (3). With (2a), we are in the realm of what John Rawls calls a "realistic utopia."3 This is supposed to be (i) sufficiently specifiable, in terms of, say, principles of distribution, a conception of the person, and a conception of justification; that is, in terms of several central organizing ideas. It is also supposed to be (ii) sufficiently realistic in terms of the moral psychology needed for its instantiation. Rawls often talks of full compliance in his well-ordered society, but for that society to be sufficiently realistic, the psychology of its citizens must merely be a sufficiently real possibility in the sufficiently near future to generate sufficient compliance to make for sufficient stability. Call a realistic utopia realizably realistic if (I) the better angels of our nature upon which it calls are sufficiently like our actual nature to be plausible in the relatively near term, and (II) it does not require too often the instantiation of those better angels. The contrast is to (2b), a realistic utopia that is unrealizably realistic because although it satisfies (I) it does not satisfy (II): it is too dependent on the more or less constant instantiation of those better angels. It assumes that "can implies will" even though in real life the inference often fails.4 Still, such a society remains "realistic" since it is possible for us always to instantiate those better angels. With (3), condition (i) is not satisfied. The issue is not that we cannot or that we believe human beings will not realize something specifiable in terms of institutions and citizen psychology. It is that we have only a vague and primarily negative understanding of what we want. It is substantially (perhaps entirely) a political via negativa. And so (ii) cannot be known to be satisfied. The distinction between (2a) (and maybe also [2b]) on the one hand, and (3) on the other, tracks two ways...

  PublisherDOI

• Practical Wisdom, Rules, and the Patient-Doctor Conversation

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2021-08-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  One of the aspirations of today’s standard algorithm for clinical decision making is to avoid physician paternalism. This chapter argues that this aspiration is in tension with what often actually happens at the bedside. The chapter suggests further that what actually happens may be preferable to the rigorous exclusion of paternalism. The current algorithm for bedside decision making has had the effect of limiting the scope for the exercise of the physician’s practical wisdom. Although the physician’s exercise of practical wisdom can verge on paternalism, it can also help patient and physician jointly arrive at the best decision, all things considered. Such an exercise of practical wisdom is what many patients expect and what excellent clinical practice requires. The chapter explores the tension between these competing claims on physician conduct in the care of patients.

  PublisherDOI

• A Less Perfect Union

  Perspectives in biology and medicine · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Law

  This is a daunting time, not only in terms of our public health and our economic health but also in terms of the health of the republic. It is an old theme that any form of popular government needs virtuous citizens if it is to survive. It also needs citizens to agree on what counts as a virtue. I fear that the pandemic has shown that "We, the people" do not agree, and this shows what we already knew, that there are profound cracks in our union.

  PublisherDOI

• Concepts at the Bedside: Variations on the Theme of Autonomy

  Perspectives in biology and medicine · 2019-01-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article examines the patient/clinician conversation when there is disagreement about the values at stake in the treatment decision. To set the stage for that examination, three cases of refusal of treatment are considered, which point to three ways of understanding the content and value of autonomy. In the patient/clinician conversation, the clinician must inevitably adopt one of these conceptions of autonomy, but if he or she adopts a conception that puts significant weight on having rationally defensible values determine the treatment decision, there is still a limit to how far the clinician may challenge the patient's values. Through an appeal to John Rawls's criterion of political legitimacy, the author argues that the clinician may challenge the ordering of the values he or she shares with the patient, but that the clinician may not challenge the content of the patient's fundamental-or life-guiding-beliefs.

  PublisherDOI

• Changing the Question

  The Hastings Center Report · 2019-03-01 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Jack, who is seventy-five years old, is in the hospital with a terminal condition that has undermined his cognitive faculties. He has left no advance directive and has never had a conversation in which he made his treatment wishes remotely clear. Yet now, a treatment decision must be made, and in modern American medicine, the treatment decision for Jack is supposed to be made by a surrogate decision-maker, who is supposed to use a decision-making standard known as "substituted judgment." According to the substituted judgment standard, Jack's surrogate decision-maker, his wife, is supposed to decide on his treatment by determining what Jack would do if he did have decisional capacity. That is, she is supposed to answer the question, what would the patient choose? I will argue that this is the wrong question to ask because when the question has a determinate answer, that answer is sometimes not sufficiently connected to the value that is supposed to make the question morally salient, and because sometimes, perhaps often, there is no determinate answer to the question of what the patient would choose. Jointly, these two problems suggest the need for a different question.

  PublisherDOI

• Two Marxian Themes

  2018-06-27 · 5 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter describes twenty-first century a Marxian view that is more plausible than a view oriented toward the world of the 1840s. The Linkage Thesis would link each person's opportunity to all persons' opportunity. The chapter provides two of Marx's claims: his 1844 claim that in a capitalist society workers are alienated from their labour; his claim in The Communist Manifesto that in a communist society 'the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all'. Moreover, to start with alienation from the product of labour, whether part, finished product, or even totality of products seems to rest on the concept of ex ante ownership, and this remains an odd basis for a Marxian view. The chapter shows that one could start with Lockean proviso premises and derive most of the aspects of alienated labour but that an account resting on such premises is suspect as a useful Marxian account.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Rolf Kaiser

  6 shared

• Thomas Lengauer

  Max Planck Institute for Informatics

  5 shared

• D Sompolinsky

  Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center

  4 shared

• Lutz Gürtler

  Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene

  3 shared

• Dieter Häussinger

  Düsseldorf University Hospital

  3 shared

• Josef Eberle

  3 shared

• Mark Oette

  3 shared

• John D. Lantos

  3 shared