Dangerous & Lazy

Some time ago Adam wrote a fine piece about ethics in House, arguing that House’s apparently unethical behavior—his devotion to solving the intellectual puzzle of illness at the expense of obeying hospital rules or caring about the wellbeing of patients—is in fact the ethical attitude par excellence. Adam explains:  “Only by practicing medicine for its own sake and not for the people, and directly enjoying its inherent satisfactions, can he ever hope to solve the hopelessly complicated cases that he is faced with.” You could derive a couple of ethical theories from this. Read more↴

Given this blog’s title, it seems appropriate to quote Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View:

But in this judging of laziness, one can often do much wrong to a human being. For nature has also wisely placed the aversion to continuous work in many a subject, an instinct that is beneficial both to the subject and to others … for, if laziness did not intervene, indefatigable malice would comit far more ill in the world than it does now.