Harm Reduction Philosophy

News

Epicurus and the Philosophy of Harm Reduction

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We can find the basic tenets of what we call harm reduction today in an Ancient Greek philosopher’s on how to maximise pleasures and minimise risks. (Article on Drug Reporter by Peter Sarosi.)

Responses: Question One

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Thank you to everyone who completed the harm reduction philosophy survey- we received well over 100 responses! Now the fun begins- analyzing the results. There are a number of ways to do this, and we are going to try several (for example, running fancy statistics). But today, we’re going to start a series where we […]

Amazing response from you all

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The idea for the project has been knocking around for a long time, discussions at conferences, on email and over skype all helped make us think this was something that might be interesting. But what we didn’t expect was such a great reaction from you all.

Abstract for HRC’s conference

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Two members of our project team (Benjamin Wegner and Nigel Brunsdon) have submitted an abstract to Harm Reduction Coalition’s National Harm Reduction Conference which is taking place in New Orleans in October. This workshop, if accepted, would use some of the responses from this website and we would be using it as an opportunity to […]

“A philosopher explains why addiction isn’t a moral failure”

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While we were getting ready to launch this website Vox.com published an article by Brendan de Kenessey a philosopher and Postdoctoral Fellow-in-Residence at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. The article examined many of the questions this site was designed to explore.
  • “The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.”

    Goethe
  • “Harm reduction, not just for other people”

    Urban Survivors’ Union
  • “Be curious, not judgemental.”

    Walt Whitman
  • “No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail harms many times greater than the pleasures themselves.”

    Epicurus