Violin

The violin is a string instrument in the violin family. It is the smallest and highest-pitched instrument in the family in regular use. The violin typically has four strings tuned in perfect fifths, and is most commonly played by drawing a bow across its strings. Violins are important instruments a wide variety of musical genres. They are most prominent in the Western classical tradition and in many varieties of folk music (where the violin is often known as the "fiddle"). However, violins are also frequently used in jazz, a number of different forms of rock and roll and metal, and descendants of folk including country music and bluegrass music. Further, the violin has come to be played in many non-Western music cultures all over the world. The violin is sometimes informally called a fiddle, regardless of the type of music played on it.

The violin was first known in 16th-century Italy, with some further modifications occurring in the 18th and 19th centuries. In Europe it served as the basis for stringed instruments used in western classical music, the viola and the violin. Violinists and collectors particularly prize the instruments made by the Stradivari, Guarneri and Amati families from the 16th to the 18th century in Brescia and Cremona and by Jacob Stainer in Austria. According to their reputation, the quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or equal it, though this belief is disputed. Great numbers of instruments have come from the hands of "lesser" makers, as well as still greater numbers of mass-produced commercial "trade violins" coming from cottage industries in places such as Saxony, Bohemia, and Mirecourt. Many of these trade instruments were formerly sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co. and other mass merchandisers.

A Defense of Abortion

"A Defense of Abortion" is a moral philosophy paper by Judith Jarvis Thomson first published in 1971. Granting for the sake of argument that the fetus has a right to life, Thomson uses thought experiments to argue that the fetus' right to life does not trump the pregnant woman's right to control her own body and its life-support functions, and that induced abortion is therefore not morally impermissible. Her argument has many critics on both sides of the abortion debate, yet continues to receive defense. Thomson's imaginative examples and controversial conclusions have made "A Defense of Abortion" perhaps "the most widely reprinted essay in all of contemporary philosophy".

Overview of the essay

The Violinist

In "A Defense of Abortion", Thomson grants for the sake of argument that the fetus has a right to life, but defends the permissibility of abortion by appeal to a thought experiment:

Thomson takes it that you may now permissibly unplug yourself from the violinist even though this will cause his death: the right to life, Thomson says, does not include the right to use another person's body, and so by unplugging the violinist you do not violate his right to life but merely deprive him of something—the use of your body—to which he has no right. "[I]f you do allow him to go on using your kidneys, this is a kindness on your part, and not something he can claim from you as his due."