Rather than eliminate the terms "mental health and illness" because of the grave moral consequences of psychiatric labeling, conservative definitions are proposed and defended. Mental health is rational autonomy, and mental illness is the sustained loss of such. Key terms are explained, advantages are explored, and alternative concepts are criticized. The value and descriptive components of all such definitions are consciously acknowledged. Where rational autonomy is intact, mental hospitals and psychotherapists should not think of themselves as treating an illness. Instead, they are functioning as applied axiologists, moral educators, spiritual mentors, etc. They deal with what Szasz has called "personal, social, and ethical problems in living." But mental illness is real.
is Lindsal'\TtaryProfessor of Pbilosopl4,, Enteitrs al7'be U'nirer.rig, of Tennessee, Knoxtli//e. He is the amhorf editor of Jtfeen books, including Religious \ralues and \raluations and oJ-ntore tltaafftl'arlicles. He sttrdied n.
My este,emed colleague and personal friend Robert S. Hartman has produced and published in The Structure of Value and numerous journal articles what I regard as the most brilliant, creative, and promising scheme of "metaethics" and formal axiology produced in our century. Ttre explora-
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