Right or Wrong – Doesn’t Matter Now –
Nov. 15, 2018 – Herbert Fingarette, a contrarian philosopher who, while plumbing the perplexities of personal responsibility, defined heavy drinking as willful behavior rather than as a potential disease, died on Nov. 2 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 97. His daughter, Ann Fingarette Hasse, said the cause was heart failure. Professor Fingarette challenged the theory that alcoholism is a progressive disease that can be dealt with only by abstinence, and he concluded that treatment could include moderated drinking. Many academics and medical professionals denounced those views as heresy. But they were invoked by the United States Supreme Court in the 1988 decision Traynor v. Turnage. In that ruling, the court affirmed the government’s denial of education benefits to two veterans who had argued that they missed filing deadlines for those benefits because of their addiction as recovering alcoholics.
