Garrath Williams

Ethical reflections help us decide what are the best actions to pursue in difficult and controversial situations. Reflections on public policy consider how to alter patterns of individual activity and institutional policies or frameworks for the better. The rising prevalence of childhood and adolescent obesity may pose serious health issues. As such, it is related to ethical and public policy questions including responsibility for health, food production and consumption, patterns of physical activity, the role of the state, and the rights and duties of parenthood.

The claim that happiness and virtue ought to be proportionate to one another has often been expressed in the idea of a future world of divine justice, despite many moral difficulties with this idea. This paper argues that human efforts to enact such a proportionment are, ironically, justified by the same reasons that make the idea of divine justice seem so problematic. Moralists have often regarded our frailty and fallibility as reasons for abstaining from the judgment of others; and doubts about our deserving some proportionment of happiness or unhappiness often arise insofar as virtue and vice may be explained on a causal basis. This paper argues that our fallibility and our susceptibility to social influence render judgment and response indispensable, because – given these characteristics – our actions and responses decide the morality that we actually share with one another. In this situation, to ‘judge not’ is to abandon the field to those with no such scruples.

Two of the most prominent questions in Kant's critical philosophy concern reason. The first, central to his theoretical philosophy, is the unprovable pretensions of reason in earlier “rationalist” philosophers, especially Leibniz and Descartes. The second, central to his practical philosophy, is the subservient role accorded to reason by the British empiricists—above all Hume, who declared, “Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals.” Treatise, 3.1.1.11; see also the entry on Rationalism vs. Empiricism .) Thus the titles of two key works: the monumental Critique of Pure Reason, and the Critique of Practical Reason that is middle point of his great trio of moral writings (between the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and The Metaphysics of Morals).

Hannah Arendt’s (1906-1975) conception of power is entirely distinctive. It is rooted in a political philosophy that celebrates the public realm of freedom that emerges when people act with others as citizens or political equals. For Arendt, power is actualized where people act together to sustain or to change the world they share with one another. Her fundamental claim is this: ‘Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together’. This entry offers some background to Arendt’s account, highlights two important contrasts that she makes between power and violence, and then points to her related notion of authority.

This paper considers the often-expressed fear that medical research may use children merely as means, and not respect them as ends in themselves – especially insofar as they are deemed less able to consent than adults. The main focus is on large-scale genetic, socio-medical and epidemiological research. The theoretical starting point of the paper is that to be treated as an end in oneself is to be regarded as – and to act as – a participant in cooperative endeavours. This participatory status is certainly connected with individual authority to consent and dissent; and there is no doubt that consent plays an important role when adults participate in many research projects. However, insofar as consent is located within structures of human cooperation, the authority to consent is not a straightforward privilege. Rather, consent is bound up with responsibility for one's choices and commitment to shared terms of cooperation. Given this understanding, it is argued that consent should not be our principal concern when we involve children in research. This is not because of children's (possible) incompetence to consent as such, but rather because children are still learning how to respect and assess the cooperative terms involved in our institutional lives. Instead, our leading concern should be with the terms regulating their involvement in research. Given suitable safeguards, research is one way in which children may learn what it is to bear responsibilities and to act as an end in oneself – that is, to cooperate with others on reasonable terms and for worthy ends

Ethical issues surrounding research are complex and multifaceted. There are issues concerning: the methods used, the intended purpose, the foreseen and unforeseen effects, the use and dissemination of findings, and, not least, what is and what fails to be researched. - In this article we break down the issues into two main categories: (I) how the research itself is done; and (II) how it is determined by and in turn affects a wider context. In the first section we discuss familiar issues such as the need for methodologically sound investigation, appropriate protections for the human subjects of research, as well as issues arising in collaborative research. The second set of issues is less well investigated and, indeed, particularly difficult to address; these are issues that extend well beyond the control of the researcher(s) or, quite often, any one individual or organization. We discuss the selection of research topics, research funding, publication and, finally, the role of external ethical guidelines and their institutional setting.

In this first part of the article, I want to sketch two things. First, I will say something about the idea of free will. The paradoxes involved in this idea often occur to people even before they come to philosophy, and these difficulties will be central to Kant’s account. But second, before turning to Kant, I would like to tackle Aristotle’s broad approach, and show that, before free will was invented by Christian philosophers, there was a quite different way of thinking about moral responsibility – one that has much to teach us. In the second part of the article, to appear in the next issue, I ask why Kant’s account continues to attract many people who would not dream of calling themselves Kantians – indeed, many who have never even heard Kant’s name. Kant’s theory involves a powerful idea of moral worth based on choice. This idea, though problematic because of the idea of freedom it seems to depend on, does account for many of our intuitions about moral responsibility. But it is not the only explanation of these intuitions, nor – I will argue – is it the most plausible.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) is likely to be the first woman to join the canon of the great philosophers. Arendt's work has attracted a huge volume of scholarship. This collection reprints papers from the USA, Germany, France and the UK, where further scholarly work is emerging at an increasing pace. Given that there was vigorous debate of her work in her lifetime, that there have since been several waves of evaluation and re-evaluation, and because a new generation of scholars is now coming to her work, a systematic collection of the critical assessments of her thought is extremely timely.

Like most bioethical discussion, examination of human biobanks has been largely framed in terms of research subjects’ rights, principally informed consent, with some gestures toward public benefits. However, informed consent is for the competent, rights-bearing individual: focussing on the individual, it thus neglects social, economic and even political matters; focussing on the competent rights-bearer, it does not serve situations where consent is plainly inappropriate (eg, the young child) or where coercion can obviously be justified (the criminal). Using the British experience of large-scale biobanking, I argue that the focus on consenting individuals distorts our ways of thinking about biobanks and has serious practical ramifications. This becomes clear if we contrast the case of adult biobanks intended for medical research with two other forms of biobanking. Thus child cohort studies – vital for sound scientific investigation of the interplay of genetics and environment in health – have been very badly funded next to adult studies. On the other hand, forensic databases have attracted massive investment, but little debate – partly owing to a sense that here, at least, is a case where consent is not relevant. Contrasting these central types of biobanking, I will suggest that there are powerful factors at work in limiting ‘ethics’ to individual rights. Projects of this size should direct our attention to more overtly political questions concerning priority setting and organisation of medical research.

Discusses what is involved in describing a person as responsible: she has responsibilities that she is duty-bound to undertake, and may be held responsible when she fails to fulfill these. Considers why societies and organizations divide responsibilities between persons. Also considers how questions of responsibility arise in the spheres of morality, law, organizational life and politics, and how different modes of holding responsible may be appropriate in each. Concludes with a brief discussion of some questions about collective responsibility.

The methodology of the IDEFICS (Identification and prevention of dietary- and lifestyle-induced health effects in children and infants) study raises a number of important ethical questions. Many of these are already well recognised in ethical guidelines that uphold principles of individual and parental consent, confidentiality and scientific review. There are, however, wider issues that require ethical reflection. In this paper, we focus on a set of problems surrounding the evaluation of complex social interventions, and argue that comprehensive and objective evaluation is a much more ethically charged aim than it may first appear. In particular, we contend that standard scientific measures - of body size and biomarkers - convey only part of the story. This is partly because, when we intervene in communities, we are also concerned with complex social effects. These effects are made even more complex by contemporary social anxieties about fat and physical appearance, as well as about the safety and security of children. Such anxieties increase the risk of undesirable side effects that are themselves difficult to gauge. In the face of these and other complexities, we argue that the evaluation of interventions should involve a strong ethical dimension. First, it must include - as does the IDEFICS study - consideration of the opinions of the people affected, who are subjected to interventions in ways that necessarily go beyond individual consent. Second, we suggest that interventions might also be assessed by how much they empower people - and especially those persons, such as children, who are otherwise often disempowered.

This paper discusses Kant’s problematic attempts to come to grips with the question of meaning. The first section sets out the problem as Kant discovers it, under the idea of a ‘Categorical Imperative.’ The second looks directly at his thoughts on the question of meaning, in connection with individual dignity, personal fulfilment and hope for our common future. Third, I examine inadequacies in Kant’s account, while the fourth part suggests that these arise through a lack of faith in the practical fruits of reason. In conclusion I raise a lasting concern belonging to post-Kantian philosophy, whether Kant’s equation of autonomy with ‘the moral law’ may not threaten both freedom and meaning in human affairs.

This article considers how we should frame the ethical issues raised by current proposals for large-scale genebanks with on-going links to medical and lifestyle data, such as the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council's 'UK Biobank'. As recent scandals such as Alder Hey have emphasised, there are complex issues concerning the informed consent of donors that need to be carefully considered. However, we believe that a preoccupation with informed consent obscures important questions about the purposes to which such collections are put, not least that they may be only haphazardly used for research —an end that would not fairly reflect the original altruistic motivation of donors, and the trust they must invest. We therefore argue that custodians of such databases take on a weighty pro-active duty, to encourage public debate about the ends of such collections and to sponsor research that reflects publicly agreed priorities and provides public benefits.

Hannah Arendt is one of the few philosophers to examine the dynamics of political action at length. Intriguingly, she emphasises the disclosure of who the actor is as a specific distinction of political action. This emphasis is connected with some long-standing worries about Arendt’s account that centre on its apparent unconcern for political responsibility. In this paper, I argue that Arendt’s emphasis on disclosure actually harbours a profound concern with responsibility. I do so by examining three questions. The main part of the paper focuses on how disclosure is bound up with political actors’ attempts to act with one another. It asks: what would it be for an actor to evade disclosure? And: what is involved in an actor acknowledging the fact of disclosure? – Looking at the matter negatively, attempts to evade disclosure and its implications lead to irresponsibility. Positively, for the actor to accept disclosure is to see herself as bound to her fellow actors and audience by relations of joint action and mutual accountability. The conclusion asks a third question: what would it mean for on-lookers to deny the relevance of actors’ disclosure? I argue that Arendt’s historiography – which revolves around stories in which political actors reveal who they are – reflects her conviction that people can and must take responsibility for their world

A brief discussion of means and ends in Arendt's political theory, which considers the following quotation from Arendt's essay, 'What is freedom?': "Political institutions, no matter how well or badly designed, depend for continued existence upon acting men; their conservation is achieved by the same means that brought them into being. Independent existence marks the work of art as a product of making; utter dependence upon further acts to keep it in existence marks the state as a product of action."