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49Childhood Obesity: Ethical and Policy IssuesOxford University Press. 2014.Childhood obesity has become a central concern in many countries and a range of policies have been implemented or proposed to address it. This co-authored book is the first to focus on the ethical and policy questions raised by childhood obesity and its prevention. Throughout the book, the authors emphasize that childhood obesity is a multi-faceted phenomenon, and just one of many issues that parents, schools and societies face. They argue that it is important to acknowledge the resulting comple…Read more
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15Kant and Global Poverty: Guest Editors’ Introduction to Special IssueEthical Theory and Moral Practice 26 (2): 169-175. 2023.
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19What is Fundamental in Criminal Law? Review of Andrew Simester, Fundamentals of Criminal Law: Responsibility, Culpability, and WrongdoingCriminal Justice Ethics 41 (3): 278-290. 2022.My discussion will focus on Simester’s overall analysis of the “general part” of criminal law theory, setting aside the book’s rich and careful analyses of many specific topics. Quite rightly, in my view, Simester wishes to emphasize criminal law’s prohibitions, and their moral as well as legal importance. My criticism is that Simester runs together moral and legal categories in a way that distorts both. Simester grounds lawful punishment in a specific notion of moral culpability. In my view, th…Read more
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52Poverty, Dignity, and the Kingdom of EndsIn Jan-Willem van der Rijt & Adam Steven Cureton (eds.), Human Dignity and the Kingdom of Ends: Kantian Perspectives and Practical Applications, Routledge. pp. 206-223. 2021.In this chapter we argue that poverty should be seen as a violation of dignity, drawing on two of Kant’s formulations of the Categorical Imperative – the formula of humanity and the formula of the kingdom of ends. In our view, poverty should not be seen primarily in terms of exploitation, nor of failures to help people in need. A Kantian perspective should give proper weight to the actual and potential agency of those who suffer poverty. This is a question about power, not just the distribution …Read more
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73Beyond (Non)-Instrumentalization: Migration and Dignity within a Kantian FrameworkEthical Theory and Moral Practice 26 (2): 209-224. 2022.This article offers a Kantian account of dignity violations in the context of contemporary migration to western states. It considers three major issues: “modern slavery,” statutory detention, and lack of rights to engage in economic activity. While most Kantian accounts emphasize the dignity violations of treating people as “mere means,” we point out that this does not capture the central issue: the “hostile environment” that so many migrants face. The first part of the article briefly sets out …Read more
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83Responsibilities for Healthcare - Kantian ReflectionsCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 21 (2): 155-165. 2012.This paper explores some ways in which Immanuel Kant’s ethical theory can be brought to bear on professional and health care ethics. Health care professionals are not mere individuals acting upon their own ends. Rather, their principles of action must be defined in terms of participation in a cooperative endeavor. This generates complex questions as to how well their roles mesh with one another and whether they comprise a well-formed collective agent. We argue that Kant’s ethics therefore, and p…Read more
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55Taking Responsibility for Negligence and Non-negligenceCriminal Law and Philosophy 14 (1): 113-134. 2020.Negligence reminds us that we often do and cause things unawares, occasionally with grave results. Given the lack of foresight and intention, some authors argue that people should not be judged culpable for negligence. This paper offers a contrasting view. It argues that gaining control is itself a fundamental responsibility, with both collective and individual elements. The paper underlines both sides, focussing on how they relate as we ascribe responsibility or culpability. Following the intro…Read more
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65The Social Creation of Morality and Complicity in Collective Harms: A Kantian AccountJournal of Applied Philosophy 36 (3): 457-470. 2018.This article considers the charge that citizens of developed societies are complicit in large-scale harms, using climate destabilisation as its central example. It contends that we have yet to create a lived morality – a fabric of practices and institutions – that is adequate to our situation. As a result, we participate in systematic injustice, despite all good efforts and intentions. To make this case, the article draws on recent discussions of Kant’s ethics and politics. Section 1 considers T…Read more
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32Regulation Enables: Corporate Agency and Practices of ResponsibilityJournal of Business Ethics 154 (4): 989-1002. 2019.Both advocates of corporate regulation and its opponents tend to depict regulation as restrictive—a policy option that limits freedom in the name of welfare or other social goods. Against this framing, I suggest we can understand regulation in enabling terms. If well designed and properly enforced, regulation enables companies to operate in ways that are acceptable to society as a whole. This paper argues for this enabling character by considering some wider questions about responsibility and th…Read more
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55An empirical survey on biobanking of human genetic material and data in six EU countriesEuropean Journal of Human Genetics 11. 2003.Biobanks correspond to different situations: research and technological development, medical diagnosis or therapeutic activities. Their status is not clearly defined. We aimed to investigate human biobanking in Europe, particularly in relation to organisational, economic and ethical issues in various national contexts. Data from a survey in six EU countries were collected as part of a European Research Project examining human and non-human biobanking. A total of 147 institutions concerned with b…Read more
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35DNA-Banken und Treuhandschaft [DNA Banking and Trusteeship]Ethik in der Medizin 14 (2): 84-95. 2002.Definition of the problem:The frequency and scope of human genetic banking has increased significantly in recent years and is set to expand still further. Two of the major growth areas in medical research, pharmacogenomics and population genetics, rely on large DNA banks to provide extensive, centralised and standardised genetic information as well as clinical and personal data. This development raises ethical concerns. Arguments and conclusion: Our article focuses on the appropriateness of info…Read more
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40Timeliness, relevance, freedom: On Steve Buckler’s reading of Hannah ArendtEuropean Journal of Political Theory 13 (3): 366-371. 2014.Part of a review symposium on Steve Buckler's book, Hannah Arendt and Political Theory: Challenging the Tradition (2011). This short appreciation of Buckler’s book highlights the two guiding features of Arendt’s method that he brings to the fore: its concern with timeliness and its epistemic relevance to political questions. It concludes with a brief note on Arendt’s relation to other ways of approaching political philosophy, as raised by Buckler’s book and my own remarks.
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145Praise and blame.Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2004.This encyclopedia entry contrasts three influential philosophical accounts of our everyday practices of praise and blame, in terms of how they might be justified. On the one hand, a broadly Kantian approach sees responsibility for actions as relying on forms of self-control that point back to the idea of free will. On this account praise and blame are justified because a person freely chooses her actions. Praise and blame respond to the person as the chooser of her deed; they recognise her digni…Read more
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44Judges in our own case: Kantian legislation and responsibility attributionPolitics and Ethics Review 3 (1): 8-23. 2007.This paper looks at the attribution of moral responsibility in the light of Kant's claim that the maxims of our actions should be universalizable. Assuming that it is often difficult for us to judge which actions satisfy this test, it suggests one way of translating Kantian morality into practice. Suppose that it is possible to read each action, via its maxim, as a communication addressed to the world: as an attempt to set the terms on which we should interact with one another. The paper suggest…Read more
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67Verantwortung [Hannah Arendt on Responsibility]In Wolfgang Heuer, Bernd Heiter & Stefanie Rosenmüller (eds.), Hannah Arendt-Handbuch: Leben - Werk - Wirkung, Metzler Verlag. pp. 325-327. 2012.Discusses different aspects of responsibility in Hannah Arendt's works.
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50Between Ethics and Right: Kantian Politics and Democratic PurposesEuropean Journal of Philosophy 20 (3): 479-486. 2012.Arthur Ripstein's book Force and Freedom insists that, ‘Freedom, understood as independence of another person's choice, is [all] that matters’. In this paper I suggest that this premise leads Ripstein to an instrumentalization of democracy that neglects a properly public and collective notion of freedom. The paper first criticizes Ripstein's key argument against any extension of public purposes beyond the upholding of persons’ ‘independence of others’ choice’. More constructively, the paper then…Read more
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46Love and responsibility: A political ethic for Hannah ArendtPolitical Studies 46 (5): 937-950. 1998.This paper argues that those critics of Hannah Arendt's thought who have protested at her disavowal of ‘moral standards’ as being appropriate in the judgment of political action have, in fact, misjudged the structure of her thought. My argument is, however, a constructive one: the paper seeks to demonstrate how Arendt arrives at her sweeping rejection of conventional standards of moral judgment, and what solution she proposes. I do this in three stages. First, I address Arendt's understanding of…Read more
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78Sharing Responsibility and Holding ResponsibleJournal of Applied Philosophy 30 (4): 351-364. 2013.Who, in particular, may hold us responsible for our moral failings? Most discussions of moral responsibility bracket this question, despite its obvious practical importance. In this article, I investigate the moral authority involved and how it arises in the context of personal relationships, such as friendship or family relations. My account is based on the idea that parties to a personal relationship not only share responsibility for their relationship, but also — to some degree that is negoti…Read more
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74Normatively demanding creatures: Hobbes, the fall and individual responsibilityRes Publica 6 (3): 301-319. 2000.This paper explores an internal relation between wrong-doing and the ability to think in moral terms, through Hobbes ’ thought. I use his neglected retelling of our ‘original sin’ as a springboard, seeing how we then discover a need to vindicate our own projects in terms shared by others. We become normatively demanding creatures: greedy for normative vindication, eager to judge others amid the difficulties of our world. However there is, of course, no choice for us but to choose our own princip…Read more
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44‘Intelligible facts’:toward a constructivist account of action and responsibilityIn Sorin Baiasu, Sami Pihlstrom & Howard Williams (eds.), Politics and Metaphysics in Kant, University of Wales Press. 2011.This paper interprets facts about actions and responsibility in terms of Kant’s category of the ‘intelligible,’ but is also broadly naturalistic in its approach. It analyses intelligible facts in terms of two elements, the institutional and the normative. First, I draw on John Searle’s account of institutional facts. Searle emphasises that neither the meaning of a word nor my possession of something is a matter of empirical facts concerning the entity itself. Instead, to understand the nature of…Read more
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46Geoffrey Vickers: philosopher of responsibilitySystems Research and Behavioral Science 22 (4): 291-8. 2005.In this article I discuss Geoffrey Vickers’ ideas from the perspective of moral and political philosophy. His thought is presented through three key terms, which I suggest can encapsulate his philosophy: (i) our human capacity to respond aptly to our situation; (ii) the analysis of modern society in terms of institutions; and (iii) the moral importance of responsibility to the maintenance of human culture and cooperation.
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32Ethics and public policyIn Luis A. Moreno, Iris Pigeot & Wolfgang Ahrens (eds.), Epidemiology of Obesity in Children and Adolescents: Prevalence and Etiology, Springer Science+business Media. pp. 7--20. 2011.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 act…Read more
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115‘Who are we to judge?’ – On the Proportionment of Happiness to Virtue: Garrath WilliamsPhilosophy 85 (1): 47-66. 2010.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 abou…Read more
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148ResponsibilityInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006.We evaluate people and groups as responsible or not, depending on how seriously they take their responsibilities. Often we do this informally, via moral judgment. Sometimes we do this formally, for instance in legal judgment. This article considers mainly moral responsibility, and focuses largely upon individuals. Later sections also comment on the relation between legal and moral responsibility, and on the responsibility of collectives.
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110Kant's account of reasonStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2009.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…Read more
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2136Hannah Arendt on PowerIn Keith Dowding (ed.), Encyclopedia of Power, Sage Publications. pp. 26-28. 2011.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 indiv…Read more
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75Children as means and ends in large-scale medical researchBioethics 26 (8): 422-430. 2011.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…Read more
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Ethical issues [in social measurement]: an overviewIn Kimberly Kempf-Leonard (ed.), Encyclopedia of Social Measurement, Elsevier. 2004.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 …Read more
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55Two approaches to moral responsibility : part twoRichmond Journal of Philosophy 6 14-19. 2004.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 responsibil…Read more
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37“No Participation Without Implication”: Understanding the Wrongs We Do TogetherRes Publica 8 (2): 201-210. 2002.Review article of Christopher Kutz, Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)