•  46
    Childhood Obesity: Ethical and Policy Issues
    with Kristin Voigt and Stuart G. Nicholls
    Oxford 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
  •  7
    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
  •  28
    Poverty, Dignity, and the Kingdom of Ends
    In 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
  •  24
    Beyond (Non)-Instrumentalization: Migration and Dignity within a Kantian Framework
    Ethical 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
  •  114
    Responsibilities for Healthcare - Kantian Reflections
    Cambridge 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
  •  49
    Taking Responsibility for Negligence and Non-negligence
    Criminal 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
  •  58
    The Social Creation of Morality and Complicity in Collective Harms: A Kantian Account
    Journal 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
  •  25
    Regulation Enables: Corporate Agency and Practices of Responsibility
    Journal 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
  •  43
    An empirical survey on biobanking of human genetic material and data in six EU countries
    with Isabelle Hirtzlin, Christine Dubreuil, Nathalie Préaubert, Jenny Duchier, Brigitte Jansen, Jürgen Simon, Paula Lobatao De Faria, Anna Perez-Lezaun, Bert Visser, Anne Cambon-Thomsen, and The Eurogenbank Consortium
    European 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
  •  124
    Nietzsche's response to Kant's morality
    Philosophical Forum 30 (3). 1999.
    Although commentators sometimes mention a link between Kant and Nietzsche, this paper claims that the continuities in their moral thought have been insufficiently explored. I argue that Nietzsche may offer us a profound rethinking of Kant’s morality – one indebted to Kant’s ideal of critique. The paper first considers the wide apparent gulf between the thinkers. The second section seeks to explain this gulf in terms which relate to Kant’s overall project, while the final section deals with Nietz…Read more
  •  67
    'Infrastructures of responsibility': The moral tasks of institutions
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 23 (2). 2006.
    The members of any functioning modern society live their lives amid complex networks of overlapping institutions. Apart from the major political institutions of law and government, however, much normative political theory seems to regard this institutional fabric as largely a pragmatic convenience. This paper contests this assumption by reflecting on how institutions both constrain and enable spheres of effective action and responsibility. In this way a society’s institutional fabric constitutes…Read more
  •  54
    Gewissen/Moral [Hannah Arendt on Conscience & Morality]
    In Wolfgang Heuer, Bernd Heiter & Stefanie Rosenmüller (eds.), Arendt Handbuch: Leben - Werk - Wirkung, Metzler Verlag. 2011.
    Discusses the different senses of morality in Hannah Arendt's work, and her understanding of conscience.
  •  87
    Blame and responsibility
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6 (4): 427-445. 2003.
    This paper looks at judgments of guilt in the face of alleged wrong-doing, be it in public or in private discourse. Its concern is not the truth of such judgments, although the complexity and contestability of such claims will be stressed. The topic, instead, is what sort of activities we are engaged in, when we make our judgments on others' conduct. To examine judging as an activity it focuses on a series of problems that can occur when we blame others. On analysis, we see that these problems t…Read more
  •  7
    This paper considers a short quotation from near the beginnings of Arendt’s Denktagebuch, dated to August 1950. This epigrammatic formulation presages Arendt’s whole political theory, by situating the political outside of the individual, in-between a plurality of human beings. My concern, however, is not with politics as such. Instead, I ask: cannot what Arendt says of politics be said with equal truth of morality? To make some attempt upon this vast question, I examine Arendt’s own more tentati…Read more
  •  145
    Responsibility as a Virtue
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (4): 455-470. 2008.
    Philosophers usually discuss responsibility in terms of responsibility for past actions or as a question about the nature of moral agency. Yet the word responsibility is fairly modern, whereas these topics arguably represent timeless concerns about human agency. This paper investigates another use of responsibility, that is particularly important to modern liberal societies: responsibility as a virtue that can be demonstrated by individuals and organisations. The paper notes its initial importan…Read more
  •  114
    Moral responsibility
    Oxford Bibliographies Online. 2010.
    [Bibliographic article focussing on compatibilist approaches to responsibility.] Moral responsibility relates to many significant topics in ethics and metaphysics, such as the content and scope of moral obligations, the nature of human agency, and the structure of human interaction. This entry focuses on compatibilist approaches to moral responsibility—that is, approaches that see moral responsibility as compatible with the causal order of the world. This is partly because they have more to say …Read more
  •  125
    Hobbes: Moral and Political Philosophy
    Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2003.
    This encyclopedia entry surveys the moral and political thought of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Hobbes's vision of the world is strikingly original and still relevant to contemporary politics. His main concern is the problem of social and political order: how human beings can live together in peace and avoid the danger and fear of civil conflict. He poses stark alternatives: we should give our obedience to an unaccountable sovereign (a person or group empowered to decide ev…Read more
  •  27
    As we have seen in the cases of Serbia and Israel, collectives can be mobilised to perpetrate grave wrongs on the basis of patently ideological claims about the harms they have suffered. This article seeks a theoretical understanding of this troubling phenomenon. It does so, first, by contrasting mobilisation based on vicarious victimhood with revenge. The groups in question do not exhibit the contact with reality and clear sense of agency that are prerequisites for revenge. However, these evasi…Read more
  •  31
    DNA-Banken und Treuhandschaft [DNA Banking and Trusteeship]
    with Doris Schröder
    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
  •  37
    Timeliness, relevance, freedom: On Steve Buckler’s reading of Hannah Arendt
    European 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.
  •  148
    Praise 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
  •  42
    Judges in our own case: Kantian legislation and responsibility attribution
    Politics 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
  •  66
    Verantwortung [Hannah Arendt on Responsibility]
    In Bernd Heiter, Wolfgang Heuer & Stefanie Rosenmüller (eds.), Arendt Handbuch: Leben - Werk - Wirkung, Metzler Verlag. pp. 325-327. 2011.
    Discusses different aspects of responsibility in Hannah Arendt's works.
  •  44
    Between Ethics and Right: Kantian Politics and Democratic Purposes
    European 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
  •  46
    Love and responsibility: A political ethic for Hannah Arendt
    Political 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
  •  75
    Sharing Responsibility and Holding Responsible
    Journal 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
  •  62
    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
  •  44
    ‘Intelligible facts’:toward a constructivist account of action and responsibility
    In 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
  •  44
    Geoffrey Vickers: philosopher of responsibility
    Systems 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.