Matthias Katzer

Definition of the problem Multiple choice exams are common in many degree programs that prepare students for health professions. However, it is controversial whether they are appropriate for exams in ethics. This article examines how questions in this format can meet the demands of competency-based ethics teaching. Arguments Multiple choice exams enable the coverage of a large portion of the course content while maintaining a high degree of objectivity. However, they often encourage superficial learning strategies. A deeper engagement with the learning content can be stimulated by more complex tasks that require candidates to combine multiple pieces of information and draw conclusions from them using their prior knowledge. Furthermore, competency-based exam questions should aim to assess genuine ethical competencies. Such competencies are usually understood to include ethically relevant knowledge, sensitivity to moral aspects, moral judgment, and appropriate motivation, although these areas cannot be addressed equally in exams. Taking some questions as an example, the article discusses the extent to which these competencies can be assessed with multiple choice questions. It turns out that there are opportunities for constructing appropriate questions as well as clear limitations of the multiple choice format. Conclusion Items with case vignettes can make it possible to construct complex multiple choice questions on ethical topics. However, this format can only achieve the goals of competency-oriented ethics teaching to a limited extent. Therefore, it is recommended to combine them with constructed-response questions.

Scholars have struggled with identifying the exact reasoning that leads to the list of human rights in Rawls's Law of Peoples. This essay argues that the list can best be explained by a reasoning based on the value of self-determination of peoples. At the same time, it argues that this reasoning still has serious difficulties. In particular, it is necessary to clarify whether human rights may always be enforced by coercive means against states that violate them. However, once this has been clarified, the balance of reasons on which Rawls’s argument rests no longer indisputably supports his conclusion.

In her political philosophy, Martha C. Nussbaum defends liberal political principles on the basis of an objective conception of the good of human beings. This paper examines whether her argument succeeds. It identifies three methods to which Nussbaum refers in order to select the central human capabilities, whose exercise is seen as constituting the human good. It asks whether these methods – the interpretation of actual ways of human self-understanding, the search for necessary anthropological features, and the idea of an overlapping consensus – can yield liberal political principles. The paper concludes that it is doubtful that the first two methods will lead to this result. As to the third method, it may yield liberal principles only insofar as it relies on the notion of human dignity which is interpreted in a way that contains a strong view of equality of all human beings. In this way, universal liberal principles are not primarily based on considerations of the human good, but on a genuine moral standpoint.