Liberal political thought has traditionally been hostile to the arbitrary power of rulers. It has, however, qualified this hostility through its promotion of what Locke calls ?prerogative?, the need for rulers to act in defence of the public good ? but on occasion outside the constraints of law. Liberal thought has tended to overlook the arbitrary powers of citizens and private organisations. This is due, first, to its commitment to individual liberty. But it is also due ?more substantially ? to (...) the belief that private agents and corporations, even when not constrained by law, are none the less subject to the non?legal sanctions and rewards imposed by the market and other aspects of civil society. Neo?liberalism is not rendered distinctive by its promotion of arbitrary power, since this has always featured in liberal government. Neo?liberalism is distinguished rather by its promotion of arbitrary powers across the full range of organs of governance ? from departments of government, through publicly and privately owned corporations, to ostensibly non?governmental bodies like charities, churches and so on. This advance in liberal promotion of arbitrary power has significant implications for the evolution of contemporary democracy. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that the development and convergence of information and communication technologies (ICT) is creating a global network of surveillance capabilities which affect the traveler. These surveillance capabilities are reminiscent of 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, and as such the emerging global surveillance network has been referred to as the travel panopticon. I argue that the travel panopticon is corrosive of personal autonomy, and in doing so I describe and analyse various philosophical approaches to personal autonomy.

Jeremy Bentham provided a comprehensive list of the sources of pleasure and pain, rather in the manner of modern researchers into human well-being. He explicitly used the term well-being and made both qualitative and quantitative proposals for its measurement. Bentham insisted that the measurement of well-being should be firmly based on the concerns and subjective valuations of those directly concerned, in the context of a liberal society. Those who wished to superimpose other judgements were dismissed as "ipsedixitists." He also addressed, (...) though of course could not solve, some of the measurement problems more recently tackled by "neo-Benthamites." The paper concludes that many of Bentham’s observations about the measurement of well-being are still relevant to issues in current research. Key Words: utilitarianism • Bentham • well-being • capabilities. (shrink)

There are two rival images often offered of the state. In one the state serves like a nanny to provide for the welfare of its members; in the other it requires people to look after themselves, providing only the service of a night-watchman. But this dichotomy, which is routinely invoked in debates about public health and welfare provision in general, is misleading. What the rival images turn on is not competing pictures of how the state should function in people's lives (...) but competing pictures of what it is to guard the freedom of its people. On the neo-liberal theory, which has been dominant over the last century or so, providing for people's freedom means leaving them to their own devices and fortunes. On the neo-republican theory, which answers to a much longer tradition, it means democratically identifying a common set of basic liberties in the exercise of which everyone should be protected by law and, if necessary, resourced. This older way of thinking about freedom has important merits missing in the newer and argues strongly against the nightwatchman state. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline Kant’s attempt to account for the category of relations, which is concomitant with his effort to prove that atomism cannot describe human experience. Kant’s journey from the First Critique to his last work the Opus Postumum is a struggle against atomistic versions of the world. In the last instance, it is a transit from I think to I act; and it is also recognition that to act can only be performed in a relational manner in (...) community with others. In order to substantiate his explanation of real forces in the world, Kant rethinks and extends his understanding of the subject from the subject as the unity of apperception to the self-positing subject living in the world with others. In order to defend ‘the being in the world’ who ‘has rights,’ I argue that we need to return to Kant’s general account of rights for all humans in the world. (shrink)

Any ethical argument involving the problems of access to assisted reproductive technologies should entail the discussion of the decision protocol and consider the individual deliberating on the appropriateness of these remedies from the point of view of self and community. Yet, arguments based on patients' own moral calculations are rare in the bioethics literature. The moral voice behind most discourses concerning ARTs is that of an outwardly independent spectator, who nonetheless proceeds to justify a personally significant worldview in the utilization (...) of these resources. Investigators grounded in social and legal sciences have offered relevant arguments in this regard, but because their discourses are derived from research protocols specific to their respective disciplines, they fail to provide a general rationale applicable to moral deliberation. (shrink)