In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 121.2 (2000) 259-277 [Access article in PDF] Propertius 4.2: Slumming with Vertumnus? Kerill O'Neill In her recent study of Ciceronian oratory Ann Vasaly observes that particular activities are associated with the monuments, edifices, and different quarters of Rome, on the basis of the daily practice and literary depiction of each location. Together, these associations constitute a "metaphysical topography" of a location--that is, the network (...) of meanings the place held for a Roman audience in the Augustan age. 1 Attention to the metaphysical topography of a place can enrich or change our appreciation of a literary work that depends in some manner on its setting. The fourth book of Propertius directs the reader's attention to a variety of places in the city, from the Tarpeian Rock (4.4) to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine (4.6), from the Ara Maxima of Hercules (4.9) to the recently restored Temple of Jupiter Feretrius (4.10). These elegies play a part in shaping our sense of each of these places, but they also draw upon the preexisting metaphysical topography. In 4.2 the statue of Vertumnus on three occasions refers to its specific location in a street shrine on the Vicus Tuscus and voices its preference for this particular spot over any other. In this essay I describe the literary tradition concerning the statue of Vertumnus and the Vicus Tuscus and demonstrate that the metaphysical topography of the location affords this aetiological poem a markedly amatory aspect, which encourages us to read it as a programmatic piece for the entire book and grants some of the narrator's assertions an ironic and witty flavor.The fourth book of Propertius' elegies is characterized by pervasive interplay between amatory and aetiological poetry. This interplay is created in the first elegy, which is split into two halves (4.1a, 4.1b). In the first half an authorial narrator introduces a new program of aetiological elegy, culminating with a promise to sing of sacred rites, festivals, [End Page 259] and the ancient names of places (4.1.69). In the second half Horus, an indignant astrologer, dismisses the poet's lofty ambitions and tells him to stick to the amatory poems that Apollo favored in his earlier books. Thus the two halves of 4.1 seek to establish a strict opposition between programs of aetiological and amatory poetry. 2 How rigorous an opposition this is to be, however, remains a matter of doubt. The recusatio elegies of the earlier books fashion a pattern of false opposition. For example, in 2.1, 3.3, and 3.9 the narrator appears to dismiss the writing of aetiological and nationalistic verse, but this refusal involves writing precisely what he claims to be rejecting. In other words, the discursive praxis usually referred to as recusatio may be more accurately described by the term "generic disavowal," 3 since it allows the disingenuous inclusion of material ostensibly precluded by the poet's antipathy or limited abilities. 4 Furthermore, Propertius has a tendency to set up binarisms that he then problematizes. Thus man appears to be constructed as the opposite of woman until we encounter Vertumnus, a statue who can be both male and female (4.2.23-24), and Hercules, a thoroughly manly god who claims to have been a "pretty good woman" through transvestism and the performance of a woman's tasks (4.9.45-50). 5Throughout book 4 we find a similar collapse of a binary opposition. Many of the elegies blur and transgress the dividing line between the aetiological and amatory programs that Horus' response to the authorial narrator constituted as incompatible. Amatory elements intrude into aetiological poems, and vice versa. For example, in 4.4 Tarpeia plays the role of an amatory heroine, 6 and in 4.9 Hercules dallies with the roles of both the exclusus amator and the puella, 7 while in 4.5 we discover sacred rites, festivals, and ancient names. 8 The Vertumnus elegy, which immediately follows the divided introduction, is ostensibly [End Page 260] an unadulterated... (shrink)

Kant's ethics, like others, has unavoidable anthropocentric starting points: only humans, or other 'rational natures', can hold obligations. Seemingly this should not make speciesist conclusions unavoidable: might not rational natures have obligations to the non-rational? However, Kant's argument for the unconditional value of rational natures cannot readily be extended to show that all non-human animals have unconditional value, or rights. Nevertheless Kant's speciesism is not thoroughgoing. He does not view non-rational animals as mere items for use. He allows for indirect (...) duties 'with regard to' them which afford welfare but not rights, and can allow for indirect duties 'with regard to' abstract and dispersed aspects of nature, such as biodiversity, species and habitats. (shrink)

Two centuries after they were published, Kant's ethical writings are as much admired and imitated as they have ever been, yet serious and long-standing accusations of internal incoherence remain unresolved. Onora O'Neill traces the alleged incoherences to attempt to assimilate Kant's ethical writings to modern conceptions of rationality, action and rights. When the temptation to assimilate is resisted, a strikingly different and more cohesive account of reason and morality emerges. Kant offers a `constructivist' vindication of reason and a moral vision (...) in which obligations are prior to rights and in which justice and virtue are linked. O'Neill begins by reconsidering Kant's conceptions of philosophical method, reason, freedom, automony and action. She then moves on to the more familiar terrain of interpretation of the Categorical Imperative, while in the last section she emphasises differences between Kant's ethics and recent 'Kantian' ethics, including the work of John Rawls and other contemporary liberal political philosophers. This reassessment will add significantly to the understanding of Kantian practical philosophy. (shrink)

Revealing flaws in both 'green' and market-based approaches to environmental policy, O'Neill develops an Aristotolian account of well-being. He examines the implications for wider issues involving markets, civil society an.

In this collection of essays Onora O'Neill explores and argues for an account of justice that is fundamentally cosmopolitan rather than civic, yet takes serious account of institutions and boundaries, and of human diversity and vulnerability. Starting from conceptions that are central to any account of justice - those of reason, action, judgement, coercion, obligations and rights - she discusses whether and how culturally or politically specific concepts and views, which limit the claims and scope of justice, can be avoided. (...) She then examines the demands and scope of just institutions, arguing that there are good reasons for taking the claims of distant strangers seriously, but that doing so points not to a world without boundaries but to one of porous boundaries and dispersed power. Bounds of Justice will be of interest to a wide range of readers in philosophy, politics and international relations. (shrink)

Why has autonomy been a leading idea in philosophical writing on bioethics, and why has trust been marginal? In this important book, Onora O'Neill suggests that the conceptions of individual autonomy so widely relied on in bioethics are philosophically and ethically inadequate, and that they undermine rather than support relations of trust. She shows how Kant's non-individualistic view of autonomy provides a stronger basis for an approach to medicine, science and biotechnology, and does not marginalize untrustworthiness, while also explaining why (...) trustworthy individuals and institutions are often undeservingly mistrusted. Her arguments are illustrated with issues raised by practices such as the use of genetic information by the police or insurers, research using human tissues, uses of new reproductive technologies, and media practices for reporting on medicine, science and technology. Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics will appeal to a wide range of readers in ethics, bioethics and related disciplines. (shrink)

Under conditions with a low level of available genetic information, mutualistic private insurance markets will often create broadly just outcomes, even if by accident rather than by design. Normatively acceptable outcomes of this kind would come under threat if insurers were to have increased access to genetic information with substantial predictive content.1 As the availability of relevant individual genetic information grows, mutualistic forms of market-based insurance face a dilemma between either sacrificing individuals’ interests in genetic privacy, or creating conditions for (...) market failure due to adverse selection. My view is therefore that we have good reason to shift towards more solidaristic forms of ‘risk-sharing institutions’ with regard to functions such as life insurance and critical illness insurance, as a way of resolving normative tensions between values of equality, privacy, non-discrimination and autonomy. Such a position, I have argued, does not depend on endorsing any particular conception of social justice, but can be defended on the basis of a number of different plausible accounts of what justice demands.1 Jonathan Pugh argues against my endorsement of a shift towards solidaristic, non-market risk-sharing institutions, and instead argues broadly in favour of the status quo. He holds that it counts against my proposals that they ‘have wide-ranging and highly revisionary implications’, and argues that my approach is mistaken in relying on ‘a single contestable theory’. Pugh offers a purportedly less contestable account of the relevant normative considerations underlying insurance regimes, composed of three …. (shrink)

John O'Neill explores the human passions as both the object of psychoanalysis and the creative principle of Freud's own discovery and practice of psychoanalysis. Love, hate, anger, jealousy, envy, knowledge, and ignorance: the passions dominate infancy, adolescence, and adulthood, marking them with narcissism, murder, seduction, and self-destruction. They are both the soul's theater and the soul of theater, art, literature, and music. If fear, hate, envy, and jealousy rival love, beauty, and knowledge, or turn into one another, they just as (...) surely expand the human heart. The original essays in this volume analyze the human passions in Freud's metapsychology, from the case histories of Dora, Rat Man, and Schreber to his studies of Leonardo da Vinci, Gradiva, and the "Case of Homosexuality in a Woman." Other essays are devoted to Macbeth, the Judgment of Solomon, Virginia Woolf, and Freud's own adolescence. In constructing a genealogy of the passions from early to late modernity, these studies show the subtle interaction of psychic and social conflict, of ambivalence and disavowal in the workings of the human soul. Contributors are John O'Neill, William Kerrigan, Donald L. Carveth, Jerome Neu, Kathleen Woodward, Claire Kahane, Mary Jacobus, John Forrester, Ellie Ragland, Geoff Miles, and Laurence A. Rickels. (shrink)

To hold an environmental ethic is to hold that non-human beings and states of affairs in the natural world have intrinsic value. This seemingly straightforward claim has been the focus of much recent philosophical discussion of environmental issues. Its clarity is, however, illusory. The term ‘intrinsic value’ has a variety of senses and many arguments on environmental ethics suffer from a conflation of these different senses: specimen hunters for the fallacy of equivocation will find rich pickings in the area. This (...) paper is largely the work of the underlabourer. I distinguish different senses of the concept of intrinsic value, and, relatedly, of the claim that non-human beings in the natural world have intrinsic value; I exhibit the logical relations between these claims and examine the distinct motivations for holding them. The paper is not however merely an exercise in conceptual underlabouring. It also defends one substantive thesis: that while it is the case that natural entities have intrinsic value in the strongest sense of the term, i.e., in the sense of value that exists independently of human valuations, such value does not as such entail any obligations on the part of human beings. The defender of nature’s intrinsic value still needs to show that such value contributes to the well-being of human agents. (shrink)

Towards Justice and Virtue challenges the rivalry between those who advocate only abstract, universal principles of justice and those who commend only the particularities of virtuous lives. Onora O'Neill traces this impasse to defects in underlying conceptions of reasoning about action. She proposes and vindicates a modest account of ethical reasoning and a reasoned way of answering the question 'who counts?', then uses these to construct linked accounts of principles by which we can move towards just institutions and virtuous lives.

In this commentary, John O'Neill concentrates upon three themes in the goal Merleau-Ponty set for himself, namely "to restore to things their concrete physiognomy, to organisms their individual ways of dealing with the world, and to subjectivity its inherence in history." O'Neill considers the three objectives in their original order: first, the study of animal and human psychology; then, the phenomenology of perception; and finally, certain extensions of these perspectives in the historical and social sciences.

One of the paradoxes of recent political and economic theory is that, in spite of a period of extended economic difficulty, there has been a growing consensus concerning the virtues of the market economy. In particular, there has been a trend in socialist theory to argue that not only are socialism and the market not incompatible, but that some version of market socialism is the only feasible, practicable, and ethically and politically desirable form of socialism. Notable proponents of this view (...) with whom this paper will be particularly concerned are Selucky, Nove and Hodgson. I will not, in this paper, address the question of whether the market and socialism are necessarily incompatible. Neither will I examine the whole gamut of political and ethical issues surrounding the relation of the market to democracy, freedom, individual rights, and so on – not because they are unimportant, but because they require more extended attention than I could give here. My concern will rather be with some of the economic arguments to which defenders of market socialism have appealed. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 1 Seiten: 111-125.

We say we can no longer trust our public services, institutions or the people who run them. The professionals we have to rely on - politicians, doctors, scientists, businessmen and many others - are treated with suspicion. Their word is doubted, their motives questioned. Whether real or perceived, this crisis of trust has a debilitating impact on society and democracy. Can trust be restored by making people and institutions more accountable? Or do complex systems of accountability and control themselves damage (...) trust? Onora O'Neill challenges current approaches, investigates sources of deception in our society and re-examines questions of press freedom. 2002's Reith Lectures present a philosopher's view of trust and deception, and ask whether and how trust can be restored in a modern democracy. (shrink)

A recent study suggests that vaccine hesitancy amongst key demographics – including females, younger individuals, and certain ethnic groups – could undermine the pursuit of herd immunity against COVID-19 in the United Kingdom. At the same time, the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JVCI) indicated that it will not facilitate the choice between available COVID-19 vaccines. This paper reflects upon lessons from the introduction of the UK’s combined Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine strategy of the 1980s when (...) Member of Parliament Miss Julie Kirkbride argued that had parents been allowed to choose between vaccine variants, then the crisis of low herd immunity – and subsequent outbreaks – could have been avoided. This paper explores this argument, as applied to the COVID-19 vaccination strategy, by considering how three key elements of informed consent – disclosure of risk, benefit, and reasonable alternatives – may be employed to tackle vaccine hesitancy and build vaccine confidence. (shrink)

I have a very particular reason to be grateful to Stewart Sutherland, our late President, which is connected to some of the themes of this lecture, so want to begin by recalling a long conversation I had with him on these topics.

A well-ingrained and recommended engineering practice in safety-critical software systems is to separate safety concerns from other aspects of the system. Along these lines, there have been calls for operating systems that implement ethical controls in an ethical layer separate from, and not amenable to tampering by, developers and modules in higher-level intelligence or cognition layers. There have been no implementations that demonstrate such a marshalling of ethical principles into an ethical layer. To address this, we present three different tracks (...) for implementing such systems, and offer a prototype implementation of the third track. We end by addressing objections to our approach. (shrink)

Focal brain metabolic effects detected by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) represent prospective indices of clinical status and guides to treatment design. Sampling bilateral pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC), anterior middle cingulate cortex (aMCC), and thalamus in 40 adult patients and 16 healthy controls, we examined relationships of the neurometabolites glutamate+glutamine (Glx), creatine+phosphocreatine (Cr), and choline-compounds (Cho) with OCD diagnosis and multiple symptom types. The latter included OC core symptoms (Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale - YBOCS), depressive symptoms (...) (Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale - MADRS), and general functioning (Global Assessment Scale - GAS). pACC Glx was 9.7% higher in patients than controls. Within patients, Cr and Cho correlated negatively with YBOCS and MADRS, while Cr correlated positively with the GAS. In aMCC, Cr and Cho correlated negatively with MADRS, while Cr in thalamus correlated positively with GAS. These findings present moderate support for glutamatergic and cingulocentric perspectives on OCD. Based on our prior metabolic model of OCD, we offer one possible interpretation of these group and correlational effects as consequences of a corticothalamic state of elevated glutamatergic receptor activity alongside below-normal glutamatergic transporter activity. (shrink)

The Aristotelian view that public institutions should aim at the good life is criticized on the grounds that it makes for an authoritarian politics that is incompatible with the pluralism of modem society. The criticism seems to have particular power against modem environmentalism, that it offers a local vision of the good life which fails to appreciate the variety of possible human relationships to the natural environment, andso, as a guide to public policy, it leads to green authoritarianism. This paper (...) argues to the contrary that an Aristotelian position which defends environmental goods as constitutive of the good life is consistent with recognition of the plurality of ways our relations to the natural world can be lived. It is compatible with the recognition of distinct cultural expressions of such relations and of the special place particular histories of individuals and social groups have in constraining environmental policy. (shrink)

Environmental problems have an ethical dimension. They are not just about the efficient use of resources. Justice in the distribution of environmental goods and burdens, fairness in the processes of environmental decision-making, the moral claims of future generations and non-humans, these and other ethical values inform the responses of citizens to environmental problems. How can these concerns enter into good policy-making processes?Two expert-based approaches are commonly advocated for incorporating ethical values into environmental decision-making. One is an 'economic capture' approach, according (...) to which existing economic methods can be successfully extended to include ethical concerns. For example, stated preference methods, especially contingent valuation, have been developed to try and capture ethical responses as 'non-use values' of the environment, in particular 'existence values'. The other is a 'moral expert' approach which confines economic methods to the analysis of welfare gains, and assumes committees of ethical experts will complement economic expertise.Both approaches face problems in terms of addressing many widely held ethical values about the environment. Furthermore, both face problems concerning the democratic legitimacy of their procedures. How can policy-making be made responsive to different ethical values? What role is there for new deliberative and participatory methods? How far do existing decision-making institutions have the capacities to incorporate different modes of articulating environmental values?This policy brief examines the limitations of current attempts to capture ethical values within existing economic instruments and considers how these limitations might be overcome. Section 1 examines the assumptions that standard economic theory makes about individuals when they express values and make choices about the environment. The current models of agents that inform policy-making are seen to be ill-suited to incorporating the ethical responses of agents and this reveals some of the policy failures that may result. Section 2 shows how the physical and social properties of many environmental goods prevent their being treated as commodities. Section 3 considers the problems surrounding conceptions of fairness and legitimacy in processes for environmental valuation. Section 4 raises questions concerning the capacities of policy-making institutions to take cognisance of the results of different methods for articulating environmental values. (shrink)

We consider here how cultural and socioeconomic dimensions of justice beyond the state are related. First we examine cosmopolitan theories that have drawn on John Rawls's egalitarian liberal framework to argue that a just global order requires substantive, transnational redistribution of material resources. We then assess the view, ironically put forward by Rawls himself, that this perspective is ethnocentric and insufficiently tolerant of non-liberal cultures. We argue that Rawls is right to be concerned about the danger of ethnocentrism, but wrong (...) to assume that this requires us to reject the case for substantive redistribution across state boundaries. A more compelling account of justice beyond the state will integrate effectively socioeconomic and cultural aspects of justice. We suggest that this approach is best grounded in a critical theory of recognition that responds to the damage caused to human relations by legacies of historical injustice. (shrink)

Many accounts of informed consent in medical ethics claim that it is valuable because it supports individual autonomy. Unfortunately there are many distinct conceptions of individual autonomy, and their ethical importance varies. A better reason for taking informed consent seriously is that it provides assurance that patients and others are neither deceived nor coerced. Present debates about the relative importance of generic and specific consent do not address this issue squarely. Consent is a propositional attitude, so intransitive: complete, wholly specific (...) consent is an illusion. Since the point of consent procedures is to limit deception and coercion, they should be designed to give patients and others control over the amount of information they receive and opportunity to rescind consent already given. (shrink)

Holland argues that environmental deliberation should return to classical questions about the nature of the good life, understood as the worthwhile life. Holland's proposal contrasts with the revived hedonist conception of the good life which has been influential on environmentalism. The concept of the worthwhile life needs to be carefully distinguished from those of the happy life and the dutiful life. Holland's account of the worthwhile life captures the narrative dimension of human well-being which is revealed but inadequately addressed by (...) hedonic research. Environmental concerns are better understood from a non-hedonist perspective. An Aristotelian version of this perspective also offers the institutional focus which Holland suggests is required in environmental deliberation. (shrink)

This article is a close reading of Jacques Derrida's critique of Marcel Mauss's classic, The Gift, and its revision through Charles Baudelaire's `The Counterfeit Coin'. Derrida's rejection of any exchange/reciprocity relation in the gift as an immoral binding of free subjects strangely accommodates the current ideological crisis of the gift in welfare societies. Moreover, Derrida's textual substitution of Baudelaire for Mauss repeats the counterfeit practice on which his own aporia of the gift is based.

T. M. Scanlon’s work on the value of equality provides the resources for developing a powerful and distinctive contractualist egalitarian view. This view acknowledges a range of egalitarian concerns, of a diverse nature, and points us towards a picture of the place of equality in the normative landscape that is richer and more complex than some other alternative views. I describe the outlines of this contractualist egalitarian view, addressing questions regarding its strength and scope. I then discuss the relationship of (...) equality to other values, such as fairness and community, and examine the contrast between contractualist egalitarian and luck egalitarian views. I conclude with a sketch of some of the practical implications that might follow from further pursuit of Scanlon’s insights on the value of equality, in the hope that this may suggest an interesting direction of travel for further work. (shrink)

'Two things', wrote Kant, 'fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: the starry heavens above and the moral law within'. Many would argue that since Kant's day, the study of the starry heavens has advanced while ethics has stagnated, and in particular that Kant's ethics offers an empty formalism that tells us nothing about how we should live. In Acting on Principle Onora O'Neill shows that Kantian ethics has practical as well as philosophical importance. First published (...) in 1975, the book is regarded as a classic account and defence of the Kantian ethical position. It addresses Kant's account of reasoning about action, in particular his controversial claim that the Categorical Imperative guides action and is basic to ethics and justice. This second edition offers a substantial new introduction and updated bibliography, and will be valuable for a wide readership in Kant studies and those studying ethics. (shrink)

Trust is valuable when placed in trustworthy agents and activities, but damaging or costly when placed in untrustworthy agents and activities. So it is puzzling that much contemporary work on trust – such as that based on polling evidence – studies generic attitudes of trust in types of agent, institution or activity in complete abstraction from any account of trustworthiness. Information about others’ generic attitudes of trust or mistrust that take no account of evidence whether those attitudes are well or (...) ill placed can offer little or no help for those who aim to place or refuse trust well. Information about attitudes is evidently useful to those who aim to influence those who hold them, which explains why polls about attitudes are popular with political parties, advertisers and other campaigning organisations. But where we aim not to influence others, but to place and refuse trust intelligently we must link trust to trustworthiness, and must focus on evidence of honesty, competence and r... (shrink)