scholarly journals Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 3-26
Author(s):  
Alex John London
Keyword(s):  
Research Ethics ◽  
Social Order ◽  
International Research ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Moral Claim ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Community Members ◽  
The Common ◽  
Managing Risk

This chapter provides an overview of the main arguments in the book. It outlines eight problematic commitments that cause fault lines in the foundations of research ethics and that are rejected in subsequent chapters. It then shows how a conception of the common good connects research to the ability of key social institutions to safeguard the basic interests of community members. The resulting view grounds an imperative to promote research of a certain kind, while requiring that those efforts be organized as a voluntary scheme of social cooperation that respects its various contributors’ moral claim to be treated as free and equal. A framework for assessing and managing risk is proposed that can reconcile these goals and it is argued that connecting research to larger requirements of a just social order expands the issues and actors that fall under the purview of the field while providing a more coherent and unified foundation for domestic and international research.

scholarly journals The Common Good and the Egalitarian Research Imperative

2021 ◽  
pp. 117-174
Author(s):  
Alex John London
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Moral Claim ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Community Members ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Common ◽  
Central Claim

This chapter distinguishes two conceptions of the common good and argues that reluctance to embrace a research imperative grounded in the corporate conception of the common good is sound. In contrast, it is argued that the basic or generic interest conception of the common good grounds an imperative with two requirements: to carry out research that produces the information necessary to enable a community’s basic social systems to efficiently and equitably advance the basic interests of its members and to ensure that this activity is organized as a voluntary scheme of social cooperation that respects the moral claim of its constituent members to be treated as free and equal. A central claim of this chapter is that an imperative to improve the capacity of social institutions to secure the interests of community members can be reconciled with fundamental moral respect for the status of the individuals who make such progress possible.

scholarly journals For the Common Good

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex John London
Keyword(s):  
Research Ethics ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
The Common ◽  
Study Participants

The foundations of research ethics are riven with fault lines emanating from a fear that if research is too closely connected to weighty social purposes an imperative to advance the common good through research will justify abrogating the rights and welfare of study participants. The result is an impoverished conception of the nature of research, an incomplete focus on actors who bear important moral responsibilities, and a system of ethics and oversight highly attuned to the dangers of research but largely silent about threats of ineffective, inefficient, and inequitable medical practices and health systems. In For the Common Good: Philosophical Foundations of Research Ethics, Alex John London defends a conception of the common good that grounds a moral imperative with two requirements. The first is to promote research that generates the information necessary to enable key social institutions to effectively, efficiently, and equitably safeguard the basic interests of individuals. The second is to ensure that research is organized as a voluntary scheme of social cooperation that respects its various contributors’ moral claims to be treated as free and equal. Connecting research to the goals of a just social order grounds a framework for assessing and managing research risk that reconciles these requirements and justifies key oversight practices in non-paternalistic terms. Reconceiving research ethics as resolving coordination problems and providing credible assurance that these requirements are being met expands the issues and actors that fall within the purview of the field and provides the foundation for a more unified and coherent approach to domestic and international research.

scholarly journals Fear of the Common Good and the Neglect of Justice

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-86
Author(s):  
Alex John London
Keyword(s):  
Research Ethics ◽  
Social Order ◽  
International Research ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
Standard Of Care ◽  
Host Community ◽  
The Common ◽  
Post Trial

This chapter traces the practical and conceptual origins of eight problematic commitments including the perception that there is an inherent moral dilemma at the heart of research with humans and the tendency to conceptualize research as a private transaction between researchers and participants without clear connections to the requirements of a just social order. It introduces readers who are new to research ethics to key cases and documents relating to domestic and international research and illustrates how they gave rise to the problematic views that produce conceptual and practical tensions in the field. The chapter frames the questions that will be addressed in subsequent chapters, including issues about research risk; the role of paternalism in research ethics; and requirements relating to responsiveness to host community health needs, the standard of care, and post-trial access in international research.

“Literary Institutions are Founded and Endowed for the Common Good”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Dorn
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Higher Learning ◽  
The Public ◽  
Regional Center ◽  
The Common ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Civic Mindedness ◽  
Primary Mission

This chapter examines Bowdoin College, which was supported by district elites who worked to erect a regional center of higher learning to which they could send their sons rather than incur the cost of dispatching them south to other colleges. On the morning of Bowdoin's opening, appointed president Joseph McKeen pronounced the college's primary mission: “That the inhabitants of this district may have their own sons to fill the liberal professions among them, and particularly to instruct them in the principles and practice of our holy religion, is doubtless the object of this institution.” This conception of higher education's function in American society drew heavily on a social ethos of civic-mindedness that assigned priority to social responsibility over individuals' self indulgence. Characterized by the practice of civic virtue and a commitment to the public good, civic-mindedness provided social institutions, including those dedicated to higher learning, a source from which to derive their central aims.

Thinking Collectively

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Spicker
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Working Together ◽  
The Common

Thinking collectively is a book about the meaning, implications and value of collectivism in social policy. Collectivism is not a single, unitary idea; it covers a wide range of approaches that depend on the importance of groups and organisations in social life. Substantive collectivism is the idea that we live, not as 'individuals', but as the members of social groups, like families, neighbourhoods and communities, and that many of our actions are done together with others in organisations and social institutions. Methodological collectivism looks for explanations and patterns of behaviour not in the actions of individual human beings, but in the actions of groups. Moral collectivism begins from the premise that collective social groups - families, businesses, institutions, governments and countries - are moral agents; that they have rights and responsibilities, that groups as well as individuals can take moral action, and that the morality of their actions can sensibly be assessed in those terms. Collective action is defined, not by what is to be done, but how. The practice of collective action, and the character of provision made, tend in their turn to influence the kinds of things that people want their services to do. Democratic deliberation, voice and empowerment become the expectation and practice of public services; co-operation, working together, sharing and solidarity come to be seen as virtues in themselves. The book makes a case for a collective approach to the common weal, based on society, the common good, solidarity, stewardship, rights, equality and a sense of common enterprise.

The Meaningful City

2019 ◽  
pp. 465-486
Author(s):  
Ruth Yeoman
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Sustainable City ◽  
Rich Diversity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
The Common ◽  
The City

This chapter applies the value of meaningfulness to a philosophy of the city. It argues that philosophies of the city can supply smart and sustainable city initiatives with human values and attention to the common good which they currently lack. By bringing the value of meaningfulness into a description of city-making, the chapter shows how city people have responsibilities to make the city when the activities of social cooperation associated with discharging such responsibilities are constituted by freedom, autonomy, and dignity, and when the social interactions of meaning-making are just. The features of an ethico-normative architecture which is capable of promoting city-level meaningfulness are specified. These include three core elements: public meaningfulness; the society of meaning-makers; and agonistic republicanism. City-making organized to manifest these features will generate a rich diversity of meaning sources on which city people can draw to craft meaningfulness in life and in work.

A Failure of Modernization: Police Reform, The “Common Good,” and Serfdom In Eighteenth-Century Russia

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-271
Author(s):  
Hugh D. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Creation

For Russian subjects not locked away in their villages and thereby subject almost exclusively to landlord control, administration in the eighteenth century increasingly took the form of the police. And as part of the bureaucracy of governance, the police existed within the constructions of the social order—as part of social relations and their manifestations through political control. This article investigates the social and mental structures—the habitus—in which the actions of policing took place to provide a better appreciation of the difficulties of reform and modernization. Eighteenth-century Russia shared in the European discourse on the common good, the police, and social order. But whereas Michel Foucault and Michael Ignatieff see police development in Europe with its concern to surveil and discipline emerging from incipient capitalism and thus a product of new, post-Enlightenment social forces, the Russian example demonstrates the power of the past, of a habitus rooted in Muscovy. Despite Peter’s and especially Catherine’s well-intended efforts, Russia could not succeed in modernization, for police reforms left the enserfed part of the population subject to the whims of landlord violence, a reflection, in part, of Russia having yet to make the transition from the feudal manorial economy based on extra-economic compulsion to the capitalist hired-labor estate economy. The creation of true centralized political organization—the creation of the modern state as defined by Max Weber—would require the state’s domination over patrimonial jurisdiction and landlord control over the police. That necessitated the reforms of Alexander II.

Republicanism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell L. Hanson
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Degree Of Control ◽  
The Common ◽  
Conflicting Interests

Significant divisions exist in all societies and communities of any size. The expression of these divisions in politics takes many forms, one of them republican. The hallmark of republican politics is the subordination of different interests to the common weal, or what is in the interest of all citizens. To ensure this outcome, government in a republic can never be the exclusive preserve of one interest or social order; it must always be controlled jointly by representatives of all major groups in a society. The degree of control exercised by representatives of different social elements may not be equal, and different styles of government are compatible with republican objectives. However, all republican governments involve power-sharing in some way. Even in a democratic republic political majorities must share power with minorities for the common good to be realized. Maintaining an appropriate balance of political power is the chief problem of republicans. One or another faction may obtain control of government and use it to further its own interests, instead of the common weal. To prevent this republicans have developed a variety of strategies. Some rely on constitutional ‘checks and balances’ to cure the mischief of factionalism. Others seek to minimize factionalization itself by regulating the causes of faction – for example, the distribution of land and other forms of property. Still others promote civic religions in order to bind diverse people together. All these methods accept the inevitability of conflicting interests, and see the need to accommodate them politically. Hence, civic life is at the heart of republicanism.

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