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Public Health Ethics and Liberalism

Radoilska, Lubomira V. (2009) Public Health Ethics and Liberalism. Public Health Ethics, 2 (2). pp. 135-145. ISSN 1754-9981. (doi:10.1093/phe/php010) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:40758)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/phe/php010

Abstract

This paper defends a distinctly liberal approach to public health ethics and replies to possible objections. In particular, I look at a set of recent proposals aiming to revise and expand liberalism in light of public health's rationale and epidemiological findings. I argue that they fail to provide a sociologically informed version of liberalism. Instead, they rest on an implicit normative premise about the value of health, which I show to be invalid. I then make explicit the unobvious, republican background of these proposals. Finally, I expand on the liberal understanding of freedom as non-interference and show its advantages over the republican alternative of freedom as non-domination within the context of public health. The views of freedom I discuss in the paper do not overlap with the classical distinction between negative and positive freedom. In addition, my account differentiates the concepts of freedom and autonomy and does not rule out substantive accounts of the latter. Nor does it confine political liberalism to an essentially procedural form.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1093/phe/php010
Additional information: number of additional authors: 0;
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Culture and Languages
Depositing User: Lubomira Radoilska
Date Deposited: 07 Mar 2014 00:05 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:15 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/40758 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Radoilska, Lubomira V..

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6442-0459
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