Relational Liberty Revisited: Membership, Solidarity, and a Public Health Ethics of Place

Public Health Ethics, p. 1, 2015

11 Pages Posted: 28 Jun 2015

See all articles by Bruce Jennings

Bruce Jennings

Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society; Center for Humans and Nature; The Hastings Center; Yale School of Public Health

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Date Written: September 1, 2014

Abstract

Public health involves the use of power to change institutions and redistribute resources and deliberately to shape of individual thought and behavior. This requires normative legitimation and demands ethical critique. This paper explores concepts that are vital to public health ethics, but have been relatively neglected. These are membership, solidarity, and the concept of place. The paper argues that the practice of public health should recognize the equal rights of membership in communities of health justice. Public health should also rely on a sense obligation and mutual aid in a world of shared vulnerability and reciprocal recognition. Finally, public health achieves its goals not merely — and perhaps not most fundamentally — through information and altering the logical ratiocination of individuals or groups, but rather through the reformation of sense and sensibility.

Keywords: Community, dignity, liberalism, mutuality, membership, place, relational liberty, solidarity

Suggested Citation

Jennings, Bruce, Relational Liberty Revisited: Membership, Solidarity, and a Public Health Ethics of Place (September 1, 2014). Public Health Ethics, p. 1, 2015, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2623732

Bruce Jennings (Contact Author)

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