A Common Morality Approach to Environmental Health Ethics

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F60076658%3A12110%2F17%3A43896162" target="_blank" >RIV/60076658:12110/17:43896162 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315643724" target="_blank" >http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315643724</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315643724" target="_blank" >10.4324/9781315643724</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

A Common Morality Approach to Environmental Health Ethics

Original language description

Environmental health comprises the study of environmental factors that affect human health, such as radiation and chemicals, and as such often addresses problems of a global nature, transcending a local or regional context. Related questions of values and norm need therefore also to be considered from a global perspective, whereas they are still mostly discussed in terms of concepts of ?Western? moral philosophy such as utilitarianism or deontology. Such a discourse is only beginning. Beauchamp and Childress in their ?Principles of Biomedical Ethics? suggest that there exists a ?common morality? which is ?not relative to cultures or individuals, because it transcends both?. They propose four cross-culturally valid principles for decision making in medicine: respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice. I have argued elsewhere and will argue here that their approach can serve as a model for environmental health as well. They need to be complemented, however, with other principles some of which can be understood as corollaries or extensions of the original four, others as applications in terms of procedural ethics. These are dignity, precaution, solidarity, and sustainability on the one hand, and inclusiveness, accountability, empathy, and transparency on the other. Their relationship to the ones proposed by Beauchamp and Childress will be briefly discussed. The main question to be addressed, however, is whether the proposed principles are indeed part of a ?common morality.? This, it will be argued, cannot be decided by a global opinion poll, but has to be based on an analysis of the written and oral traditions which have provided ethical orientation throughout history and are still considered seminal by a majority of people. It turns out that there are indeed many commonalities across cultures and the concept of globally shared core values for environmental health is not hopelessly idealistic.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

C - Chapter in a specialist book

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

30304 - Public and environmental health

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2017

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Book/collection name

Ethics of Environmental Health

ISBN

978-1-138-18662-0

Number of pages of the result

18

Pages from-to

51-68

Number of pages of the book

182

Publisher name

Routledge Earthscan

Place of publication

Oxford

UT code for WoS chapter

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