The aim of this article is to study the relationship between Epicureanism and pandemic priority-setting and to explore whether Epicurus's philosophy is compliant with the later developed utilitarianism. We find this aim interesting because Epicurus had a different way of valuing death than our modern society does: Epicureanism holds that death—understood as the incident of death—cannot be bad (or good) for those who die (self-regarding effects). However, this account is still consistent with the view that a particular death can be (...) bad for everyone else but those who die, such as family, friends, and society (other-regarding effects). During the pandemic, the focus has been on the number of deaths more than on the suffering and reduced well-being of those infected and the rest of society. However, since the pandemic requires prioritization, it is, on a utilitarian account, important to consider priorities that do the most good overall. In this article, we approach the harm of death from an Epicurean point of view, seeking to flesh out potential implications for pandemic priority-setting, and healthcare in general, using a case study of COVID-19 priority-setting. We also explore whether this would conflict with utilitarianism. We conclude that an Epicurean pandemic priority-setting approach would be different but, surprisingly, not radically different from many of the actual priority-setting decisions we saw under the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Ethicists have investigated ethical problems in other disciplines, but there has not been much discussion of the ethics of their own activities. Research in ethics has many ethical problems in common with other areas of research, and it also has problems of its own. The researcher’s integrity is more precarious than in most other disciplines, and therefore even stronger procedural checks are needed to protect it. The promotion of some standpoints in ethical issues may be socially harmful, and even our (...) decisions as to which issues we label as “ethical” may have unintended and potentially harmful social consequences. It can be argued that ethicists have an obligation to make positive contributions to society, but the practical implications of such an obligation are not easily identified. This article provides an overview of ethical issues that arise in research into ethics and in the application of such research. It ends with a list of ten practical proposals for how these issues should be dealt with. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between utility and justice in the ancient Epicurean tradition, and as it developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries following the revival of Epicureanism in the writings of Pierre Gassendi. It focuses on the significance of various allusions to a line from Horace, ‘utilitas, justi prope mater et aequi’, which appeared in writings of Hugo Grotius, David Hume, and Jeremy Bentham, and was used to give utility a prominence in modern hought that it had not (...) hitherto received. The article attempts to provide the context for Hume’s belief in the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals that the foundation of justice was utility and for Bentham placing utility at the foundation of his system. (shrink)

The larger topic which interests me is the general influence of the Greeks on Mill but here I shall concentrate on one aspect of this larger problem – can some of the difficulties which Mill is seen as getting into with his modified utilitarianism be better understood through an appreciation of the primacy of Greek views on happiness instead of the usual emphasis given to the Benthamite starting-point? The traditional objections to Mill's version of utility hardly need rehearsing: how can (...) he admit a qualitative element into a scale which only objectively measures quantity? How can he include the higher nature of man in a scheme which only recognizes pleasures and pains? Whether these and other criticisms lead the commentator to condemn Mill's attempt or whether they act as a springboard to discover a plausible defence of Mill, there is today a consensus that Mill's trouble arises from tampering with Bentham as a result of later alien influences. (shrink)