What we owe to our pets
Australians love having pets around. But what are our obligations to our animal companions?
Much has been said about the benefits of living with pets – from companionship to improved mental and physical health. Out of two thirds of Australia households that are home to at least one pet, a whopping 85% of owners have said that pets have a positive impact on their lives.
In other words, they’re good for us. But are we good for them? And what are our obligations in these relationships so many of us find ourselves in?
Legally, we own animals. We purchase them, register them as our pets, and pay for their routine and emergency health care where required. In this way, pets are similar to property. But that doesn’t mean we can treat them like ordinary property.
Unlike us, animals are not typical “moral agents”. They cannot make and enact ethical decisions, like choosing between different foods based on their carbon footprint, or making an informed choice about breeding if there is a risk of passing a heritable disorder to offspring.
Pets fall into the category of “moral patients” – beings who matter morally, but who are subjects of our moral consideration and actions. They need us to make good decisions for them. This is especially important because we take them out of their natural environment and bring them into our homes, environments designed specifically to cater to the needs of our species. We require animals to live within these spaces and adapt to our lifestyles.
Sometimes we forget how challenging this can be. For example, animals may be nocturnal, but we expect them to adapt to the hours we keep. Indoor dogs rely on us to provide outside access for toileting and exercise. Cats rely on us to change their litter tray and provide suitable surfaces to scratch and climb. They cannot predict when our routines – and hence their routines – will change.
As a veterinarian, sometimes my client (a human) will tell me that my patient (an animal), urinated outside of the designated toileting area “to spite them” when they were late home from work. It is not uncommon for humans to attribute hostile intentions to animals who display behaviours we find problematic, when these behaviours may be manifestations of an animal’s frustration if their needs are not met (e.g. provision of multiple litter trays for cats, lack of choice).
As a result, shelters are full of animals who have, for one reason or another, not been able to adapt to human behaviour. This is not the fault of the animal; it’s often due to our unrealistic expectations.
In Australia, we tend to think of “responsible pet ownership” as ensuring that pets are well behaved (that is, they do not cause a nuisance to others), that they are microchipped, desexed and registered, and that we provide appropriate food, water, shelter and veterinary care as required.
Though many people would characterise their role in terms that go beyond “ownership”. Indeed, the use of the term “pet owner” has decreased, in favour of terms like “guardian” or “caretaker” or even “pet parent”. This reflects a view that animals are more like family members than property.
Animal welfare science and legislation increasingly reflect the position that we need to provide animals with lives worth living, or good lives. That is, not just minimisation of poor welfare and associated negative mental experiences or feelings, but striving to maximise positive mental experiences.
The early view of good animal welfare was informed by the “Five Freedoms” model of animal welfare. These include freedom from: pain, injury and disease; fear and distress; discomfort; hunger and thirst; and to express normal behaviour.
But according to the more recent “Five Domains”, physical and functional factors including nutrition, physical environment, health, behavioural interactions with other animals, humans and the environment) influence mental experiences (the fifth domain).
This model stresses that what matters most to animals is their subjective experiences. Therefore, just acting to minimise negative mental experiences (such as confining a dog to stop them running on the road and experiencing a painful injury), doesn’t necessarily lead to positive welfare.
To ensure that an animal has a good life, they should be able to have more positive than negative experiences. With the example of the confined dog, that means providing, where possible, opportunities for positive interaction with animals, people and the environment. Walks. Sniffing. Chasing a ball (if that’s their game). Spending time with them. Of course, not all animals are social species. We need to pay attention to the preferences of animals, and, where possible, offer them choice, so they can experience positive welfare.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make unpopular choices for them. While sentient animals – including humans – like to exercise choice or agency, we need to ensure that those choices are likely to lead to sustained positive welfare rather than poor welfare. So while an indoor cat may have a ravenous appetite, indulging the cat to the point where they become obese is likely to lead to poor welfare in the long term.
We need to remind ourselves that, as humans living in environments designed almost exclusively for humans, we expect a lot of our animal companions. In addition to meeting their basic needs, we should aim to provide them with good lives. This requires doing a bit of research, observing animals carefully, and learning from them. Our lives are richer for it.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY Dr Anne Quain
Dr Anne Quain is a veterinarian with additional qualifications in the field of animal welfare. Anne is interested in all aspects of small animal health, particularly animal welfare. She also has a BA in arts, majoring in philosophy. Her PhD research explored the types of ethically challenging situations encountered by veterinary team members, and evaluated ’ethics rounds’, a form of clinical ethics support designed to foster a sense of moral community among veterinary team members. She is interested in exploring the impact of ethically challenging situations on veterinary practitioners and believes that philosophy must be accessible, engaging and ultimately practical.
6 dangerous ideas from FODI 2024
From dangerous dissenters to powerful provocations – this year Festival of Dangerous Ideas speakers covered some of the thorniest dilemmas of our time.
Here are 6 things we learnt at FODI 2024:
Our ideological chambers can be dismantled, but only if we can listen to others
Sharing some of the more extreme responses to her work, cultural critic Roxane Gay examines the costs of unapologetically sharing bold ideas and opinions.
Speaking to the current state of fragmented discourse, where our political differences are more calcified than ever, Gay says “This mode of discourse assumes that what we believe in and our faith in what we know are so fragile that they cannot stand thoughtful engagement”. In her talk, she says there is still hope to create progress if we are able to become more elastic in our thoughts, “to stop screaming and start listening”.
The machines are killing our kids
Psychologist Jean Twenge makes the case that younger generations are suffering in life-altering ways because of the amount of time they spend looking at screens. Through years of research and millions of survey responses, she argues that since the proliferation of smartphones, adolescents and teens are increasingly and significantly more likely to suffer from symptoms of depression, while simultaneously are much less likely to engage in positive wellbeing practices like sleeping enough, seeing friends or exercising.
Twenge proposes that a radical shift in the amount we use our phones is needed (as young people, as parents and as a society) to reverse these harmful effects.
We need to engage in a culture of growth rather than cancellation
If podcast host Megan Phelps-Roper had left the extremist Westboro Baptist Church today, cancel culture might have meant she’d never have been forgiven, and she wouldn’t have become such a powerful voice for persuasion and reconciliation. Speaking on the Uncancelled Culture panel, Megan argues for a radical form of forgiveness, where we’re forced to recognise someone’s humanity, consider not just what they did but why, and take a chance on the possibility of redemption. While it can be difficult for us to set aside our sense of justice to engage with empathy, just as it can be difficult for us to express contrition for our own errors, but it’s only in doing so that we will shift from cancel culture to a culture of growth.
Coming to terms with our desire for something greater can help us understand the human condition
In a cheeky conversation and book reading, comedian and author David Baddiel says his desperate desire for God convinced him that there isn’t one. “Desire provides no frame for reality”, says Baddiel. This recognition can at once be a liberation from our impulses, while at the same time be a reminder and a call for us to embrace the common humanity that compels us all to crave order within the chaos of life.
In difficult conversations, the most effective tool to communicate with our opponent is empathy
One year on from the release of the divisive podcast series The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, host and former member of the Westboro Baptist Church Megan Phelps Roper, and podcast producer and journalist Andy Mills reflect on the radical power of listening when we come across viewpoints in direct opposition of our own.
As they dissect the reasoning that led them to wade into the difficult cultural conversation surrounding sex and gender, Phelps-Roper cites her previous experience talking at the 2018 Festival of Dangerous Ideas about leaving the Westboro Baptist church “Listening is not agreeing, empathy is not a betrayal of your cause… My life was profoundly changed by exactly that kind of dialogue. It’s what caused me to leave extremism and find meaning and love and freedom and grace in a world I’d been taught was evil”.
Denial sustains liberal imagination
How can a left leaning Western person reconcile the commitment to democracy and civil rights, with support for a state that practices apartheid? Academic Saree Makdisi argues it’s because we are living in a culture of denial. He says the mechanisms of occlusion, narrative and appealing to progressive Western values serve to make us overlook the world’s horrors.
Catch up on select FODI 2024 sessions, streaming on demand for a limited time only.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
What are we afraid of? Horror movies and our collective fears
In 1968, the dead walked the Earth. George A. Romero’s The Night of The Living Dead, shot on a shoestring budget in black and white and film stock, was the movie that popularised zombies as we now know them.
In the film, a ragtag group of survivors must band together, as corpses rise from the grave in a desperate search for human flesh.
Night of the Living Dead was a smash hit. It made more than 250 times its budget, becoming a cultural talking point, and scarring an entire generation. Taken on face value, its success is surprising. The film is unremittingly bleak, even for a horror movie – aside from the blood and guts, it also ends with one of cinema’s great downers, as the film’s hero, Ben (Duane Jones), is murdered not by the zombies, but instead an armed posse dispatched to kill the zombies, who confuse him for a reanimated corpse.
Given Ben is African-American, the film’s final image – his dead body set alight, burning to ash on top of a pile of zombie corpses – had powerful, painful symbolism for audiences in the late sixties. It was a time of huge social upheaval; of struggle, pain, and change. America was still in the midst of the Vietnam war, and the Civil Rights movement was continuing to gather steam.
Indeed, that collective social suffering is precisely the means of explaining Night of the Living Dead’s great success. Mired in images of real-life suffering, beamed into their homes via their TV sets, American audiences flocked to see a film that gave a voice to the feeling of the times – its ambient horror. To borrow a quote from horror director Wes Craven, Night of the Living Dead didn’t “create” fear – it released it.
Naming the unnamable
Horror’s persistent success – slashers almost always make money, and are a go-to for indie directors precisely because they’re almost guaranteed to make a financial return – speaks to the genre’s ability to address the unnamed. Each generation has its trauma, and each generation has a horror film that speaks to that trauma.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, released in 1960, was a reaction to a spate of serial murders – chiefly the killings committed by Ed Gein. Rosemary’s Baby, released the same year as Night of the Living Dead, bottled the collective anxiety that came from modern urbanisation: set in a sprawling apartment block, it posits that you can never truly know your neighbours. Carrie channeled first wave feminism, and the oppression conducted by both men and the church; Clive Barker’s Hellraiser explored queerness and kink, and the violent reaction to it; Hostel and Saw, the forerunners of the “torture porn” movement, were birthed by images of violence released out of Abu Ghraib; and Get Out compressed years of racist oppression into one shocking tale.
In this way, horror films tap into what philosopher and psychologist Carl Jung referred to as the “collective unconsciousness”. Jung believed that we all have both personal unconsciousness, and an unconsciousness shared by all. This deeper, shared unconsciousness is populated by “instincts”, “primal fears”, and “archetypes.” These archetypes directly tie us back to our ancestors – they are as old as human beings are. They are core figures, images, and stories, that, given they are located deep inside us, are frequently “strange” and disturbing. Jung gave these archetypes names, from “eternity” to “the profane”.
Horror draws on these archetypes. In fact, given how common archetypes are – we cannot help, Jung thought, coming back to them – sometimes, these archetypes can be described as “cliches.” Just as the collective unconsciousness keeps returning to specific images and figures, so too does horror have its tropes: the masked murderer; the demon child; the haunted house; the animal that appears as a harbinger of doom.
This is why horror movies tap us in a deep, powerful way. They apply images and stories to things that live deep inside us; that are innate. Indeed, the philosopher William James thought that fear was key to the unconscious – he argued that if you dropped an Eskimo into the African savannah, they would know to be afraid of a lion, even if they had never encountered one before. Whether we like it or not, terror lives somewhere deep inside us; an unavoidable vein of anxiety, running through the human condition. By engaging with that, horror movies hit us on a primal level – and bring us closer to each other.
The release of fear
This releasing quality of horror films has been proven to have personally therapeutic benefits. Horror movies allow us to confront our fears directly; to expose ourselves to them. But more than that, they allow us to do so in a controlled, calm setting.
When we’re terrified by a horror movie, we’re not terrified in the same way we would be if we were literally in the situation outlined. Our brains know, on some level, that we are safe; protected; sitting at home, or in a movie theatre. A recent study showed that horror movies can provide “stress release, managing real-life fears, and gradually reducing the impact of stressors through exposure to danger and fear in a controlled environment.”
But horror movies don’t just help individuals expose themselves to fear. Their hugely beneficial ethical dimension is their ability to help societies to understand their fears.
We cannot solve or change something that we cannot name. Without proper language – without images – we cannot hope to confront the sick or ailing parts of our society. Horror movies funnel collective anxieties into precise ones. And with their image as a kind of vocabulary, we can start talking about these issues, and in that way, move to change them.
Indeed, stories of horror and evil have historically served as a way of forming and reinforcing moral judgement. We tell ourselves stories of what taboos look like when they are broken in order to remind ourselves of the importance of those taboos. Using these narratives, we can come together in order to decide what is permissible and what is not – the shock of anti-social, violent behaviour moving us towards a place of steadfast moral judgement. The horror movie only scares us because it shows us what we shouldn’t do, what we don’t want, what we, collectively, will work to avoid.
This quality of sharing is important. The success of a film like Get Out brought people together. It cut across class, gender and racial divides. In cinemas across the world, people sat in the dark, and discovered that they were afraid of the same thing as the person in the seat next to them. And it is from that base of solidarity – provided by cinematic nightmares, no less – that special things can happen.
Image: Get Out, Universal Pictures
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY Joseph Earp
Joseph Earp is a poet, journalist and philosophy student. He is currently undertaking his PhD at the University of Sydney, studying the work of David Hume.
Should I have children? Here’s what the philosophers say
Parenthood has traditionally been considered the normal outcome of growing up. A side effect of reaching maturity.
Across Europe and the US, only 10%-20% of adults remain childless or (more positively) child free. In some cases, this is accidental. People wait for an ideal time that never arrives – and then it is too late.
Anti-natalism is the philosophical view that it is ethically wrong to bring anyone else into being. The justifications draw upon worries about suffering and choice. And it’s not an exclusively modern attitude. The ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, writing at the end of the 5th century BC, tells us that it is “best of all” not to have been born, because life contains far more suffering than good.
Contemporary anti-natalist arguments add a nuance by focusing on an asymmetry between pain and its absence. The absence of all pain is good, but this good can only be achieved through not bringing anyone into existence at all. The presence of pain is bad, and it is always part of life. So why forego the certainty of a good thing for the certainty of many bad things?
Philosopher David Benatar presents the best known contemporary argument along these lines in his 2006 Sophocles-inspired book, Better Never to have Been:
“It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place.”
Other versions of anti-natalism focus instead upon the fact that nobody chooses to exist. Existence is thrust upon us. Inconveniently, this suggests that the vast number of teenagers who tell their parents: “I didn’t ask to be born”, may in fact be budding philosophers.
The problem with anti-natalism
Anti-natalist arguments can sound like something from Oscar Wilde, rather than practical guidance for life. This makes them difficult to challenge. However, one popular response is to say that a refutation is unnecessary.
Having children is part of the canvas on which ethics is painted, rather than part of the picture. The ethical picture can change, but the canvas is not optional. It holds our way of human life in place. Individuals can choose to procreate or not to procreate, but rejecting parenthood entirely has no place within a good society.
Critics find this response evasive. Many of us also wonder why humans are drawn toward parenthood and what we might be missing if we choose not to procreate. Schopenhauer answers the “why” question in The World as Will and Representation (1818) by claiming that biology overrides sound judgement and tricks us into producing the next generation.
But is it really a trick? After all, there do seem to be some important good things bound into parenthood.
The philosophical benefits of parenthood
Plato’s Lysis struggles to identify these good aspects of parental care. His central character, Socrates, gives some young men a hard time when they cannot identify what benefit they bring to their parents. What they fail to recognise is that the goods of parenthood involve seeing a child grow and mature – and finding meaning in the process.
This recognition of the role played by care for others is also present in many religious traditions – particularly in the ways that they address life’s sufferings.
Buddhists celebrate the rebirth of enlightened humans into a world of suffering in the hope that they may help other beings.
Confucians highlight that, across generations, children can care for parents and grandparents.
In both cases, care binds a good society together, in ways that sustain social hope. In contemporary social economy, the younger generation of taxpayers supports older generations as well as childcare.
While non-existence would avoid may bad things, new humans carry the possibility of making the future better than the past. Losing such hope for the future would be terrible all round.
Focusing instead on the lack of choice exercised by a nonexistent, unborn human generates interesting philosophical puzzles, but bypasses what runs philosophically deep. Such as the wonder that the female body is where the creation of all humans happens – the place where every pianist, pickpocket and anti-natalist starts out.
The female power to give birth also counteracts complex forms of sociocultural control and sets in motion practical problems: who will become family members of a new human? Will relatives and our wider society care in the right ways?
Women must make the final decision about giving or not giving birth. At the same time, to give life a sense of meaning, we share our lives with friends, life partners, and children. Disappointment, joy and loss are part of the package. Even Schopenhauer, who spurned parental love, felt the need to lavish care upon his beloved dog.
We can love and find meaning without having children. But parenthood is one of our more entrenched ways of trying to live meaningful lives. For some, there may be no other workable path. Personal histories can lead any of us to feel incomplete without children. More disturbingly, it can lead people to feel like failures if they remain childless. And that, surely, is a bad thing.
In a rare Sydney appearance, philosopher David Benatar presents The Case for Not Having Children at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas on Sunday 25 August, 2024. Tickets on sale now.
This article was originally published in The Conversation.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY Tony Milligan
Research Fellow in the Philosophy of Ethics, Cosmological Visionaries project, King's College London.
Ethics explainer: The principle of charity
The principle of charity suggests we should assume good intentions about others and their ideas, and give them the benefit of the doubt before criticising them.
British philosopher and mathematician, Bertrand Russell, was one of the sharpest minds of his generation. Anyone deigning to offer a lecture in his presence at Cambridge University was sure to have every iota of their reasoning scrutinised and picked apart in excruciating detail.
Yet, it’s said that before criticising arguments, Russell would thank them warmly for sharing their views, then he might ask a question or two of clarification, then he’d summarise their position succinctly – often in more concise and persuasive terms than they themselves had used – and only then would he expose its flaws.
What Russell was demonstrating was the principle of charity in action. This is not a principle about giving money to the poor, it’s about assuming good intentions and giving others the benefit of the doubt when we interpret what they’re saying.
The reason we need charity when listening to others is that they rarely have the opportunity to say everything they need to say to support their view. We only have so many minutes in the day, so when we want to make an assertion or offer an argument, it’s simply not possible to account for every assumption, outline every implication and cover off all possible counterarguments.
That means there will inevitably be things left unsaid. Given our natural propensity to experience disagreement as a form of conflict, and thus shift into a defensive posture to protect our ideas (and, sometimes, our identity), it’s all too easy for us to fill in the gaps with less than charitable interpretations. We might assume the person speaking is ignorant, foolish, misled, mean spirited or riddled with vice, and fill the gaps with absurd assertions or weak arguments that we can easily dismantle.
We also have to decide whether they are speaking in good faith, or whether they’re just engaging in a bit of virtue signalling and didn’t really mean to offer their views up for scrutiny, or whether they’re trying to troll us. Again, it’s all too easy to allow our suspicions or defensiveness to take over and assume someone is speaking with ill intent.
However, doing so does them – and us – a disservice. It prevents us from understanding what they’re actually trying to say, and it blocks us from either being persuaded by a good point or offering a valid criticism where one is due. Failing to offer charity is also a sign of disrespect. And it’s well known that when people feel disrespected, they’re even more likely to double down on their defensiveness and fight to the bitter end, even if they might otherwise have been open to persuasion.
It’s probably no surprise to hear that the internet is a hotbed of uncharitable listening. Many people have been criticised, dismissed, attacked or cancelled because they have said or done something ambiguous – something that could be interpreted in either a benign or a negative light. Some commentators on social media are all too ready to uncharitably interpret these actions as revealing some hidden malice or vice, and they leap to condemnation before taking the time to unpack what the speaker really meant.
Charity requires more from us, but the rewards can be great. Charity starts by assuming that the person speaking is just as informed, intelligent and virtuous as we are – or perhaps even more so. It encourages us to assume that they are speaking in good faith and with the best of intentions.
It requires us to withhold judgement as we listen to what’s being said. If there are things that don’t make sense, or gaps that need filling, charity encourages us to ask clarificatory questions in good faith, and really listen to the answers. The final step is to repeat back what we’ve heard and frame it in the strongest possible argument, not the weakest “straw man” version. This is sometime referred to as a “steel man”.
Doing this achieves two things. First, the speaker will feel heard and respected. That immediately puts the relationship on a positive stance, where everyone feels less need to defend themselves at all costs, and it can make people open to listening to alternative viewpoints without feeling threatened.
Secondly, it gives you a fighting chance of actually understanding what the other person really believes. So many conversations end up with us talking past each other, getting more frustrated by the minute. Arriving at a point of mutual understanding can be a powerful way to connect with someone and have an actually fruitful discussion.
It is important to point out that exercising charity doesn’t mean agreeing with whatever other people say. Nor does it mean excusing statements that are false or harmful.
Charity is about how we hear what is being said, and ensuring that we give the things we hear every possibility to convince us before we seek to rebut them.
However, if we have good reason to believe that what they’re saying, after we’ve fully understood it in its strongest possible form, is false or harmful, then we need not agree with them. Indeed, we ought to speak out against falsehood and harm whenever possible. And this is where exercising charity, and building up respect, might make others more receptive to our criticisms, as were many of the people who gave a lecture in the presence of Bertrand Russell.
The principle of charity doesn’t come naturally. We often rail against views that we find ridiculous or offensive. But by practising charity, we can have a better chance of understanding what people are saying and of convincing them of the flaws in their views. And, sometimes, by filling in the gaps in what others say with the strongest possible version of their argument, we might even change our own mind from time to time.
This article has been updated since its original publication on 10 March 2017.
Experience the principle of charity in action at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas. Returning to Carriageworks, Sydney from 24-25 August 2024. Tickets on sale now at festivalofdangerousideas.com.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
10 dangerous reads for FODI24
Exploring crumbling democracies and generational warfare to moral panic, The Festival of Dangerous Ideas returns 24-25 August to Carriageworks, Sydney.
FODI24 will create a sanctuary for those wanting to cut through the noise, ask hard questions and engage in good faith conversation about the most challenging issues of our time.
Sharpen your mind with 10 dangerous books from this year’s line-up of thinkers, artists, experts and disruptors. You know, the books you need to buy before they are banned, burnt or redacted forever…
Roxane Gay: Opinions
Focusing on the art of argument, this retrospective of essays and writings from culture critic Roxane Gay covers politics, race and identity, feminism, popular culture, and more.
Roxane Gay // How to Have Dangerous Ideas // Sat 24 August, 12:30pm
David Runciman: How Democracy Ends
A provocative book by political philosopher and historian David Runciman, asks the most trenchant questions that underlie the disturbing patterns of our contemporary political life.
David Runciman // Votes for 6 Year Olds // Sat 24 August, 4:30pm
Jean Twenge: iGen
Drawing from nationally representative surveys of 11 million young people as well as in-depth interviews, iGen is the first book to document the cultural changes shaping today’s teens and young adults, documenting how their changed world has impacted their attitudes, worldviews, and mental health.
Jean Twenge // The Machines Killing Our Kids // Sat 24 August, 10:15am
David Baddiel: The God Desire
A philosophical essay that utilises comedian David Baddiel’s trademarks of storytelling and personal anecdotes, offering a highly readable new perspective on the most ancient of debates.
David Baddiel // The God Desire // Sun 25 Aug, 6:45pm
Megan Phelps-Roper: Unfollow
A gripping memoir of escaping extremism, podcast host Megan Phelps-Roper uncovers her moral awakening, her departure from the Westboro Baptist Church, and how she exchanged the absolutes she grew up with for new forms of warmth and community. Her story exposes the dangers of black-and-white thinking and the need for true humility in a time of angry polarisation.
Megan Phelps-Roper & Andy Mills // The Witch Trials // Sat 24 Aug, 6:30pm
Jem Bendell: Breaking Together
In an era of societal collapse, academic Jem Bendell explores how the full pain of our predicament can liberate us into living more courageously and creatively.
Jem Bendell // Breaking Together // Sun 25 Aug, 3:45pm
Saree Makdisi: Tolerance is a Wasteland
Academic Saree Makdisi reveals the system of emotional investments and curated perceptions that sustains the liberal imagination of a progressive and democratic Israel.
Saree Makdisi // Tolerance is a Wasteland // Sun 25 Aug, 12:45pm
Masha Gessen: Surviving Autocracy
A guide to understanding and recovering from the calamitous corrosion of American democracy over the past few years from Russian-born writer and journalist Masha Gessen.
Masha Gessen // The War of the Narratives // Sat 24 August, 2:30pm
Jen Gunter: Blood
A book from the Internet’s OBGYN that fights myths and fear mongering with real science, inclusive facts, and shame-free advice on the topic that impacts more than 1.8 billion people worldwide: menstruation.
Jen Gunter // Lifting the Curse // Sun 25 Aug, 11:45am
Coleman Hughes: The End of Race Politics
Author Coleman Huges makes the case for a colorblind approach to politics and culture, warning that the so-called ‘anti-racist’ movement is driving us—ironically—toward a new kind of racism.
Coleman Hughes & Josh Szeps // A Colourblind Society: Uncomfortable Conversations Live // Sun 25 Aug, 4:45pm
These titles, plus more will be available at the Dangerous Books x Gleebooks popup – running 10am-8pm across 24-25 August at Carriageworks, Sydney. Check out the full FODI program at festivalofdangerousideas.com
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
Meet James Shipton, our new Fellow uncovering the ethics of regulation
We’re thrilled to announce we’ve appointed James Shipton as an Ethics Centre Fellow.
Former chair of ASIC and one of Australia’s top corporate regulators, James has over 20 years experience in regulation, financial markets, the law and academia, both internationally and in Australia.
Most recently, he was the Executive Director of Harvard Law School’s Program on International Financial Systems. Prior to that, his career has included Executive Director and Commission member of the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) of Hong Kong and almost a decade at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong.
To welcome him, we sat down with James to discuss the role ethics plays when it comes to regulation and the banking and financial services industry.
Tell us, what draw you to a career in the financial services sector?
Finance always fascinated me ever since my father took me to the Melbourne Stock Exchange after school one day in the 1970s. I remember him taking me into the ‘open outcry’ market and explaining how the ‘chalkies’ wrote the bid and offer prices on black board on a mezzanine. It was exciting, noisy, and thrilling. I was hooked.
As I got older, I realised the important societal role finance played; in addition to its economic one. It facilitated modern life and allowed us all to plan for the future and prepare against risks. It is this interconnection between finance’s economic and social roles that fascinates me; that is also an intersection that is under-appreciated, including by people working in finance.
Reflecting on the Hayne Royal Commission and your role at ASIC are you now seeing some positive changes to the industry?
Yes and no. Paradoxically, the larger financial institutions were the ones who have moved in a more positive direction whilst various governments and government agencies have let the momentum slip from the Royal Commission. Perhaps, in part this was because of the pandemic but it was also ideological and/or political. The way I have described it, the Royal Commission provided a ‘sugar hit’ to ASIC and APRA; but that was fleeting, and we have returned to the status quo of lack of policy and funding prioritisation for those all-important regulators.
What kind of work will you be engaging with at The Ethics Centre?
I am currently writing a book on optimising regulation by improving regulatory design, governance, and strategy. As part of this project, I am developing ways and means for regulators and regulated persons to better understand each other; by doing so the purpose of regulation will more likely be achieved. There is a wonderful expression in Cantonese, ‘gai tong aap gong’ which translates to ‘the duck is talking to the chicken’. That is how I see regulators and the regulated; they both look similar, but they are each talking a completely different language and cannot understand the other.
Accordingly, I am working with the Centre to develop greater understanding between regulators and those regulated using ethics and professional integrity as a bridge.
I am also contributing to The Ethics Alliance & the BFSO Young Ambassadors by helping them to better understand the purpose of regulation as well as pass on some of my own professional challenges and experiences.
What does regulation mean to you? And where does ethics sit in the regulatory world?
‘Regulation’ is a much-misunderstood concept; particularly by regulators. Regulation is the modification of behaviours pursuant to norms in a sector of importance to society. Put simply, ‘regulators are in the behavioural modification business’. And since regulation is all about ‘norms’ and ‘behaviour’, ethics plays a large part in this equation.
Australia is commonly called a ‘nanny state’. From an international perspective do you think this is a fair label? As a society are we overregulating?
We have to move beyond the debate of ‘over’ or ‘under’ regulating and, instead, get regulation ‘right’. Regulatory systems are far from their optimal state because of a series or structural flaws. First of which is a lack of precision in the objectives or purpose of regulatory systems. My research suggests that most regulators lack a meaningfully precise articulation of their job; that articulation via their statutory purpose or ‘objectives’ is, usually, either as ‘wide a as the Nullarbor Plain’ or highly prescriptive but full of inconsistencies. Unlike central banks who have a clear, precise, and measurable mandates (financial stability, price stability, employment, and/or economic growth), regulators are left to interpret, execute, and then explain unclear, imprecise, and ultimately unmeasurable objectives. From this flows a raft of structural flaws that prevent regulators from ever succeeding (how can they if their definition of ‘success’ is unclear or absent!?).
Self-regulation has proven to realistically not be enough to steer people to making good choices, what do you think are the driving factors that prevent people from doing the right thing?
Self-regulation often (not always) fails for the same reason regulators fail; their objectives are unclear and/or they do not use the full suite of regulatory tools to change behaviour (especially enforcement). Regulation is the utilisation of incentives and disincentives to modify behaviour; rarely does one work without the other.
Do you think people who break the rules are bad or is it our systems that are bad?
A criminal barrister once described his clients to me as “bad, mad, or sad”, adding quickly that ‘most of them are just sad’. In the world of white colour crime, it is probably more a mixture of bad and sad; the latter usually seeing the person descend into the abyss of misconduct. Two must read books about this are: Nick Leeson’s Rogue Trader (how he triggered the collapse of Baring Bros.) and Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana Henriques.
Taking the ‘bad’ and ‘sad’ analogy further, our regulatory system needs to account for both. It must be as effective and credible as possible to disincentivise the ‘bad’ against wrongdoing; and incentivise the ‘sad’ to adhere to the purpose of regulation (again, this is why ‘regulatory purpose and objectives’ are so vital).
If you were to be an Australian ambassador to a country, which country would you choose and why?
India in a heartbeat. We have so much in common with India and the potential there – economic, cultural, and societal – is vast. (I also love the food).
And lastly the big one – what does ethics mean to you?
Its everything; its my guiding light. My personal motto is to ‘be a good person by doing good things in a good way’.
Image by Aaron Francis
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
We are witnessing just how fragile liberal democracy is – it’s up to us to strengthen its foundations
Unless we want to slip into a world where force and coercion drive politics, then we all must invest in reinforcing the institutions that keep liberal democracy working.
For most of human history, politics was — and in many parts of the world today, still is — a wilderness. Political victories were won at the point of a spear or the barrel of a gun, rather than at the ballot box. When there was a dispute about whose interests ought to take priority, how to distribute resources, or even who gets to have a say in how people live their lives, it was those who wielded the greatest force who typically got to choose. And, unsurprisingly, they often chose in favour of themselves.
This makes liberal democracy an historical anomaly. Within liberal democracy, we fully expect there to be disagreements about how best to run society — not least because the “liberal” part allows each person to define their own vision of a good life rather than having one imposed on us by others. But in liberal democracy, these disagreements are not won through coercive force but through persuasion, or as the German liberal philosopher Jürgen Habermas puts it, “the unforced force of the better argument”.
But the wall of civility surrounding the garden of liberal democracy is not impregnable. Coercive force lingers just outside, threatening to burst in and bypass the messy process of persuasion — as it did on 13 July 2024, when a would-be assassin attempted to silence former President Donald Trump with an assault rifle rather than words.
The good news is that the near universal expressions of shock and condemnation at the attempted assassination show that most people in the United States, and in other liberal democracies, still prefer to resolve their disputes within the norms of the liberal democratic garden rather than returning to the wilderness. Still, this episode serves as a potent reminder of just how fragile and important the norms that preserve liberal democracy are, and that the institutions that enable peaceful political debate require constant reinforcement.
The grand bargain
The problem is that, in recent years, liberal democracy has been failing itself. One of the “unforced forces” that keeps the system operating is a tacit buy-in on behalf of every individual within the system. We need to believe that the system is working for us, that it’s fair, and that our voice matters, otherwise we have little incentive to work within it. If we feel powerless, disenfranchised, embattled or feel our livelihood or safety is threatened, we have more reason to step outside the walls of civility.
But liberal democracies, such as the United States — and to a lesser but nonetheless significant extent, Australia — have often failed to give us good reason to believe the system is working.
For many of us, the “grand bargain” of liberal democratic society is breaking down. This bargain states that if we work hard, get a good education, and play by the rules, then we’ll have every opportunity to live a fulfilled and fulfilling life. But that’s just not the reality for a large proportion of the population. Many liberal democracies are facing an omni-crisis — combining housing, inflation, wealth inequality, climate change, mental health, loneliness, childcare, aging, the erosion of traditional jobs, the fragmentation of communities, as well as racism, sexism and other forms of systemic discrimination, and more besides.
If people feel powerless or disenfranchised, they’ll reject the constraints the system places on them to engage in peaceful debate.
Or if they feel that the stakes are so high that they can’t afford to let the other side win, then they’ll reject the ballot box and turn to other means to achieve their political ends.
How to restore faith in liberal democracy
Of course, those in power must not neglect their responsibility to protect and strengthen the system, and restore the grand bargain, even if they might forego short-term political or financial advantage in doing so.
Although it’s up to us to hold them to account. We should demand more of our elected representatives. But we must demand more of ourselves as well. We must lower the temperature of popular discourse: tune out the hyperbole, avoid partisan media, carefully curate our social media, don’t engage with those promoting conspiracy theories, and refuse to feed the trolls. Listen and ask questions of people who have different opinions. Advance our views with conviction, but also with humility. Acknowledge that there is probably not one right answer to many of the challenges we face, and that compromise is inevitable.
Just as important is building the social foundations that enable civil but spirited discourse. That means investing in our local communities to build “social capital” — the trust, respect, and norms of reciprocity that keep society functioning. Talking to your neighbour over the fence, taking your dog to the park, participating in a class at your local community centre, volunteering for a local organisation, joining an activist group — these are the grassroots of the liberal democratic garden, and they’re just as important as the larger institutions. They reinforce our common humanity; our neighbour might vote differently to us, but we still share the same human concerns.
As American political commentator Yuval Levin has stated, those we disagree with aren’t just going to disappear if we coerce them into silence or bully our way into power. Their views will persist, and if we give them no voice, they will be motivated to find other ways to be heard. We must practice tolerance and compromise, because the alternative is a return to the wilderness.
Catch Democracy is Not Worth Dying For at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Sunday 25 August at Carriageworks, Sydney. Tickets on sale now.
This article was originally published by ABC religion and Ethics.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY Tim Dean
Dr Tim Dean is a public philosopher, speaker and writer. He is Senior Philosopher and Manos Chair in Ethics at The Ethics Centre.
Trump and tyrannicide: Can political violence ever be justified?
It is remarkable that Donald Trump, former US President and presumptive Republican nominee, is alive today.
He survived an assassination attempt at relatively close range, which killed one bystander and serious injured two more. Trump himself was lightly wounded. The photograph of Trump bloodied and bellowing defiance as he is dragged from the stage by Secret Service agents has become the defining picture of this election — and perhaps the state of American democracy. It is a portrait of a demagogue who conjured violence and malice for nearly a decade in American politics only, like the sorcerer’s apprentice, to have these same forces turn against him. It is a portrait of a fracturing republic.
In the aftermath of the assassination attempt there has been universal condemnation of the attack. President Joe Biden addressed the nation declaring in no uncertain terms that there was no place for violence in American politics and that the attack was “sick”.
The condemnations seem platitudinous and empty, however — a slightly more refined form of the “thoughts and prayers” ritually offered in the wake of mass shootings. It also seems to run counter to reality.
Political violence is part of American culture. It birthed the republic in the Revolutionary War. The founding fathers all recognised that, under certain conditions, political violence was both just and necessary.
Many Americans still agree. Just last month, Richard Pape from the University of Chicago found that some 10 per cent of Americans support the use of force to stop Trump from regaining the White House, while 6.9 per cent of Americans would support the use of force to install him. That is some 44 million Americans. Simple attempts to wave political violence away is not sufficient to deal with this problem. There needs to be a serious discussion about when political violence is justifiable.
Is Trump a tyrant?
Blanket condemnations of political violence are frequently unconvincing. This would condemn us to doing nothing in the face of evil. The real discussion is about when such things are permissible. I want to address one particular act of political violence: tyrannicide.
We can distinguish tyrannicide from assassination by saying the former is justifiable political killing and the latter is not. You might say there is no such thing. When I ask my students about whether deliberate killing is justifiable, often most of them do not think it is. The intuition that deliberately taking another person’s life is deeply ingrained, and rightly so, but it does need to be critically examined.
Consider a test case. Reinhard Heydrich was a high-ranking officer in the SS, a chief lieutenant of Adolf Hitler, and one of the prime movers of the Holocaust. On 27 May 1942, Czech and Slovak partisans assassinated him with an improvised bomb. It is difficult to argue that the killing of a man deeply implicated in the coercive imposition of a racist totalitarian regime and industrialised murder of innocent persons is wrong.
There has been significant discourse around the threat Trump poses to American democracy. As president he showed little knowledge or interest in the guardrails against his power, he relentlessly demonised his opponents, and instigated a violent mob to prevent the peaceful transition of power. In the lead up to the 2024 presidential election, little seems to have changed. The poisonous rhetoric continues, he threatens to jail his political opponents, and he has indicated his desire to reshape America into a more authoritarian and theocratic state with his ties to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
Here, then, is the crux of the problem: Trump seems like a figure bent on hollowing out republican institutions and accumulating arbitrary power in the office of the president, to wield as he pleases. He looks a lot like a Julius Caesar. But does this legitimise a modern Brutus?
The answer is no, but we need to know why.
“An enemy of all humanity”
The bar for tyrannicide must be high and clear. This is for two reasons. The first is simply the categorical value of human life: if murder is not wrong then what is? People like Heydrich forfeit their immunity from violence by committing terrible acts that shock the conscience of humanity. In the past, they would be described as hostis humani generis, an enemy of all humanity. This term was used to describe pirates and those who violated the basic terms of human social cooperation. They were outlaws — quite literally, beyond the protection of the law. People like Heydrich and his master were legitimate targets for tyrannicide because they committed crimes against humanity and in doing so made themselves a threat to all persons. To kill a Heydrich or a Hitler is akin to killing in self-defence or the defence of others. It is justifiable.
There might be some push back. This bar requires crimes against humanity to be committed before an act of tyrannicide — but what if they could be prevented by removing criminals before they act. The problem with this stance is that it creates an almost impossible burden of judgement. Think of John Wilkes Booth. After shooting Abraham Lincoln, he shouted sic semper tyrannis, “thus ever for tyrants”, the call used by the assassins of Julius Caesar. Yet, the judgement of history is that Lincoln, far from being a tyrant, was one of America’s greatest leaders and his murder one of its most profound tragedies. There is no such ambiguity when it comes to the likes of Heydrich or Hitler.
The further reason for having a high bar for tyrannicide is the consequences. One of the reasons Jeremy Bentham was critical of the right to resist oppression was that it left too much to the judgement of individuals and could lead to anarchy if anyone who felt oppressed could turn a knife on the judge who condemns them or the politician who advocates a policy with which they disagree. Those who would use this sort of violence run a terrible risk of breaking democratic systems.
Democracy is almost alchemical in its operation. It can transmute violent dissent into peaceful disagreement. The enemy becomes the rival. How? Because of the “losers’ consent”. The defeated side in a democracy does not resort to violence as they recognise that they may win the next contest. The legitimacy of the system survives electoral defeat. Political violence and assassinations erode this fundamental norm; they signify a withdrawal of consent.
Under these conditions, violence can produce the very outcome it seeks to prevent: a total collapse and a spiral into authoritarianism.
Again, think of those who killed Julius Caesar. They acted to preserve the Roman Republic, but instead they sparked a brutal civil war that eventually produced the Roman Empire.
Political violence of this sort can only be justifiable under the worse conditions. We may find Donald Trump repugnant, but he has not committed crimes against humanity. He is not hostis humani generis. This does not mean, however, that Trump is beyond reproach. His outriders — including his vice-presidential running mate, J.D. Vance — have claimed that democratic rhetoric about the risk Trump poses to American democracy are responsible for the assassination. They are attempting to elevate him the paradoxical state of a living martyr who cannot be criticised.
Setting aside the fact that we still have no notion of what motivated the would-be assassin, this evolution in the Trump cult of personality must be resisted for the sake of democracy. The sad fact is that no one has done more to erode the norms of democracy than the man who was almost killed on that stage in rural Pennsylvania. This cannot be ignored. He must be held to account — but with ballots, not bullets.
Is democracy worth dying for? Find out more at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, 24-25 August at Carriageworks, Sydney.
David Blunt also chairs The Pitchforks are Coming at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas. Tickets on sale now.
This article was originally published by ABC Religion and Ethics.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY Dr. Gwilym David Blunt
Dr. Gwilym David Blunt is a Fellow of the Ethics Centre, Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sydney, and Senior Research Fellow of the Centre for International Policy Studies. He has held appointments at the University of Cambridge and City, University of London. His research focuses on theories of justice, global inequality, and ethics in a non-ideal world.
Ethics Explainer: Cancel Culture
When mass outrage is weaponised and encouraged, it can become more of a threat to the powerless than to those it’s intended to hold to account.
In 2017, comedian Louis C.K. was accused of several instances of sexual misconduct, to which he later admitted in full. This was followed by a few cancelled movies, shows and appearances before he stepped away from public life for a few years.
In 2022, lecturer Ilya Shapiro was put on leave following a tweet he posted a few days before he was employed. Shapiro contended that the university failed in its commitment to free expression by investigating his actions for four months, before reinstating him under the reason that he was not accountable to the university for actions taken before his employment started.
These are both instances of what some people would call “cancel culture”, yet they involve very different issues. To unpack them, we first need to define what we mean by cancel culture.
From around 2015 onwards, the term started gaining mainstream traction, eventually being named Word of the Year by Macquarie Dictionary in 2019:
“The attitudes within a community which call for or bring about the withdrawal of support from a public figure, such as cancellation of an acting role, a ban on playing an artist’s music, removal from social media, etc., usually in response to an accusation of a socially unacceptable action or comment by the figure.”
The quintessential examples of cancel culture are calls from groups of people online for various public figures to be stripped of support, their work boycotted, or their positions removed following perceived moral transgressions. These transgressions can be anything from a rogue tweet to sexual assault allegations, but the common theme is that they are deemed to be harmful and warrant some kind of reaction.
A notoriously contentious concept, cancel culture is defined, or at least perceived, differently based on the social, cultural and political influences of whom you ask. Though its roots are in social justice, some believe that it lacks the nuance needed to meet the ends it claims to serve, and it has been politicised to such an extent that it has become almost meaningless.
Defenders of accountability
The ethical dimensions of this phenomenon become clear when we look at the various ways that cancel culture is understood and perceived by different groups of people. Where some people see accountability, others see punishment.
Defenders of cancel culture, or even those who argue that it doesn’t exist, say that what this culture really promotes is accountability. While there are examples of celebrities being shamed for what might be conceived as a simple faux pas, they say that the intent of most people who engage in this action is for powerful to be held accountable for words and actions that are deemed seriously harmful.
This usually involves calls to boycott, like the ongoing attempts to boycott J.K. Rowling’s books, movies and derivative games and shows because of her vocal criticism of transgender politics since 2019, or like the many attempts to discourage people from supporting various comedians because of issues ranging from discriminatory sets to sexual misconduct and harassment.
Those who view cancel culture practices as modes of justice feel that these are legitimate responses to wrongdoings that help to hold people with power accountable and discourage further abuses of power.
In the case of Louis C.K., it was widely viewed that his sexual misconduct warranted his shunning and removal from upcoming media productions.
Public figures are not owed unconditional support.
While it’s not clear that this kind of boycotting does anything significant to remove any power from these people (they all usually go on to profit even further from the controversy), it’s difficult to argue that this sort of action is unethical. Public figures are in their positions because of the support of the public and it could be considered a violation of the autonomy we expect as human beings to say that people should not be allowed to withdraw that support when they choose.
Where this gets sticky, even for supporters of cancel culture, is when people with relatively little power become the targets of mass social pressure. This can lead to employers distancing themselves from the person, sometimes ending in job loss, to protect the organisation’s reputation. This is disproportionately harmful for disadvantaged people who don’t have the power or resources to ignore, fight, or capitalise on the attention.
This is an even further problem when we consider how it can cause a sense of fear to creep into our everyday relationships. While people in power might be able to shrug off or shield themselves from mass criticism, it’s more difficult for the average person to ignore the effects of closed or uncharitable social climates.
When people perceive a threat of being ostracised by friends, family or strangers because of one wrong step they begin to censor themselves, which leads to insular bubbles of thoughts and ideas and resistance to learning through discussion.
Whether this is a significant active concern is still unclear, though there is some evidence that it is an increasing phenomenon.
Defenders of free speech
Given this, it’s no surprise that the prevailing opposition to cancel culture is framed as a free speech and censorship issue, viewed by detractors as an affront to liberty, constructive debate, social and even scientific progress
Combined with this is a contention that cancelling someone is often a disproportionate punishment and therefore unjust – with people sometimes arguing that punishment wasn’t warranted at all. As we saw earlier, this is particularly a problem when the punishments are directed at disadvantaged, non-public figures, though this position often overstates the effect the punishments have on celebrities and others in significant power.
A problem with the claim that cancel culture is inherently anti-free speech is that, especially when applied to celebrities, it relies on a misconception that a right to free speech entails a right to speak uncontested or entitlement to be platformed.
In fact, similar to boycotting people we disagree with, publicly voicing concerns with the intention of putting pressure on public figures is an exercise in free speech itself.
Accountable free speech
An important way forward for both sides of issue is the recognition that while free speech is important, the limits of it are equally so.
One way we can do this is by emphasising the difference between bad faith and good faith discussion. As philosopher Dr Tim Dean has said, not all speech can or should be treated equally. Sometimes it is logical and ethical to be intolerant of intolerance, especially the types of intolerance that use obfuscating and bad faith rhetoric, to ensure that free speech maintains the power to seek truth.
Focusing on whether a discussion is being had in bad faith or good faith can differentiate public and private discourse in a way that protects the much-needed charitability of conversations between friends and acquaintances.
While this raises questions, like whether public figures should be held to a higher standard, it does seem intuitive and ethical to at least assume the best of our friends and family when having a discussion. We are in the best place to be charitable with our interpretations of their opinions by virtue of our relationships with them, so if we can’t hold space for understanding, respectful disagreement and learning, then who can?
Another method for easing the pressures that public censures can have on private discourse is by providing and practicing clear ways to publicly forgive. This provides a blueprint for people to understand that while there will be consequences for consistent or shameless moral transgressions, there is also room for mistakes and learning.
For a deeper dive on Cancel Culture, David Baddiel, Roxane Gay, Andy Mills, Megan Phelps-Roper and Tim Dean present Uncancelled Culture as part of Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2024. Tickets on sale now.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
