Ethics and Social Welfare : Human inter dependency and un conditional rights

1. Ethics and Social Welfare:Human interdependency and unconditional rights Hartley Dean London School of Economics

3. Outline • Ethics and morality • The hegemonic liberal-individualist ethic • Human (inter-)dependency • Human (co-)responsibilities • Unconditional rights ?

4. 1. Ethics and morality • A contested distinction • A dialectical relationship Ethics Cognitive ‘ethos’ Values (what is ‘right’) Abstract principles Doctrines (eternal) Systemic/universal Morals Cultural ‘mores’ Norms (what is ‘good’) Customary practices Codes (agreed) Living/local

5. 2. The hegemonic liberal-individualist ethic • Regards dependency and responsibility as inimical • Deep-rooted contractarian assumptions • The sovereignty of the bargaining/competitive human subject must be ‘traded’ to secure the minimum necessary level of social order • Civil and political rights take precedence over social rights which must remain (a) subordinate to political and legal processes; and (b) subject to ‘progressive realisation’ • Social rights and social liberalism • ‘Reluctant collectivism’ of Keynes and Beveridge • The Roosevelt legacy and the UDHR • The re-construction of social rights in a post-social era? • Equality of (moral) worth and the ‘covenant of opportunities and responsibilities’ • A test of ‘worth’: avoidance of (welfare) dependency • Welfare conditionality: no help without strings

6. 3. Human (inter-)dependency • Alternative solidaristic conceptions of rights • The sovereignty of the attached/co-operative human subject must be ‘pooled’ to secure the maximum achievable level of social cohesion • Rights as a system of mutual protection premised on a collectively held recognition of individual vulnerability/frailty (Turner) • The struggle for recognition (Honneth) • The ‘ethical life’ depends on recognition through: • Love: self-identity • Solidarity: collective identity • Rights: mutual recognition of each other’s claims

7. 3. Human (inter-)dependency(Contd…./) • The right to (ontological) security • The distinction between categorical and ontological identity (Taylor): the noumenal self • Frailty and the right to social protection, social inclusion and ‘asylum’ • An ethic of care • Self-alienation from social humanity: capitalism’s fetishised notions of work, dependency and justice • Re-constituting individuals as interdependent ‘selves-in-relationship’; and social policy in terms of the organisation/ negotiation of how we care for and about each other (e.g. Sevenhuijsen/ Williams)

8. 4. Human (co-)responsibilities Competing conceptions of responsibility ethical individualist/ collectivist/ contractariansolidaristic moralistic co-responsibility civic duty conditional obedience moral obligation

9. 4. Human (co-)responsibilities(Contd…./) • An (alternative) ethic of co-responsibility • The social negotiation of mutual obligation: beyond the mechanistic calculus of policy prescription • Apel: co-responsibility requires • Rational judgements, not moral traditions • An effective (global) communication community capable of acknowledging the needs/claims of all its members • Equal respect for scientific and ethical claims to truth • Constituting personhood • Minimum material provision is as constitutive of personhood as liberty or autonomy and reflects extent to which we each have ethical responsibility for everybody else (Griffin)

10. The evidence (from UK): • Popular discourse • Is capable (reluctantly) of acknowledging human interdependency • Is ensnared by a narrow (ethically individualistic) notion of responsibility • Accedes to the inalienability of certain human rights, but is inhibited from translating awareness of interdependency into support for universal social rights

11. ConclusionTo promote an ethically premised unconditional rights-based approach to social welfare provision would be: • Jolly nice (Pooh) • Ever so difficult (Eyore) • Tremenously exciting (Tigger)