Organ transplantation is at once a technology that raises new ethical problems and a good testing ground for various moral principles. It has become a common procedure in some countries and, at least in the United States, promises to become even more so. It poses questions about costs and benefits as well as the very large question of whether we should try to renew human life indefinitely and, if so, at what cost. It raises the problem of whether organs are the property of their possessors – at least when the possessors are competent adults. It raises issues of organ sales, of what might be called donor recruitment, of informed consent, of reparations when transplant fails, of eligibility for transplant, and of competition for medical time and expertise between transplantation and other, less dramatic kinds of medical care. This essay touches on all of these topics, with the aim of identifying the broad dimensions of the ethical problems of organ transplantation and some of the moral principles that may help us solve them.

Morally speaking, is abortion murder? This is what I am calling the ‘abortion problem’. I claim that neither pro-life nor pro-choice advocates have the correct solution; that the correct solution is instead one considered correct by relatively few people. But if this solution really is correct, then why, after years of intense debate, is this solution not more widely accepted? Many, no doubt, are precluded from accepting it by religious dogma. But others, I think, fail to arrive at a correct solution because they have been approaching the problem from the wrong theoretical framework. Or they have been approaching it without any theoretical framework at all. That is, they have no theoretical framework beyond that of merely examining their moral intuitions and, if anything is clear so far from the abortion debate, it is that intuitions alone, which differ radically from person to person, are not sufficient to solve the problem. In short: one is unlikely to arrive at the correct solution unless one starts from a sound theoretical framework. I shall, in what follows, sketch what I take to be a sound theoretical framework. Then I shall try to show what solution to the abortion problem follows from it.

By the death, last summer, of Jack Robson, the world of utilitarian studies and a wider world of scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic (and indeed of the Pacific too) lost one of their most distinguished figures. It would not be appropriate here, even if it were possible now, to attempt a full and measured assessment of his work. Writing only a few months after the news of his death, while the sense of loss is still so sharp for all his many friends, two things are possible. Something can and should be said to acknowledge and celebrate Robson's achievement as a scholar; and to this can be added some personal recollections of one whose human qualities were as outstanding as his scholarship.

There can be no doubt that Brian Barry has made an enormous contribution to the clarification of the ideas of justice current in contemporary political thought. In Barry's Justice as Impartiality he explicitly distinguishes and sets in competition three models of justice: justice as mutual advantage; justice as reciprocity; and justice as impartiality (the ‘rational’, ‘fair’, and ‘reasonable’ of my title), and he argues that we should prefer the last of these. What I want to do here is to consider four questions. First, what is this competition a competition about? Second, has Barry adequately characterized the contenders? Third, can the competition be won on the grounds Barry suggests? Fourth, is it a competition that we should want to be won by a single theory? By contrast I want to argue that there are advantages in retaining a pluralist perspective in which all three approaches remain in play.

There are a variety of arguments regarding which entities on earth have intrinsic value and therefore deserve ethical consideration. The thesis that only human beings have intrinsic value has waned considerably in recent years, mainly thanks to the efforts of animal liberationists. There now seems to be wide agreement that ethical consideration should be extended to entities beyond human beings. Disagreements are concerned with how far it should be extended: to animals with similar capacities to humans, to all sentient beings, or to all living beings, or even to the whole ecosystem?

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.

The British utilitarians are not generally considered explorers of classical Greek thought. This paper examines the contribution of James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and George Grote to the development of Platonic studies in nineteenth-century Britain. Their understanding of Platonic philosophy challenged prevalent interpretations, and caused a fruitful debate over long neglected aspects of Plato's thought. Grote's Platonic analysis, which comes last in order of time, cannot, of course, be considered in isolation from the relevant debates in Germany. Grote, the erudite historian of ancient Greece, paid considerable attention to the arguments of the German classicists, put forward in many cases a new point of view, and prompted a radical revaluation of Platonic political thought.

It is a commonplace that in many societies people adhere to profoundly different conceptions of the good. Given this we need to know what political principles are appropriate. How can we treat people who are committed to different accounts of the good with fairness? One recent answer to this pressing question is given by Brian Barry in his important work Justice as Impartiality. This book, of course, contains much more than this. It includes a powerful and incisive discussion of several accounts of distributive justice (‘justice as mutual advantage’ and ‘justice as reciprocity’), a critique of other attempts to defend liberal neutrality and a rebuttal of those who are critical of the ideal of impartiality. In this paper I wish, however, to focus on Barry's defence of liberal neutrality. The paper falls into three parts. Section I outlines the thesis that Barry wants to defend and gives a brief sketch of the argument he employs to defend it. Barry's argument makes two claims – what I have termed the Sceptical Thesis and the Agreement Thesis. Section II therefore critically assesses Barry's defence of the sceptical thesis and Section III examines the agreement thesis.

Women tend to earn less than their male colleagues. Furthermore, women tend to earn less than men who hold jobs that are nominally different but relevantly similar to their own. Advocates of ‘comparable worth’ protest these facts. Their protest sometimes takes this form: Those differences in pay between men and women are undeserved. The argument for this claim is simple. Some facts are relevant to the wage one deserves for performing a given job; some are not. In the vast majority of cases, the argument continues, gender is not relevant to the wage one deserves; relevant are, say, the skill, responsibility, and working conditions required by the job. When jobs are comparable with respect to these facts, those who work in them deserve equal pay. Therefore, women and men who work the very same jobs deserve equal pay; likewise for women and men whose jobs are nominally different but relevantly similar.

It has been commonly accepted that Bentham, in his theory of constitutional law, aimed to replace the natural opposition of interests which existed between rulers and subjects with an artificial identification or junction of interests. This was brought about by making it the self-interest of rulers to act in such a way as to promote the general interest. In other words, any sinister interest to which the ruler was exposed, that is any desire he might feel to sacrifice the general interest to his own particular interest, had to be nullified: this would leave that part of his interest which coincided with the general interest as the only interest by which his conduct could be determined.

Brian Barry's Justice as Impartiality is a highly enjoyable and rewarding book. It throws new light on some familiar theories of justice, and shows how the idea that principles of justice are those principles which no one could reasonably reject can yield prescriptions for constitutional design. But I shall argue that Barry's defence of his theory is less robust than he thinks, and more generally that there is reason to suppose that principles of justice are as contestable as conceptions of the good.

John Stuart Mill argued, in his Principles of Political Economy (1848, 7th edn., 1871), that existing laws and customs of private property ought to be reformed to promote a far more egalitarian form of capitalism than hitherto observed anywhere. He went on to suggest that such an ideal capitalism might evolve spontaneously into a decentralized socialism involving a market system of competing worker co-operatives. That possibility of market socialism emerged only as the working classes gradually developed the intellectual and moral qualities required for worker co-operatives to succeed against private firms. Workers would tend to reject the hierarchical wage relation as they developed the requisite personal qualities, he believed, and capitalists, facing escalating wages for skilled labour as a result of the diminishing supply of high-quality workers for hire, would tend to lend their capital to the worker co-operatives ‘at a diminishing rate of interest, and at last, perhaps, even to exchange their capital for terminable annuities. In this or some such mode’, he speculated, ‘the existing accumulations of capital might honestly, and by a kind of spontaneous process, become in the end the joint property of all who participate in their productive employment: a transformation which, thus effected, (and assuming of course that both sexes participate equally in the rights and in the government of the association) would be the nearest approach to social justice, and the most beneficial ordering of industrial affairs for the universal good, which it is possible at present to foresee.’

European portraits of the great Asian states, China, India, and Persia, remained remarkably constant from the establishment of the Chinese silk trade in the first century B.C. until the religious and mercantile expeditions to the Orient prominent in the late Middle Ages. For more than a millenium, the Eastern empires had been classified by Europeans as stable despotisms – stationary societies governed by custom and tradition and devoid of economic, political, or cultural dynamism. Only during the Enlightenment did the proper interpretation of the merits of ‘Oriental despotism’ become a matter of controversy. To some Enlightenment figures, the paternalistic despotisms of Asia appeared to be superior to the nations of Europe ethically and in the quality of their political, legal, and educational institutions. Many social philosophers of the period agreed that the example afforded by Asia could contribute much to the rejuvenation of European society they hoped to effect.

In Justice as Impartiality Brian Barry seeks to present ‘a universally valid case in favour of liberal egalitarian principles’ (p. 3). It is an ambitious enterprise undertaken with originality, vigour, and wit; and containing a wealth of interesting argumentation. If, ultimately, Barry fails in the task he sets himself, as I shall argue he does, the attempt is none the less highly instructive; not only because of the many local successes in his arguments with proponents of alternative theories and his often illuminating discussions of particular issues, but also because of the lessons to be learnt from his failure. For if even Barry's formidable defence of a contractualist, neutralist liberalism does not succeed then there may be good reason to think that none will. While this larger claim will not be fully justified here, and the case against justice as impartiality does not depend upon it, one of my deeper motivating concerns is to try to show that the most important failures in Barry's argument are inextricably bound up with the nature of his undertaking. We are concerned, I believe, not just with some inevitable imperfections of execution but with a flawed project.

Alfred Marshall's ethics, critically examined by Parsons in the 1930s and often the target of unfair remarks in the past, has become the object of more sympathetic and detailed studies in recent years. These studies have tried to redress the balance that had been upset by routine criticisms, and to prove that Marshall's interest in ethics was neither lip-service to conventional morality nor uncritical acceptance thereof. Moreover, they have vindicated Marshall's claim that his economics, though unconnected to any ethical philosophy, was still one of the moral sciences, inseparable from ethical considerations.

Brian Barry's Justice as Impartiality is an important book. One of its contributions to the discipline is a characteristically clear presentation of what follows if one accepts a commitment to equality, and the reasonableness of continuing and profound disagreements about the nature of the good life (the reasonableness of pluralism). I take the argument of Justice as Impartiality to be an important next step in the attempt to give an account of the content of justice which is impartial, fair, or neutral between conceptions of the good, and engaging with it has the great advantage that many of the criticisms that can be made of Barry apply to other liberal contractualist theories of social justice. It is faintly ironic that it is one of Barry's great virtues, his clarity, that makes it easier to see the problems inherent in the attempt to complete the impartialist project. I have not attempted below to offer a systematic summary and critique of Barry's book or any particular section of it. Instead I have opted to try to engage with the ideas that drive it at a more fundamental level.