Personal responsibility in the moral maze
Do circumstances constrain our capacity to choose how to behave?
Michael Buerk, in the chair on the Moral Maze
On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, we discussed personal responsibility in the light of the pandemic. With social restrictions such as curbing family or social gatherings, self-isolating or wearing masks, we asked whether it was fair or right to expect the public to share the responsibility for slowing the spread of the virus, and whether it was fair or right to blame people if they didn’t comply with the rules. To what extent should difficult personal circumstances excuse a person for non-compliance? Beyond the pandemic, does personal disadvantage constrain an individual’s freedom of action, or does everyone have an equal capacity to choose how to behave?
My co-panellists were Andrew Doyle, Matthew Taylor and Ash Sarkar. Our witnesses were Sally Bloomfield, professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Dr Deepdi Gurdasani, clinical epidemiologist at Queen Mary University, London; Dr Alexander Brown, reader in political and legal theory at the University of East Anglia; and Sir Michael Marmot, professor of epidemiology at University College, London.
You can listen to the programme on BBC iPlayer here.
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