This year is a good one for several related anniversaries. It is forty years since the first issue of the Journal of Applied Philosophy was published, the journal having been created by the Society for Applied Philosophy founded in 1982 with the remit of offering rigorous philosophical analysis of contemporary practical issues; it is the centenary of the birth of Mary Warnock; and it is forty years since the establishment of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the United Kingdom’s well-regarded regulator of fertility treatment and embryo research. Its setting up followed the Report of a Committee chaired by Mary Warnock at the invitation of the United Kingdom Government. Now then seems an excellent time to remember her, to assess her contribution to applied ethics and public policy, and to take the temperature of debates on the cutting edge of reproductive ethics.
Such an assessment is timely since Mary Warnock is routinely characterized as a rightly distinguished contributor to public policy but has no great shakes as a philosopher. She is not remembered alongside her contemporaries, Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch, those ‘women up to something’ in the words of the title of a book on the four who all made important contributions to philosophy, and especially to ethics. Warnock was omitted, and her male philosopher contemporaries were scathing of the ethical value of her work in public policy, with Richard Hare being a particularly sharp critic.
The general tenor of the overall assessment of her life work was that she did tremendous public service through her work on fertility treatment and embryo research, as well, it should be remembered, as on animal experimentation and special education, but that she did so at the expense of philosophical integrity and rigor. She was an exemplary political pragmatist but was not a major philosopher. This assessment has not been helped by the fact that she herself disparaged without a trace of false modesty her own philosophical talents.
Yet her publications in philosophy are impressive. Her monograph, Imagination, is a notable contribution to an important topic that combines philosophy and literary criticism with a defense of the proper purpose of education. She wrote a sympathetic review of existentialism at a time—1970—when the dominant orthodox approach of English-speaking philosophy viewed Continental theory as unworthy of serious attention; and she published surveys of moral philosophical writing that are insightful both as to its failings and clear as to the ways it might improve.
Above all, her understanding of what is needed of a philosopher who wishes to contribute effectively and intelligently to public policy is worthy of our attention. Her defense of the right approach is not made in a monograph nor in articles in philosophy journals. It is found in essays, interviews, and autobiographical reflections on her achievements. Like John Rawls, she identified enduring, intractable moral disagreement on important matters as a significant feature of liberal democracy. As a democrat, she took seriously the need to respect and take account of everyone’s views, even if she was clear that sometimes it is important to correct factual mistakes about what, for instance, science can do. Unlike Rawls, she does not commend the idea of an overlapping consensus; and unlike Rawls, who sought a justification by such a consensus of fundamental principles of justice, she was concerned with how to find support for laws and policies on contentious matters. She recognized the need in problematic areas of bioscientific regulation for some laws rather than none; and she saw the importance of finding appropriate measures that were clear, determinate, and enforceable.
One could argue that the fundamental difference between Warnock and Rawls was that, whereas he was interested in the hypothetical procedures that generate grand theory, she was interested in the actual procedures that drive incremental policy improvements. At their best, hypothetical procedures and grand theories can open up a vision of the world as it could be if only we could make it that way. At their best, actual procedures gain buy-in through negotiation, mutual respect, and consensus-building, and their outcomes survive when and because they work. Each pathway has its limitations, but both are philosophical methods, and both are needed if philosophy is to be a valuable tool for social change.
This fall, to mark Mary Warnock’s centenary, the Journal of Applied Philosophy and the APA will together produce an APA Live webinar on reproductive ethics and public philosophy, featuring four younger scholars working on the cutting edge of practical, public philosophical work in this area. Megan Kitts (Baylor College of Medicine) takes seriously the distinctive value of embryos, finding them to bear a symbolic value that ought to be respected in fertility clinics and elsewhere. Her account of symbolic value – a value also borne by corpses – allows us to embrace certain laboratory practices that underwrite assisted reproduction but to reject the cavalier discarding of embryos. Yet if embryos are not to be discarded, then what may be done with them? Permanent storage is expensive and seems like little more than another form of discarding. Adoption is unrealistic, given the numerical imbalance between unused embryos and would-be adopters, not to mention the impact on children currently awaiting adoptive parents. So what is to be done? Olivia Schuman (University of Louisville) ponders the new science of “compassionate transfer.” This process, in effect, applies the “rhythm method” to IVF: embryos are transferred into a patient’s body during an infertile period for potential reabsorption or natural discharge, just as would happen with sperm when ovulation had not occurred. Schuman considers whether this strategy offers a way forward for ethically handling unused embryos.
What about moral relationships between parents and the children who already exist? Reuven Brandt (UCSD) takes on a persistent puzzle of what parents owe to children and why, developing a Rossian “directed duty of care” with implications far beyond procreation. Unlike some accounts, Brandt’s finds a way to insist on relatively demanding parental duties without implying that those lacking the advantages of social class and geography somehow do wrong by bringing children into the world. Indeed, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees each person the right to “found a family,” which entails the right to parent. But Benjamin Lange (LMU Munich) wonders how to account for people’s rights, not just to parent some child or other, but to parent a particular child. As Brandt’s discussion notes, child welfare-based accounts make this problem of parental claims on particular children even harder. Lange grounds the particularity right in the project of parenting, a project which often forms a major part of a person’s life and explains their custody-generating attachment to particular other persons.
Each of these four contributions—mostly drawn from the November issue of the Journal of Applied Philosophy, which marks Warnock’s centenary—exemplifies the Warnockian method of public philosophy at its best. Each one moves the ball forward, not by imagining a hypothetical procedure that yields a grand theory, but by taking seriously the concerns of real people, sometimes at far opposite ends of high-stakes debates over our most intimate relationships.
David Archard
David Archard is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Queen’s University Belfast. His extensive publications include Children. Rights and Childhood, the first book philosophically to analyze the moral and political status of children. He is Vice President of the Society for Applied Philosophy and formerly Deputy Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, and Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.
Avery Kolers
Avery Kolers is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Louisville. He is Co-Editor of the Journal of Applied Philosophy. His works in applied and political philosophy include A Moral Theory of Solidarity.
