ABSTRACT
The Handbook is the first volume to attempt comprehensively to map the current state of play of global ethics and to say something about possible futures, academically and in terms of policy and practice. Global ethics is a discipline, field, area of study or approach that responds to the most pressing
contemporary global challenges. These challenges are many and varied, and include the challenges of climate change; pressure on scarce resources (including food, clean water and aid, land and drugs); conflict, war and terrorism; health threats, such as pandemics and the depletion of effective drugs; the movement of people, goods, services and information; and, perhaps most importantly, continued poverty of the majority of the world’s population and extreme poverty of significant numbers. Global ethicists seek to respond to such challenges comprehensively and at all levels: from theory to policy to practice. Global ethicists engage in theoretical discussion about the nature of global justice and the good life, conceptions of which are necessary if we are to know what it would be for people to flourish and be respected, and for us to know when justice has, in fact, been done. In addition to developing overarching theory, global ethicists also seek to engage theoretically with the topical issues and responses, for instance, providing theories about ethical responses to particular challenges and assessing, ethically and politically, possible solutions. In this manner global ethicists are concerned directly with policy assessment, development and promotion. Likewise, global ethicists are eager to connect theory and policy to real-world practice and to impact and affect the lives of real individuals. Given the breadth of global ethics, in terms of the topics it covers and the levels at which it
works (theory, policy and practice), global ethics is necessarily multidisciplinary. It draws on moral and political philosophy, political and social science, empirical research, and real-world policy and activism. For global ethicists to engage with contemporary dilemmas they must understand the nature of the topics involved, and this requires expertise beyond the typical moral and political philosophical training of most ethicists. Accordingly, global ethicists cannot be “armchair” philosophers but must engage with experts of other disciplines – including economists, lawyers, development experts, sociologists – and be empirically informed, which means that, as well as knowing the relevant scientific and social-scientific data and theories, they often also work with practitioners, activists and policy-makers. This is demanding, as it requires far more knowledge and engagement than is standardly required of ethicists. But those who fail to do this will produce irrelevant or misguided theories, proposals and analysis. It is for this
reason that the commitment of global ethics to multidisciplinarity has been termed fundamental and substantial, and not merely a contingent commitment, and it is methodologically defining of global ethics and one of its distinctive features.1
