Ethics and Public Life

This inter-disciplinary project seeks to explore the role, character, nature and place of ethics in public life. Politicians might use moral rhetoric and justifications for their actions, and public agencies and institutions claim to have ethically informed constitutions, policies and practices, but contemporary critiques have raised significant questions about how ethical public life is. Critics point to an absence of deliberative public engagement with ethical debates, the instrumentality and functionality to ethical processes in policies and institutions and a decided gap between moral rhetoric and ethical thinking. Ethical discourse has arguably become the domain of legitimation for self-interested and ideological preferences, mystification rather than clarity in public debate and moral imposition of rather than ethical debate in public policy, opinion formation and institutional practices and services.

• Public Understandings of Ethics and Ethical Education for Public Understandings
• Ethical Regulations, Codes and Scrutiny in Public Life
• Ethics in Social and Public Policy-Making: from Governance to Implementation
• Intellectuals, Academia, the Arts, Culture and Ethical Knowledge
• Applied Ethics in Public and Private Life
• Ethics and Public Life: Historical Perspectives
• Applying Ethical Theories and Ideas to Public Problems and Issues

Related themes will also be identified for development and exploration. Out of our deliberations it is anticipated that a series of related cross context research projects will develop.