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Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa share at least three things: cultural heritage, a high burden of disease and a low financial commitment to health care. This thesis asks questions of justice about health care systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular Nigeria. The questions are about access to the available health resources and services within African health care systems. While the sub-region as a whole cannot boast of good health care, certain population groups are relatively more disadvantaged. This suggests either or both of two problems: a) that access to basic health care is not proportionate to the populations’ needs; and/or b) that the distribution of the available health care resources favour some over others. Attempts to improve population health have focused on empirical, economic or social strategies. These tend to overlook the ethical dynamics surrounding access to and the distribution of health care. In view of this moral challenge, Norman Daniels has proposed the ethical framework of Accountability for Reasonableness, which can provide basic guidelines for just health care reforms in Africa. While his approach has been effective in the United States, the theoretical basis has fundamental value differentials from African ideals of justice. Starting from Daniels’ Just Health – Meeting Health Needs Fairly, this PhD study develops an African ethical framework that could inform reforms in African health care systems. Specifically, it establishes four key attributes of the African moral outlook, and three principles of African justice. It further abstracts an African method of ethical analysis: process equilibrium. Against this background, the thesis develops a harmonised framework of just health care. Daniels’ principles are matched with African principles to create a Just Health Theory, which is adapted to the Sub-Saharan Africa context. The resulting African principles are mapped onto the health care sector and finally blended into the Harmonised Framework of Just Health Care. By combining the insights from Daniels with African values and approaches, it is possible that just health care will be attained in Nigeria and beyond.

This thesis is about the character of the non-cognitivist theory of ethics and its practical impact on contemporary moral and political life, It is suggested that non-cognitivism, understood as a distinct style of ethical theorising advanced most notably by Ayer, Stevenson, Hare and Mackie, has both a philosophical character, and an ideological character of a liberal-individualist kind. In the first four chapters the philosophical nature of the non-cognitivist account of ethics is critically examined. In chapters five and six it is argued, following Maclntyre, that there is a need to sketch out the historical context of the emergence of the theory in order to gain a complete understanding of its character. This is undertaken by drawing upon previously unpublished or unavailable material by such thinkers as Duncan-Jones, Barnes and Stevenson. In chapters seven and eight the ideological character of the theory is examined by indicating that philosophy and ideology constitute two logically different forms of understanding. It is suggested that the philosophical arguments advanced within non-cognitivism serve the purpose of giving coherent expression to a presumed ideological liberal-individualist conception of man and his relation to others in the world. Chapters nine and ten considers the implications for contemporary liberal theory of the non-cognitivist dominance of the moral philosophy and political practices of the Western democracies. It is claimed that the attempts of Dunn, Forty and Rawls to justify liberal theory and practice are unsuccessful because non-cognim has effectively undermined the distinction between morality and prudence upon which such a justification is grounded. The conclusion reached is that liberalism is in a state of crisis.

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This historical study attempts a thorough revision of some current assumptions about Fielding's moral 'philosophy'. It endorses the orthodox view that Latitudinarian Anglicanism was a decisive influence, but questions whether the Anglican moralists can usefully be described as exponents of 'benevolism' - their sermons are distinguished most notably by an overriding concern with the inculcation of prudence, and by persistent hortatory appeals to self-interest. 'Prudentialism' is arguably a better term for Latitudinarian ethics, and indeed for that dimension of Fielding's work which is attributable to Anglican influence - above all, the reiterated emphasis on the coincidence of virtue and interest. The Latitudinarian connexion is important. But there were other formative influences, including the 'negative' influence of philosophies with which Fielding disagreed, such as ethical rationalism and psychological egoism. The moral 'philosophy' of Tom Jones is not a rigid conceptual structure: it is a dynamic, and sometimes polemical, response to contemporary ethical debate. This study therefore analyzes Fielding's moral vocabulary by relating it to various other contemporary moral vocabularies. Making constant, detailed reference to chosen contextual sources, it explores Fielding's views on a range of 'live' moral and moral-psychological issues: on the functions of prudence and the grounds of prudential obligation; on the relations between prudential obligation and other moral duties; on benevolence, self-love, and 'disinterestedness'; on the relative status of 'private' and 'public' virtues; on the moral functions of reason and the passions; and on the psychology of moral judgment. This study suggests that Fielding's writings embody a complex and uneasy synthesis of two historically divergent ethical traditions: in his didactic emphasis on interest and his concern with the enlightenment of self-love, Fielding is a literary heir of Anglican prudentialism; in his esteem for the 'heart', he can be seen as an ally of the newer 'sentimental' school of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Hume.

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This thesis is an exploration of several themes in the work of Aristotle and Hegel concerning the nature of action and ethics, and discusses the issues raised in relation to modern moral philosophy. The thesis takes as its starting point both Aristotle's and Hegel's conception of rational, purposive human action as being central to ethics and morality. This is carried out in contrast to influential trends in modern moral philosophy regarding the nature of reason and desire. Part one considers Hegel's view of the task of philosophy, i. e. the assimilation and reflection of the particular subject matter of which it speaks, rather than abstract theoretical thinking. The discussion will highlight that many of the problems raised in the rationalist/empiricist debates of the 17th and 18th Centuries are due to the abstract nature of those discussions, and to attempts to assimilate the subject matter to primary assumptions about reason, experience and the individual. In particular, the metaphysics of mind and the epistemology that the debate involved, it will be claimed, draws a hard and fast distinction between reason and desire. This has led to abstract theories of reasoning and motivation. One particular consequence of abstract, theoretical thinking is that the conceptual language of debate becomes divorced from the subject matter under discussion. In particular, the cluster of concepts that form the basis of the philosophy of mind, action, ethics - reason, desire, motive, intention, purpose, etc. - become refined and specialised to a degree that they come to bear only a vague resemblance to the reasons, etc. that are features of actual (as opposed to theoretical) human conduct. In Part Two of the thesis, I will offer a contrasting perspective, discussing Aristotle's and Hegel's treatment of these concepts without the theoretical framework inherited from 17th and 18th Century metaphysics and epistemology.