In recent years, activism movements have shaken public consciousness, waking us up to the fact that there is no time to waste in light of the Social and Environmental Crises humanity is facing. Since the pivotal role of science and technology has in both creating and trying to solve those Crises, scientists’ political engagement has been the topic of an increasing number of publications. A number of authors call for academics to engage in activism, reasoning it with the responsibility academics have towards society as professionals and human beings. However, what this responsibility itself means in the context of academic activism has been largely overlooked. We identified Hans Jonas’ ethics of responsibility as the most apt theory to analyze the phenomenon. In fact, according to Jonas, science has unleashed the uncontrolled power of technology by only seeing the benefits of technological innovations, while forgetting to consider its costs. Therefore, ethical reflections should be brought back into science to move from a retroactive towards a future- oriented responsibility that focus of preserving the existence of future generations on Earth. Through semi-structured interviews with academics who are engaged in academic activism, we investigate the concept of responsibility in relation to their engagement. Our findings indicate that academic activism is a manifestation of individual future-oriented responsibility, sparked by the fear for a doomed future. Unfortunately, the attempt by academic activists to bring ethical reflections into the wider institutional context is faced with resistance by the prevailing neoliberal system, which prevents academia from taking collective responsibility and re-establishing its social mandate.

Islam, its texts and lived practice, finds growing importance within the global discourse on bioethics, as there is an increasing Muslim population and burgeoning interest in biomedical research and biotechnologies in the Muslim world. The aim of this thesis is to assess if and how Islam influences the ethical decision making of researchers, REC (researcher ethics committee) members, guideline developers and Islamic scholars in the biomedical research context. I began addressing this question by first reviewing the literature that has been published to explore the role that Islam plays in the literature on biomedical research ethics. There is evidence that some Muslim countries have developed "Islamic" guidelines. That is, guidelines with the explicit aim of setting out Islamic values and stating their relevance to the ethics of research. A review of research guidelines employed within countries with a significant Muslim population, was carried out, to investigate the role of Islam in such guidelines. The literature and guideline review revealed that although international guidelines have been adapted to incorporate Islamic views, studies have shown that the latter are of limited practical application within a "Muslim country" setting. An empirical study was carried out in two case study sites to assess the extent to which Islam influences ethical decision making within the context of biomedical research. 56 semi-structured interviews were carried out in Malaysia (38) and Iran (18) with researchers, REC members, guideline developers and Islamic scholars to understand whether Islam influences what they consider to be an ethico-legal problem, and if the latter emerges, then how such issues are addressed. The empirical study indicates five main conclusions. The first is that Islam and its institutional forms do impact ethical decision making in the day-to-day practice of biomedical research in countries with a Muslim population and/or in the research careers of Muslim researchers. Secondly, it shows that there are many distinctive mechanisms, such as the involvement of Islamic scholars, the process of ijtihad (independent reasoning) and the production of fatawah (legal edicts), by which Islam does identify and develop ethical views about biomedical matters. Thirdly, HIV/AIDS poses major challenges to the world of Islam as it does the rest of world. The epidemic raises issues that touch on cultural sensitivities that are important to Islamic societies and this study has shown that no simple or single response was observed to the ethical issues arising from HIV/AIDS. Fourthly, researchers face practical challenges when deliberating women's autonomy in contexts where Islam is appropriated within 'male dominated' contexts. The role and status of women is disputed in such contexts with views ranging from women needing their husband's permission to leave the home to men and women having equal freedoms. Finally, this study describes and analyses how the personal faith of researchers and their deep commitment to Islamic ethics and law influences their understanding of their legal and moral accountability and ethico-legal decision making. It shows that researchers adopt multiple roles and are required to balance numerous value systems and priorities and face moral anxiety and frustration when these different moral sources are in conflict. Overall, this study indicates that, in the countries studied, Islam does influence biomedical research ethics, and that this can be appreciated through the growing reference to Islam and its scriptural sources in biomedical research ethics literature, research ethics guidelines and the role of Islam in the day-to-day practice of biomedical researchers in the case study sites, that has been captured in the empirical study.

Im Beitrag wird argumentiert, dass sich die Scientific Community reflexiv mit Wissenschafts- und Forschungsethik auseinandersetzen muss. Ergänzend zu institutionalisierten Regeln und Routinepraktiken der Fächer braucht es dafür eine frühestmögliche Aneignung des Themas durch Studierende im Sinne einer „Schlüsselkompetenz“. Jedoch ist für die Disziplinen insgesamt eine systematische Integration als Ausbildungsinhalt nicht erkennbar. Es wird beschrieben, vor welchen Herausforderungen der Einbezug des Gegenstands in der Hochschullehre steht. Dem werden Didaktikbausteine als Potenzial für die systematische Verankerung in Curricula gegenübergestellt. Abschließend werden förderliche Maßnahmen vorgeschlagen.

This thesis explores the normative significance of making a rights-backed, authorized demand as a right holder. Rights, I argue, enable their holders to make a special kind of demand which comes with a special force. It is, in other words, one of rights' functions that they are demands-enabling. I single out what sort of demands I am interested in exploring. I also look at how these special demands are normatively significant. I call them rights-backed, authorized demands. They are normatively significant, first, because of the interesting role they play in other agents' practical-reasoning, and , second, because the very making of these demands, as a matter of rights, is empowering in an abstract way. I go on to contrast my view with other ‘demand theories' in existence and conclude that my view is substantively different. In particular, existing demand theories of rights all fail to sufficiently highlight the importance of actual demands, and instead focus on the ‘status' of ‘being in a position' to make demands. I argue that this focus is a fundamental mistake. I also consider how my view can contribute to some related literature on rights. First, I argue that my view highlights a new function which rights have: it has interesting implications on the shape of the long-standing debate between the will and interest theory of rights. Second, I argue that my view provides us with a new way to counter one of the most discussed criticisms of the existence of welfare human rights, which is the argument that rights must correlate with some specific duties as a necessary existence condition, and that human welfare rights fail on this mark. I conclude that if human rights indeed have a demand-related function as I argue, it weakens the intuitive appeal of this criticism.

This study explores the rediscovery and development of a tradition of Ciceronian academic scepticism in British philosophy between c.1660-c.1760. It considers this tradition alongside two others, recently recovered by scholars, which were recognised by contemporaries to offer opposing visions of man, God and the origins of society: the Augustinian-Epicurean, and the neo-Stoic. It presents John Locke, Conyers Middleton and David Hume as the leading figures in the revival of the tradition of academic scepticism. It considers their works in relation to those of Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury, and Bernard Mandeville, whose writings refashioned respectively the neo-Stoic and Augustinian-Epicurean traditions in influential ways. These five individuals explicitly identified themselves with these late Hellenistic philosophical traditions, and sought to contest and redefine conventional estimations of their meaning and significance. This thesis recovers this debate, which illuminates our understanding of the development of the ‘science of man’ in Britain. Cicero was a central figure in Locke’s attempt to explain, against Hobbes, the origins of society and moral consensus independent of political authority. Locke was a theorist of societies, religious and civil. He provided a naturalistic explanation of moral motivation and sociability which, drawing heavily from Cicero, emphasised the importance of men’s concern for the opinions of others. Locke set this within a Christian divine teleology. It was Locke’s theologically-grounded treatment of moral obligation, and his attack on Stoic moral philosophy, that led to Shaftesbury’s attempt to vindicate Stoicism. This was met by Mandeville’s profoundly Epicurean response. The consequences of the neo-Epicurean and neo-Stoic traditions for Christianity were explored by Middleton, who argued that only academic scepticism was consistent with Christian belief. Hume explored the relationship between morality and religion with continual reference to Cicero. He did so, in contrast to Locke or Middleton, to banish entirely moral theology from philosophy.

This thesis examines the policies, positions, and perspectives of developing countries on the emerging norm of humanitarian intervention after the Cold War, focusing on the period between 1991 and 2001. In doing so, it questions the role of opposition that conventional wisdom has allotted to them as parochial defenders of sovereignty. Instead, the thesis reveals variation and complexity, which militates against defining the South, or the issues that humanitarian intervention raises, in simplistic either-or terms. Part I draws on insights about ‘sovereignty as what states make of it’ to break the classic pluralism-solidarism impasse that has otherwise stymied the conversation on humanitarian intervention and confined the South as a whole to a ‘black box’ labelled rejectionism. It reconstructs the empirical record of developing countries at large on six cases of military intervention (northern Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, and East Timor), revealing variation that defies easy categorization. It also charts a cumulative and dynamic trend within the South towards a grey area between pluralism and solidarism that shows how these were not diametrically opposed positions. Following from that, Part II looks in-depth at India and Argentina. Whereas Argentina accepted the idea of humanitarian intervention, India remained reluctant to countenance it and persistently objected to the development of a new rule in its favour. Part II argues that the level of congruence between the emerging norm and the two countries’ prevailing values, aspirations, and historically constructed ways of thinking played a key role in determining the different levels of acceptance that the idea found with them. Part III delves deeper into the substance of their views. It shows how neither country constructed mutually exclusive choices between pluralism and solidarism, sovereignty and human rights, and intervention and non-intervention. Rather, both exhibited an acute awareness of the dilemmas of protecting human rights in a society of states, and a wariness of yes-no answers. Cumulatively, this thesis thus points away from thinking about the South itself as a given category with clear, shared or pre-determined ideas, and towards a more nuanced and inclusive conversation on humanitarian intervention.

L’anti-microbio-gouvernance apparaît comme un ensemble de politiques, de standards et d’avis judicieux visant à responsabiliser les pratiques à l’égard des conséquences d’une technologie – l’antibiotique. Si l’antibiotique améliore à court terme l’offre de soins (la cure pharmaceutique), il est aussi à la source de nouveaux risques anthropiques et écologiques à long terme pour la santé, la productivité et la biodiversité, en raison de l’émergence de gènes de résistance réduisant l’efficacité des traitements et faisant pression sur les communautés bactériennes – humaines, urbaines, édaphiques, etc. L’appréciation de ce dilemme (cure / risque), puis la performance de sa gestion, reposent sur la qualité des politiques et du processus d’antimicrobiogouvernance ainsi que des réflexions en amont intégrant les valeurs (éthiques), les savoirs (scientifiques) et l’expérience. La vision globale de Van Rensselaer Potter pour la bioéthique ouvre la perspective vers la philosophie et la pratique d’Aldo Leopold, dont une technique d’aménagement adaptatif des écosystèmes co-construite, par communauté, sur la base d’une bio-éthique globale (techno-socio-écologique) des pratiques et de l’environnement. En effet, comment responsabiliser tout un chacun face à une cure, à un risque et à l’incertitude ? En prenant la perspective de la sociologie des organisations, cette thèse explore une piste étudiée en science, technologie et société : comment concerter l’humain et le non-humain (les technologies et la Nature) par la voie de systèmes (communication, collaboration et éducation) pour anticiper l’émergence de problèmes ? L’objectif de cette thèse est de proposer une approche en éthique pour coconstruire la gouvernance des relations se tissant entre les secteurs et les disciplines bâtis sur les valeurs de la santé, de la productivité et de la biodiversité. À sa racine, ce cadre de gouvernance vise à dynamiser l’arbitrage de l’accès et de la protection des données – et conséquemment le trajet de l’information, des connaissances et des applications technologiques, pratiques et politiques – sans briser la confiance des acteurs impliqués. L’arbitrage des données, à la source de la production des connaissances techniques, est la clé pour orienter les systèmes de communication et de politiques conduisant à des conseils et à des régulations. Cette nouvelle approche en éthique cherche à avancer la vision d’un projet commun sans altérer l’intégrité des actions spécifiques à la médecine, à l’agriculture et à l’écologie. Cette thèse théorise et applique le procédé d’une bioéthique expérimentale combinant les façons de faire empirique, réflexive et multisite. Elle s’inspire de méthodes en anthropologie, en sociologie et en gestion, et de la réflexivité balancée. Quatre unités épistémiques sont articulées in fine selon une logique précise pour éviter un biais cognitif auquel le raisonnement d’une bio-éthique s’expose (le sophisme naturaliste) : le descriptif, une prise de conscience (partie I) ; l’appréciatif, une théorie de travail (partie II) ; le normatif, la préparation du terrain (partie III) ; et l’évaluatif, les outils de bioéthique (partie IV). Ultimement, le produit de l’approche est un cadre de gouvernance coconstruit avec plusieurs collaborateurs dont les initiatives sont susceptibles de provoquer des changements politiques et scientifiques. À titre de bioéthicien, l’intention est d’aider les personnes et les institutions ayant le leadership de projets de société à développer des outils capables d’encapaciter (ang., empowerment) les communautés à gouverner les changements à venir qui les concernent. / Anti-microbial governance can be understood as a set of policies, standards and judicious guidance aimed at making practices more responsible for the consequences of a technology – the antibiotic. While in the short-term antibiotics improve the quality of care (the pharmaceutical cure), they also create new long-term risks to anthropical and environmental health, productivity and biodiversity, due to the emergence of resistance genes that reduce the effectiveness of treatments and put pressure on bacterial communities – human, urban, edaphic, etc. The appreciation of this cure / risk dilemma, and the performance of its management, rely on the quality of the antimicrobial policy and governance processes as well as on upstream reflections integrating (ethical) values, (scientific) knowledge and experience. Van Rensselaer Potter’s global vision for bioethics opens the perspective towards Aldo Leopold’s philosophy and practice, namely an adaptive management technique of ecosystems co-constructed, per community, based on a global (techno-socio-ecological) bio-ethics of practices and the environment. Indeed, how can we make everyone responsible in the face of a cure, risk and uncertainty? By taking the perspective of the sociology of organizations, this thesis explores a path studied in Science, Technology and Society: how to bring together the human and the non-human (technologies and Nature) through (communication, collaboration and education) systems to anticipate the emergence of problems? This thesis will propose an approach in ethics to co-construct the governance of relationships between sectors and disciplines built on the values of health, productivity and biodiversity. At its root, this governance framework aims to energize the arbitration of access to and protection of data – and consequently the paths of information, knowledge and technological, practical and political applications – without breaking the trust of the actors involved. Data arbitration, at the source of technical knowledge production, is the key to guiding communication and policy systems toward guidelines and regulations. This new approach to ethics proposes the vision of a common project without altering the integrity of specific actions in medicine, agriculture and ecology. This thesis theorizes and applies the practice of an experimental bioethics combining empirical, reflexive, and multisite ways of thinking. It draws on methods in anthropology, sociology, and management, and uses the reflexive balancing process. Four epistemic units are articulated in fine according to a precise logic in order to avoid a cognitive bias to which the reasoning of a bioethics is exposed (the naturalistic fallacy): the descriptive, a raising of awareness (part I); the appreciative, a working theory (part II); the normative, the preparation of the terrain (part III); and the evaluative, the tools of bioethics (part IV). Ultimately, the product of this approach is a governance framework co-constructed with several collaborators whose initiatives have the potential to bring about policy and scientific changes. As a bioethicist, the intention is to help individual and institutional leaders of socio-technical projects to develop tools capable of empowering communities to prospectively govern the changes that concern them.