Moral Risks in Social Work HOLLIS, MARTIN; HOWE, DAVID
Journal of applied philosophy,
October 1987, Volume:
4, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Social workers must often decide whether a child, at possible risk from its parents, should be removed from home. Each year some children, left at home, are abused or killed. If the procedures have ...been duly followed, is a bad result to be put down to incompetence or to bad luck, and, if to the latter, does that cancel moral responsibility? We examine the claim that the case is one of 'moral luck' and argue that the system licences greater risk than is morally justified. This is because it embodies conflicting imperatives of welfare and justice. Anyone who becomes a social worker must face a constant risk to moral integrity 1.
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A rejoinder to Hollis and Smith's article in Review of International Studies vol. 20(3) 1994, arguing that an ontological discourse, such as that suggested in Giddens' theory of structuration, must ...precede substantive epistemological questions; and that an assumed universalist epistemology negates difference in international social life. Hollis and Smith, in turn, reply.
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38.
Preface Hollis, Martin
Trust within Reason,
03/1998
Book Chapter
Trust within reason is based on the inaugural series of A. C. Reid Lectures in Philosophy at Wake Forest University and I take pleasure in giving thanks to all who made the occasion possible. For ...almost half a century Dr Reid so inspired his students at Wake Forest that it was decided to mark his death with a fitting memorial. The A. C. Reid Philosophy Endowment Fund, whose subscribers include many of those students, exists to promote a philosophical spirit in a troubled world and the A. C. Reid Lectures are part of its endeavours. I am glad to be associated with so noble an undertaking and honoured to have been invited to inaugurate the series. It was a very genial occasion too, widely attended and leading to fertile exchanges with members of several departments. That is due to the Wake Forest Philosophy Department and I thank the philosophers for the energy and kindness which went into the accompanying arrangements. Ralph Kennedy and Win-Chiat Lee, in particular, who undertook the practical work, were tireless in their determination to make the lectures a success and their visitor abundantly welcome.The final text also owes much to a period in Munich as the guest of the Philosophy Department and especially to the comments of my amiable host, Wilhelm Vossenkuhl. That provided a welcome chance to extend and improve the text, helped by wide-ranging seminars with graduates and faculty. Raimo and Maj Tuomela, who were visiting the University, kindly shared their work on joint action and gave me the benefit of their comments.
This chapter will tackle the modern problem of the first by giving it a historical setting while the next chapter will provide a contemporary one. But we need to start with a plan for the whole book. ...The next section sets out accordingly.plan of the bookThe opening chapter began with recent ideas of rational action and where they are heading. Then it set them in an older context of Enlightenment hopes and fears, prompted by plausible doubts about the problem of trust. Straight ahead lies a simple treatment of rational action as the pursuit of any end in an instrumental way, with or without a further claim that questions about ends are simple too. This will fail, however, if ends are ambiguous in ways affecting their rational pursuit. There are three possibilities. The simplest is that each of us can do as we think best for ourselves, provided that we do what suits us all. But this may turn out less simple than it seems, when we reflect on the tension between the good of each and the good of all. Can the simplest idea cope with it? If not, we must accept that something more is needed. It could be, secondly, that a rational person's ends have to be moral in a sense which makes our individual concerns subordinate to those of humanity. Trust is a sign that we are rational enough to accept the point. Or it could be, thirdly, that we need thicker ends which cannot all come from further reflection on our personal advantage.
