Hope, the common good and our duty to the future

Living in Canada, where the federal parliament is debating a bill to permit euthanasia, and teaching in the field of medicine, ethics and law, Professor Margaret Somerville is acutely aware of the conflict between progressive and traditional values that such issues provoke. Against this background her recent book, Bird on an Ethics Wire, explores the values needed to maintain a world that reasonable people would want to live in and pass on to their descendants. Rachael Wong interviewed Professor Somerville during a recent visit to Sydney.

What is Bird about, in a nutshell?

The central idea is that we are in a crisis of conflict between respect for individual autonomy and protection of the common good. The balance has swung dangerously towards individual autonomy and this situation urgently needs to be corrected. A related point is this: in the past few decades we have realised that our physical eco-system is not indestructible – it is vulnerable and it can be irreparably damaged – and that we have obligations to future generations to care for it. The same is true of our metaphysical eco-system, the values, principles, attitudes, beliefs and stories we buy into to create the intangible glue that bonds us together as a society.

In this book do you talk about how to find that balance?

The aim is more to get people to recognise that what I call “radical autonomy” or “intense individualism” is not an unalloyed good. Rather, it is very much what has caused the current situation in Canada regarding abortion: we have no abortion law at all – you can have an abortion the day you would have given birth – and we now have euthanasia, and liberalized laws on prostitution and pornography. In every case it has been the individual who wants these things allowed who has prevailed; they say if they want it then they have a right to it. It is what I call a “choice and change” argument and strategy. They want to choose their own path and to do so they want change in current values and laws. There is not enough concern for the common good and there is particularly not enough concern for the well-being of future generations and the values we need to hold in trust for them.

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