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THE ETHICS OF OMISSION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2019

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Abstract

In society, power and responsibility are often linked, supporting the idea that with great power comes great responsibility. I assert that this link between power and responsibility is a form of the Act–Omission Distinction, a principle in ethics that there is a morally relevant distinction between doing something and omitting to do something, e.g. a difference between killing someone and letting someone be killed. As such, using trolleys, elected spider-men, and real-life cases such as R v Stone & Dobinson, I contest this casual relationship between power and responsibility and argue the relationship to be correlative as both power and responsibility are often simultaneously caused by consent.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2019 

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