The Holberg Lecture: Justice without Ethics: A Twentieth Century Innovation?

For centuries discussions of justice and ethics were seen as linked  domains of duty in European thought and culture. In the twentieth century they were seen as diverging in marked, interesting and unsettling ways. There is now widespread acceptance that justice is a matter of respect for objectively justified human rights, but (other) ethical standards lack wider justification and reflect either individual choice or shared standards. I shall argue that this view promotes inadequate accounts both of justice and of other ethical standards.

Onora O'Neill will be introduced by Ellen Mortensen, academic director for the Holberg Prize.