Bioethics Forum Essay
In a World with Many Epsteins, Does Ethics Still Matter?
Between the two of us, we have logged about 100 years working on ethical issues in medicine and science. We have published thousands of books and papers on moral problems, taught countless undergraduate and graduate students at distinguished universities, and lectured at untold numbers of professional ethics gatherings and seminars. We each hold a doctorate in philosophy.
So we should be able to answer a simple question that was posed to one of us recently by a smart high school student: Considering the epidemic of cruelty, corruption, lying, exploitation, abuse, and vulgarity in public life these days emanating from the highest levels of society, from Steve Wynn to Larry Summers, Kristi Noem to Cesar Chavez, both in the United States and other nations, why should anyone care about ethics? That question merits a serious response.
Over the last 50 years or so, those of us who opine on what’s right and wrong in practical affairs, from a secular point of view, have come to be called ethicists. The fact that professionals with that moniker don’t have a ready answer to why we should care about ethics or teach about it when facing all the nastiness, selfishness, bigotry, and greed of the world today bothers the heck out of us.
We’re in good company. For thousands of years philosophers and just plain folks have been trying to figure out whether ethics really matters. As far back as Plato’s Republic Thrasymachus argued that “justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger.” Nietzsche and Marx both enthusiastically agreed. Unless we’re prepared to throw out all claims to right and wrong, good and evil, and simply opt for self-interest and power – an option that has been espoused by government officials and business tycoons – the place of morality in the cosmos is just about the most puzzling question there is. Without an answer, the world belongs to the most abusive, exploitive, deceptive, and hateful – guilt free. And as kids, including our recent inquisitor, see every day, there’s no shortage of such types.
Why even bother to teach your children to be good or fret over how to advise them to behave toward their neighbors? Why correct your children when they say they want to emulate prominent politicians? Why challenge nascent bigotry?
Faith goes far as an answer, but not quite far enough. If it were all there is then we’d have to conclude that a supreme being ultimately decides – keeps your scorecard as he or she deems right, doles out the rewards and punishments – and leave it at that. But why would such a being command us to think reflectively about our actions and relationships? A completely arbitrary, preordained moral universe isn’t moral; it’s just a couple of opaque boxes. Goodness happens to be the label of one box, evil the label of the other. In this observation we’re actually affirming one of those endless footnotes to Plato, who discussed exactly this problem as his teacher Socrates faced it 2500 years ago as an unhappy citizen of Athens. And we’re in plenty of good company with thinkers from many religious and political traditions who doubt the basis for ethics.
The alternative to unreasoned acceptance through faith is that good and evil are part of the structure of reality. They exist, and certain beings – in particular, human ones, but perhaps also others (aliens, AI) – have access to them. How that works out in detail are the main chapters of the history of moral philosophy. Those specifics aren’t the main problem for today’s ethicists. The main problem is that we can’t promise you a rose garden for being good, not now and maybe not ever.
Another age-old observation made about our world is that, as one popular writer put it some years ago, bad things do happen to good people. There’s no sugar coating that. Ethics is not for those looking for an easy win.
Yet we continue to believe what wise traditions teach: that integrity, or at least striving for it, is the most important quality a person can possess. And that many of those who would exploit others’ weaknesses, frailties, and vulnerabilities are out of tune with the way the world fundamentally is, as long as it is true that that some are aligned with good and some aren’t.
You could say that all this fishing for meaning in ethics just makes us saps. Yet it’s notable that those who insist that the world is all about power, that strong leaders can make their own laws, no matter the price, excite such a strong negative reaction even among many of those who would otherwise identify with the short-term aims of such people. It’s not only that it’s rude to say such things in polite company. It also stimulates a visceral reaction to the very ugliness of might makes right.
Does the arc of reality bend toward justice? The trouble is, it’s a very long arc, and it is likely that no human being will see the end of it. But in the short run, for questions about the ethical treatment of a person or a group in a particular set of circumstances, well, the answers to those questions matter a lot.
Humans do need to learn morality. They are born with dispositions, sympathies, and preferences but these need to be shaped into character and agency. So, the answer to the high school kid, or your kid, or anyone who asks, no matter how successful or privileged, is that ethics is important both because it reflects basic truths about the world and because it is the only weapon we have against wickedness, evil, and inequity. We don’t have to agree about morality, but we do have to agree that for human beings it matters. We need to keep teaching about it.
Arthur Caplan, PhD, has taught ethics and medical ethics for 50 years, most recently at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He is a Hastings Center Fellow. @ArthurCaplan
Jonathan D. Moreno, PhD, has taught philosophy and bioethics for 50 years, most recently at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Hastings Center Fellow.
This piece raises an important question for those of us in bioethics. Ethics is often discussed in classrooms, hospitals, and journals, but the public learns about ethics by watching what happens when powerful people harm. As a mother of two teenage daughters, I think a lot about what the next generation is learning from the world we are handing to them. Ethics matters most when it is hardest to enforce, not when it is easiest to discuss.
Beyond individual misconduct, cases like Epstein suggest something deeper: not just moral failure at the personal level, but environments and systems that enable, normalize, and even protect exploitation. In that sense, Epstein is not an exception—it is a symptom.
I would also argue that this connects to a more fundamental issue: the source of morality itself. When morality is detached from a higher, objective foundation—what many understand as accountability to God—it becomes increasingly relative and negotiable under pressure from power, wealth, and competing interests.
But ethics is not only about belief; it is also about protection. Strong moral frameworks historically functioned to safeguard the most vulnerable—especially women and children—by setting clear boundaries, reinforcing family structures, and limiting pathways to exploitation.
When both the moral anchor and these protective structures are weakened, the outcome is not surprising.
So perhaps the question is not only whether ethics still matters, but whether our current ethical frameworks—at both the personal and systemic level—are capable of truly protecting human dignity.
Because in the end, when morality becomes negotiable, it is always the most vulnerable who pay the price.
Thank you for highlighting an important ethical position: to sustain engagement with, hear from, think with, advocate and act with vulnerable communities. Professionalization, academic bureaucratization/regimentation and financialization of ethics, have tended to avoid that richly engaged and sustained ‘life with’ the vulnerable. Professional ethics rarely lives with working class communities, communities with poor literacy/numeracy, behavioral difficulties, and daily struggles to live or live well. The Buddha, and his mendicants, daily ‘begged’ alms/food for their daily meal. Even after they had secure resources. And many monks – who are also teachers of popular morality, social ethics, and counselors for those who seek their consideration – still do. Not a bad model – with appropriate Americanizations – to help ethics restore its strengths, after its demotion in the culture.
Oh, and not to shame or blame anyone but the list of names who were somehow involved with or attracted to the Epstein money and glamor is long, and includes aplenty academics and other people we’d call ‘Lefties’ who, we are told, behave better than – or ‘are’ better than – the others on the list. People who attend too many posh meetings to discuss ethics, who are rarely seen speaking in the boonies, with working class communities, etc: what are we think about that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_named_in_the_Epstein_files
Thank you both for this exposition on why ethics matters. It appears that a Machiavellian answer to the question, “How should we then live?” has prevailed. A restoration of understanding one’s own – and the other’s – true agency is required, as is a consideration of living a principled and virtuous life. This, among other lessons from the Humanities, requires our collective attention as academics, citizens, and moral agents desiring to live in a free and just society.
Hisham Hasan. My first response would be to remark two examples of agents grounded in some Ersatz “higher, objective foundation” — Roman Catholic Clerics in their too frequent sexual exploitation of children, and the morality police in religiously strict Islamic countries. Second are you suggesting that if we could purchase some extra protection by ignoring whether the structures are to be believed, we should consider that descent into promulgating falsehoods a bargain? And third, morality doesn’t get detached from ideational structures that are internally flawed and anything but objective. It stands on its own if it is to stand at all.
I think there’s a misunderstanding of my point, so let me clarify it more precisely.
I’m not claiming that appealing to a “higher foundation” automatically makes people moral, or that religious institutions are immune to abuse—history clearly shows they are not. So examples like misconduct by clergy or others don’t really address what I’m arguing.
My point is more fundamental: what ultimately grounds morality itself?
If morality is purely human-made or socially constructed, then in principle it can always be renegotiated under pressure—by power, wealth, or shifting cultural norms. In that case, we may prefer protecting the vulnerable, but it becomes difficult to explain why we are objectively obligated to do so.
On the other hand, grounding morality in something beyond human preference provides a basis for saying that exploitation is wrong—even when powerful systems normalize or benefit from it.
So the question remains: on what basis, within a purely material or subjective framework, do moral obligations become truly binding rather than negotiable?
And I think this connects to a deeper issue beyond morality itself.
I’d also be genuinely interested in something more personal on this point.
Why do you believe what you believe rather than something else? And under what circumstances would you be willing to change that belief?
I think these questions matter, because if our beliefs are ultimately shaped by environment, culture, or preference, then that raises a deeper question about whether we’re actually tracking truth—or just inheriting positions.
Sadly, the authors talk as if Mark and Nietzsche were correct, that religion deadens reason, and God is a disempowering fiction.
They make this ridiculously simplistic comment about religious faith:
“Faith goes far as an answer, but not quite far enough. If it were all there is then we’d have to conclude that a supreme being ultimately decides – keeps your scorecard as he or she deems right, doles out the rewards and punishments – and leave it at that.”
It sounds like familiar ideological anti-faith arguments. Shame on them.
Many achievements that benefit humanity, over centuries, have been achievements of faith-ful advocates for humanity, faith-ful scientists making progress for human health, faith-ful leaders in crises and in peace, faith-ful neighbors helping their neighbors. The latter is how most good things happen in rural working class communities: neighbors helping neighbors. If the authors understood this, existentially, they would have spoken differently about faith-ful people.
But among their concluding comments we see that working class folks are not their audience. They frame their conclusion this way:
“the answer to the high school kid, or your kid, or anyone who asks, no matter how successful or privileged …’
Framing a conclusion to most people of the world, and great numbers of Americans. must include faith-fulness in some religious context,
however simple – as a silent Quaker meeting or a recitation of the Vedas – or however ornamented – as a Coptic or Romanian Orthodox liturgy or a sub-Saharan ritual initiation into society – all the diversity of which involve some faith.
Your excellent essay is most timely. When Will and Dan founded the Hastings Center in 1969, we had a plethora of major health issues to address and political crises as well. The Hastings Center encouraged the development of ethical debates from academic institutions to Presidential Commissions. At our particular time of criss, injustice and corruption; the need for an ethical counterweight is stronger than ever. Thank you for speaking out.
Human beings are animals aspiring to be something more. The Epstein class still lives by the law of the jungle – that power rules. Ethics represents a different potential reality, born out of consciousness and rationality, where collective interests of a human society outweigh the individual animalistic tendencies. We may eventually achieve something greater for all, or we may destroy ourselves as these ways of life conflict, but if we surrender the aspiration to ethical existence, we will never be more than beasts.
Thank you for addressing this vital issue at this vital time. I am a bit disappointed at your brevity, and lack of depth in discussing the ethical dilemmas. At at time when other countries are giving legal agency to trees, to animals, we can’t even make a coherent argument for the reality of love — of a mother for her child, a sister for her brother, a father for his father. Love and empathy, with the exception of psychopathy, is inborn in humans. And in animals. The perversion of love by power, avarice, is perversion of what is inborn and distributed throughout nature. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr spoke of the evils that systems set up for their own preservation, who manipulate others by taking away their agency, are pervasive and murderous. Please do better with your hundreds of years of ethics studies and PhDs.
We need to think through reasons to act ethically in a cruel and capricious world. Huh, go figure, I wonder if anybody ever thought of that question before?
Aristotle has entered the chat. . . . followed closely by Alasdair MacIntyre.
The war in Ukraine is such a powerful story of a personal human experience faced with feelings and decisions that most of us have the luxury to only consider academically. It is painful to see how normalized cruelty worldwide has been and continues to be, in spite of our awareness. I have published and reported on the abuse of women in Ukraine for egg donation (and surrogacy) while U.S. doctors, patients, investors and many medical professionals turn a blind eye. They want the eggs for their very desperate (paying) patients who are unaware of the methods of procurement, and the fact that the resulting children in western countries will never know the true source of their genetic makeup. I hear from medical professionals in IVF, why is it unethical if it helps put food on the table for these women and their families? In an ideal world, these women should have the opportunity to gain education and skills that do not require this choice, which should only be made if it is a true choice and not a means of survival. Education about the effects of abuse and exploitation and appealing to compassion through knowledge seems to be all I can do. Power equals money and those who exploit, make the money. What is the answer??