Abstract

The papers in this issue of Public Health Ethics arise from a workshop on the role of political philosophy in public health ethics, held at Manchester Metropolitan University in September 2008.1 Part of the reason for exploring the role of political philosophy in relation to public health (and public health ethics) is the thought that the political is ineliminably social: it is about how we live together. Exactly what public health is and what it ought to be is contested, but it surely involves the two senses of public in the sense of the object of attention (i.e., societal or population health) and also the mode of delivery (i.e., collective or participatory action) (Verweij and Dawson, 2007). Political philosophy is concerned with actions in the public sphere related to both these elements.