The selection of topics for intensive research has often been a function of serendipitous opportunity. My forays into philosophy of education were largely in response to the prompting of friends and my dissatisfaction with much of what - at that time - passed for philosophy of education. I cannot honestly say that there has been either continuity or an overarching schema, though I suspect ,or at least hope, that someone who looked at my oeuvre might conclude that there was a philosophically integrated author.
John KleinigI remember Stanley Benn remarking that one needed to be a certain age to engage with problems in political philosophy - I think he had in mind a certain breadth of understanding and experience - and so my political interests developed more slowly than the others.
John KleinigStructurally I don't see a fundamental difference between what we may reasonably expect of police and doctors - though obviously the fact that doctors are generally pursuing life-saving activities and police may be engaged in life-threatening activities may lead to differences in how we construe the moral limits to their roles.
John KleinigIn later years, when I started working in police ethics, I was professionally drawn back to the topic but as well was better able to see two sides to loyalty - its importance for certain central human relations such as friendships, but also its corruptibility in the sense that loyalty could be invoked against other moral constraints: it sometimes function as something of a moral Trojan horse, undermining other moral considerations.
John KleinigAs a matter of ethics - our broader social life needs to be constrained by law and other devices - resolving at the societal level matters that should not be left for individual ethical negotiation. What is important - in the end - is that we are enabled to flourish in ways that acknowledge our dignity.
John KleinigI confess to being something of a philosophical butterfly. The world is full of so many interesting questions, and although my greatest passion is for some form of applied ethics, that leaves me with oodles of possibilities, many of which I have never had the time or opportunity to explore in great depth.
John KleinigPolice have both extra constraints and extra permissions - on the one hand, they can't dodge involvement in social disorder as the rest of us can and they may be required to conduct themselves privately in a way that does not undermine their public authority; on the other hand, they have permission to engage in deceptions, invasions of privacy and uses of force that are forbidden to the rest of us. But this does not put them beyond common morality.
John Kleinig