Onora Sylvia O’Neill, Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve CH CBE FRS FBA FMedSci is a
philosopher and a crossbench member of the House of Lords.
The daughter of Sir Con Douglas Walter O'Neill, O. S. O'Neill was educated
partly in Germany and at St Paul's Girls' School, London before studying
philosophy, psychology and physiology at Oxford.
O. S. O'Neill went on to complete a doctorate at Harvard, with John Rawls (who
quotes from Grice's "Personal Identity") as supervisor.
O. S. O'Neill taught at Barnard, the women's college in Columbia, New York.
O. S. O'Neill returned to The Old World and took up a post at the Essex.
O. S. O'Neill was Professor of Philosophy at Essex when she became Principal of
Newnham, Cambridge.
O. S. O'Neill is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, a President
of the British Academy and chair the Nuffield Foundation.
O. S. O'Neill was the founding President of the British Philosophical
Association (BPA).
O. S. O'Neill held the Spinoza Chair of Philosophy at Amsterdam.
She was the Principal of Newnham, Cambridge, and she was in chair in the
Equality and Human Rights Commission.
O'Neill's work has earned her numerous honors and awards, including the
Berggruen Prize.
O'Neill has written widely on political philosophy and ethics, international
justice, bioethics and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
Across various works, O'Neill has defended and applied a Griceian
constructivist interpretation of Kantian ethics heavily influenced by, and yet
critical of, the work of John Rawls (who relies on Grice's "Personal Identity"
-- and Rawls was discussed at Grice's Play Group), emphasising the importance
of Griceian TRUST, consent and respect for autonomy in a just society.
O. S. O'Neill has written extensively about trust, noting
"that people often choose to rely on the very people whom they claimed NOT to
trust" -- cfr. Grice on the clash between the principle of conversational
self-love and the principle of conversational benevolence --
and suggesting that we
"need to free professionals and the public service to serve the public ... to
work towards more intelligent forms of accountability ... [and] to rethink a
media culture in which spreading suspicion has become a routine activity".
Cheers,
Speranza
