Beyond Procedural Universalism: Relational Ethics and the Limits of Global Public Health Codes

Abstract

This paper argues that global public health ethics remains normatively incomplete, privileging Euro-American moral ontologies centered on individual autonomy, institutional authority, and procedural rationality, while marginalizing relational, communal, and character-based dimensions of moral life. It develops a relational ethical framework informed by Filipino moral philosophy, grounded in the interrelated concepts of kapwa (shared personhood), bayanihan (collective moral agency), and pagpapakatao (relational moral character), and advances these not merely as cultural descriptors but as normative responses that generate evaluative standards, guide ethical judgment, and justify action in public health contexts. The paper situates its contribution within existing debates on epistemic injustice and relational ethics while explicitly acknowledging the heterogeneity of moral traditions across the Global South. It further develops a sustained objection–reply engagement addressing relativism and defends a model of context-sensitive normativity grounded in shared human conditions of vulnerability and interdependence. The argument is supported through empirical illustrations drawn from disaster response, caregiving practices, and community health systems beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the paper advances a methods–normativity bridge, demonstrating how participatory approaches such as Participatory Action Research (PAR) generate ethical validity through co-produced standards. The paper concludes by proposing a methodologically transferable model for global bioethics that advances relational, pluralistic, and contextually grounded ethical practice without collapsing into relativism or cultural exceptionalism.