The goal of this paper is to increase interest in Cicero’s “De Officiis” as both a textbook and resource for developing curricula at the secondary and post-secondary level. The paper begins by tracing the extensive influence that the work has had in ethics, political philosophy, literature, and education before proceeding to an explanation for why its influence has waned since the nineteenth century. Next, the paper contends that “De Officiis” addresses some of the most relevant and pressing questions in ethics. (...) Finally, the paper provides suggestions on how the work can be used in the classroom. (shrink)

This essay challenges the portrayal of philosophical idealism as sinful ‘confinement in the self’, arguing that this obscures a relationship between Hegel and Bonhoeffer characterised by variation rather than contradiction. I first trace a limited congeniality between their respective critiques of the ‘beautiful soul’ and the ‘privately virtuous’, showing how both thinkers resist moral isolation through the call to confession. Second, I follow their attempts to overcome an oppositional logic between such social exchange and divine agency, rooted in the syntax (...) of Hegel’s phrase ‘God existing as community’. This provides sharper focus to Bonhoeffer’s variations, changing the subject from God to Christ and the attendant act from reciprocal confession to intercessory prayer. Rather than merely defensive revision, I argue that this reveals an agile Christology which can sustain an ethical posture of ‘being for others’ through the withheld confession and broken trust typical of a communion of sinners. (shrink)

What is the cultural value of illegal works that violate the copyrights of popular fiction? Why do they persist despite clear and stringent intellectual property laws? Drawing on the disciplines of new media, law, and literary studies, Illegal Literature suggests that extralegal works such as fan fiction are critical to a system that spurs the evolution of culture. Reconsidering voices relegated to the cultural periphery, David S. Roh shows how infrastructure--in the form of legal policy and network distribution--slows or (...) accelerates the rate of change. He analyzes the relationship between intellectual property rights and American literature in two recent copyright disputes. And, in comparing American fan fiction and Japanese dojinshi, he illustrates how infrastructure and legal climates detract from or encourage fledgling creativity. Illegal Literature fills a crucial gap between the scholarly and the popular by closely examining several modes of marginalized cultural production. Roh makes the case for protecting an environment conducive to literary heresy, the articulation of an accretive rather than solitary authorial genius, and the idea that letting go rather than holding on is important to a generative creative process. In a media ecology inundated by unauthorized materials, Illegal Literature argues that the proliferation of unsanctioned texts may actually benefit literary and cultural development. (shrink)

I explore the increasingly important issue of cooperation in immoral actions, particularly in connection with healthcare. Conscientious objection, especially as pertains to religious freedom in healthcare, has become a pressing issue in the light of the US Supreme Court judgement inHobby Lobby. Section ‘Moral evaluation using the basic principles of cooperation’ outlines a theory of cooperation inspired by Catholic moral theologians such as those cited by the court. The theory has independent plausibility and is at least worthy of serious consideration—in (...) part because it is an instance of double-effect reasoning, which is also independently plausible despite its association with moral theology. Section ‘Case study:Burwell v. Hobby Lobby’ examinesHobby Lobbyin detail. Even if the judgement was correct in that case the reasoning was not, as it involved applying a ‘mere sincerity’ test to the cooperation question. The mere sincerity test leads to absurd consequences, whereas a reasonableness test applied using the theory of cooperation defended here would avoid absurdity. Section ‘A question of remoteness: “accommodations” and opt-outs’ explores the post-Hobby Lobbyproblem further, examining opt-outs and accommodations: theLittle Sisters of the Poorcase shows how opt-outs are misunderstood on a mere sincerity test, which the court rightly rejected. Section 'Application to the medical field:Doogan and Wood’ discusses the UK case ofDoogan and Wood, concerning participation in abortion. Again, a judicially recognised ethic of cooperation, if it were part of the fabric of legal reasoning in such cases, would have enabled the conscientious objectors in this and similar situations to have their freedom of conscience and religion respected in a way that it currently is not. (shrink)

I argue that (a) the phenomenon characteristic of pragmatic presupposition, is distinct from (b) the phenomenon characteristic of semantic presupposition, and that there are sentences exhibiting (a) alone. I apply this to Stalnaker's defense of van Fraassen's theory of semantic presupposition against Karttunen. I show that, since Stalmaker fails to distinguish (a) from (b), this defense amounts to an unsuccessful attempt to explain pragmatically the supposed instances of (b) in Karttunen's counter-examples. I observe that, given the distinction between (a) and (...) (b), we can salvage from Stalnaker the strategy of discounting certain of Karttunen's counter-examples which exhibit not (b) but merely (a). (shrink)

This commentary critiques the publish-or-perish culture in business academia, driven by accreditation requirements, which pressures faculty to prioritize quantity over quality in research. It examines the impact of these pressures on research credibility and the rise of predatory journals. Ethical concerns regarding the necessity and impact of the resulting research are discussed. The article calls for reevaluating research priorities and advocating for high-quality, impactful studies that address significant business and societal challenges. By fostering ethical research practices and combating predatory journals, (...) business academia can enhance the credibility and relevance of its contributions. (shrink)

This article deals with the housing framework of laws, that is, constitutions. It distinguishes between constitution referring to the de jure, formal, written book of laws and codes that assume supreme authority within any structure, and constitution which defines a body of informal, conditional rules and laws that do not have supreme authority but are abided by, owing to various objective, subjective factors. Constitution reflects the gap between aspiration and actuality, and constitution attracts a higher degree of compliance and implementation. (...) Studies have indeed found a negative relationship between formal rights protection and actual rights observance. The article reveals that rights guarantees are more prone to failure than success as they depend substantially on environmental and institutional conditions. This article emphasizes a symbiosis between judicialization and constitutionalization while a policy question needs to be judicial in nature if the judiciary has to decide on it. (shrink)

Until the discovery of catalytic RNA, the notion that all enzymes are proteins had seemed incontrovertible. Now the existence of RNA enzymes has been confirmed in a variety of contexts. What is known about the chemistry of RNA‐catalyzed reactions is reviewed below, with particular attention to the self‐splicing rRNA intron of Tetrahymena thermophila and the processing of pre‐tRNA molecules by RNase P.

In Some Pragmatist Themes, D. S. Clarke shows the relevance of classical pragmatism to recent American philosophy. He outlines pragmatism's two central claims and then demonstrates how these claims generate views on issues dominating contemporary discussions including the nature of truth, the structure of moral reasoning, and the social role of philosophy.

The success of movies like The Artist and Hugo recreated the wonder and magic of silent film for modern audiences, many of whom might never have experienced a movie without sound. But while the American silent movie was one of the most significant popular art forms of the modern age, it is also one that is largely lost to us, as more than eighty percent of silent films have disappeared, the victims of age, disaster, and neglect. We now know about (...) many of these cinematic masterpieces only from the collections of still portraits and production photographs that were originally created for publicity and reference. Capturing the beauty, horror, and moodiness of silent motion pictures, these images are remarkable pieces of art in their own right. In the first history of still camera work generated by the American silent motion picture industry, David S. Shields chronicles the evolution of silent film aesthetics, glamour, and publicity, and provides unparalleled insight into this influential body of popular imagery. Exploring the work of over sixty camera artists, Still recovers the stories of the photographers who descended on early Hollywood and the stars and starlets who sat for them between 1908 and 1928. Focusing on the most culturally influential types of photographs—the performer portrait and the scene still—Shields follows photographers such as Albert Witzel and W. F. Seely as they devised the poses that newspapers and magazines would bring to Americans, who mimicked the sultry stares and dangerous glances of silent stars. He uncovers scene shots of unprecedented splendor—visions that would ignite the popular imagination. And he details how still photographs changed the film industry, whose growing preoccupation with artistry in imagery caused directors and stars to hire celebrated stage photographers and transformed cameramen into bankable names. Reproducing over one hundred and fifty of these gorgeous black-and-white photographs, Still brings to life an entire long-lost visual culture that a century later still has the power to enchant. (shrink)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s account of a transnational “confessing” church, developed with allusion to W.E.B. Du Bois, offers critical potential for addressing the problem of the global color line. To make this case, I first trace the ways in which Du Bois’s and Bonhoeffer’s German–American exchange studies contribute to their critical standpoints. Bonhoeffer’s “Protestantism without Reformation” is then examined to show that its view of American denominations is not mere German paternalism but a critique of how atomized churches can mask racial segregation, (...) even as it takes seriously America’s founding as a “nation of refugees.” Finally, Bonhoeffer’s references to intercultural encounter, particularly with respect to the Jewish diaspora in his later Ethics, provide for the extension of his ecclesiology beyond Germany and the “West.” Specifically, Du Bois’s own creedal language and pan-Africanism require that a truly global confession of the “form of Christ” must attend to unrecognized histories from the “Black Atlantic.”. (shrink)

In this paper I utilize Martin Beck Matuštík’s intellectual biography of Habermas as a means for reflecting on the meaning that criticaltheory has for us in the wake of September 11. I argue that the significant contribution of Matuštík’s book is that it fruitfully continues theconversation about the meaning of critical theory by underscoring the sociohistorical contexts that frame Habermas’s intellectual engagements. Matuštík’s figure of the critical theorist as witness refocuses attention on the critical theorist in context, nevertheless as critical (...) theorists we also need to be mindful of the plurality of disastrous events that continue to shape our world. (shrink)

Moral foundations theory has provided an account of the moral values that underscore different cultural and political ideologies, and these moral values of harm, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity can help to explain differences in political and cultural ideologies; however, the extent to which moral foundations relate to strong social ideologies, intergroup processes and threat perceptions is still underdeveloped. To explore this relationship, we conducted two studies. In Study 1, we considered how the moral foundations predicted strong social ideologies such (...) as authoritarianism and social dominance orientation as well as attitudes toward immigrants. Here, we demonstrated that more endorsement of individualizing moral foundations was related to less negative intergroup attitudes, which was mediated by SDO, and that more endorsement of binding moral foundations was related to more negative attitudes, which was mediated by RWA. Crucially, further analyses also suggested the importance of threat perceptions as an underlying explanatory variable. Study 2 replicated these findings and extended them by measuring attitudes toward a different group reflecting an ethnic minority in the United States, and by testing the ordering of variables while also replicating and confirming the threat effects. These studies have important implications for using MFT to understand strong ideologies, intergroup relations, and threat perceptions. (shrink)

This article discusses the work of George Seddon as a significant Australian intellectual whose writing on postcolonial settler-descendant relations with land and nature is a major contribution to academic and public life. Seddon’s originality lies partly in his bridging knowledge and expertise in both the humanities and sciences. However, while there is a reliance upon factual data drawn from geology, botany and zoology, Seddon’s analyses of language and culture can appear idiosyncratic and unsystematic in terms of social science methods. Based (...) on introspection, the work might be considered ‘autoethnography’, though Seddon seeks to do more than tell stories about himself. In acknowledging both the brilliance and shortcomings of Seddon’s work, I present some examples of how it has stimulated my own research on the cultural implications of naming species and places in Australia. (shrink)

As an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne in the 1980s, I recall a story that used to circulate to the effect that Australian philosophers were realists (the term prefixed by the obligatory adjective "hard-headed") because we lived in a harsh, sunlit environment where no misty meadow or morning fog obscured the objective reality of a mind-independent physical universe.

Threat avoidance involves both detection of a threatening stimulus and reaction to it. We demonstrate with empirically validated stimuli that threat detection is more pronounced among males, whereas threat reactivity is more pronounced among females. Why women are less efficient detectors of threat challenges Benenson et al.'s conceptual analysis.

Ketamine is a dissociative drug that has been used medically since the 1970s primarily as an anesthetic agent but also for various psychiatric applications. Anecdotal reports and clinical research suggest substantial potential for ketamine as a treatment in conjunction with psychological interventions. Here, we review historical and modern approaches to the use of ketamine with psychotherapy, discuss the clinical relevance of ketamine’s acute psychoactive effects, propose a unique model for using esketamine with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and suggest considerations for (...) moving medication-assisted psychotherapy forward as a field. (shrink)