I will argue that, due to the level of attention given to comparing and contrasting Socratic Intellectualism with the Republic, the question of the possibility of akrasia in Plato’s thought has not yet been adequately formulated. I will instead be focusing on Plato’s Symposium, situating Alcibiades at its epicentre and suggesting that his case should be read as highlighting some of Plato’s concerns with Socratic Intellectualism. These concerns arise from the following position of Socratic Intellectualism: knowing the greater good will (...) necessarily entail doing good, and will thereby remove the motivational content of prior knowledge of what is good. Through Alcibiades, Plato explores the possibility of a negative reaction to knowledge of the greater good. Importantly, rather than simply arising as a result of being overcome by the passions, Alcibiades’ negative reaction assumes that rational freedom is required to reject the greater good in favour of the lesser. (shrink)

Canada’s population is aging, and seniors constitute the fastest growing demographic in the nation. The chronic health conditions, limited social support, functional decline, and cognitive impairment experienced by seniors may necessitate admission to a personal care home (PCH) setting up until the time of their death. The ethical problems that arise in the care of dying patients are numerous and complicated. The care of dying seniors in PCHs, however, is largely provided by frontline workers such as healthcare aides (HCAs), who (...) usually have little training in palliative care or ethics. Research examining the identification and resolution of ethical problems in care of the dying has been conducted from the perspectives of nurses and physicians in various clinical settings, but the voice of HCAs in PCHs is virtually absent from clinical ethics. Given that the inability to satisfactorily resolve ethical issues in clinical practice is associated with feelings of guilt, powerlessness, avoiding contact with patients, failing to provide good physical care, and increased staff turnover, an empirical examination of HCAs’ experiences of ethically challenging situations is warranted.We conducted a phenomenological study to access the lived experience of HCAs (N=12) working in proprietary and nonproprietary care homes as they encountered situations they deemed ethically challenging in providing end-of-life care to dying seniors. The findings reported here explicate: (1) the types of situations that are ethically problematic for HCAs; (2) the meanings they assign to these situations, and (3) the impact such situations have on the provision of end-of-life care. (shrink)

While researchers have examined the types of ethical issues that arise in long-term care, few studies have explored long-term care nurses’ experiences of moral distress and fewer still have examined responses to initial moral distress. Using an interpretive description approach, 15 nurses working in long-term care settings within one city in Canada were interviewed about their responses to experiences of initial moral distress, resources or supports they identified as helpful or potentially helpful in dealing with these situations, and factors that (...) hindered nurses in their responses. Using a thematic analysis process, three major themes were identified from the nurses’ experiences: (i) the context of the situation matters; (ii) the value of coming together as a team; and (iii) looking for outside direction. The work of responding to initial moral distress was more fruitful if opportunities existed to discuss conflicts with other team members and if managers supported nurses in moving their concerns forward through meetings or conversations with the team, physician, or family. Access to objective others and opportunities for education about ethics were also identified as important for dealing with value conflicts. (shrink)

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

Setting goals in the workplace can motivate improved performance but it might also compromise ethical behavior. In this paper, we propose that individual differences in the dispositional tendency to morally justify behavior moderate the effects of specific performance goals on unethical behavior. We conducted an experimental study in which working participants, who were randomly assigned to a specific goal condition or to a condition with a vague goal that lacked a specific target, completed two tasks in which they had the (...) opportunity to act unethically. In an ethical dilemma task, participants in the specific goal condition were more likely to advocate using unethical methods. However, in an anagram task, only those with high moral justification overstated their performance to a greater degree in the specific goal condition. As such, individuals may not be equally susceptible to the ‘dark side’ of goal-setting. (shrink)

Now unknown or forgotten, influential schoolmasters took the game of association football to many parts of England. They had several roles: they brought the game to individual schools, they established regional and national leagues and associations, and they founded professional football clubs. They also exported the game around the world, working as moral missionaries, passionate players and energetic entrepreneurs. The role of teachers in association football is a much neglected aspect of English cultural history. It is a story that deserves (...) to be told because it allows a fundamental reappraisal of the status and position of these teachers in late nineteenth century and early twentieth century society. This volume was previously published as a special issue of the journal _Soccer and Society_. (shrink)

The Current Legal Problems lecture series and annual volume was established around sixty years ago at the Faculty of Laws, University College London and has long been recognized as a major reference point for legal scholarship. The continuing strength of Current Legal Problems is its representation of a broad range of legal scholarship opinion, theory, methodology, and subject matter, with an emphasis upon contemporary developments of law. Contributions to the 62nd volume in the series include a comparative analysis of UK (...) and US responses to terrorism, a discussion of the current legal solutions to the issue of cohabitation, an analysis of the broadening scope of risk regulation, and essays on subjects as diverse as media regulation, art and law, and abstraction and equality. (shrink)

The Current Legal Problems lecture series and annual volume was established around sixty years ago at the Faculty of Laws, University College London and has long been recognized as a major reference point for legal scholarship. The continuing strength of Current Legal Problems is its representation of a broad range of legal scholarship opinion, theory, methodology, and subject matter, with an emphasis upon contemporary developments of law. Contributions to the 61st volume in the series include an analysis of war as (...) crime by Professor Gerry Simpson, an assessment of the problems in building a realistic climate change regime by Professor Daniel Cole, and an exploration of the problems of character evidence by Dr Mike Redmayne. (shrink)

This review article analyses Tarunabh Khaitan’s attempt in his recent book, A Theory of Discrimination Law, to identify the central purpose and justification of discrimination law. Khaitan sets out to determine the key features of discrimination law through rigorous comparative analysis, and to locate a solid normative foundation for its provisions. He concludes that discrimination law is structured around an ‘obsession’ with combating group disadvantage, ie relative forms of disadvantage between different groups whose membership is defined by morally irrelevant or (...) valuable personal characteristics such as gender, race and disability. He goes on to make a strongly argued liberal case as to why discrimination law is justified in seeking to minimise the negative impact on individual liberty of group disadvantage. Certain aspects of his analysis fail to capture the full complexity of discrimination law and the moral concerns which underpin its functioning. However, in general, Khaitan’s arguments make an invaluable contribution to the diffuse theoretical literature on discrimination law, and are bound to become a major point of reference in conceptual debates about this highly significant area of law. (shrink)

Exploring online criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ protest during ‘Euro 2020’, this article examines how alt- and far-right conspiracies were both constructed and communicated via the social media platform, Twitter. By providing a novel exploration of alt-right conspiracies during an international football tournament, a qualitative thematic analysis of 1,388 original tweets relating to Euro 2020 was undertaken. The findings reveal how, in criticisms levelled at both ‘wokeism’ and the Black Lives Matter movement, antiwhite criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ (...) protest were embroiled in alt-right conspiracies that exposed an assumed Cultural Marxist, ‘woke agenda’ in the tournament’s organization and mainstream media coverage. In conclusion, it is argued that conspiratorial discourses, associated with the alt-right, provided a framework through which the protest could be understood. This emphasises how the significance of conspiracy functions to promote the wider dissemination of alt-right ideology across popular cultural contexts, such as sport. (shrink)