Current literature has documented the detrimental effects of cyberbullying which include a range of internalising and externalising problems for those involved. Although critical, this research can sometimes ignore social-ecological aspects of a child’s life that can potentially ‘buffer’ the negative psychological effects of such involvement. With this in mind, this cross-sectional investigation of 12-16 year olds [M(SD): 13.5(1) years] in Ireland focused on the role of friendship quality and gender in association with cyberbullying involvement and psychological well-being (N= (...) 2410). The Cyberbullying and Online Aggression Scale was used to measure cyber perpetration and victimisation. A modified version of the Cambridge Friendship Questionnaire was included to investigate peer friendship quality. Finally, the Moods and Feeling Questionnaire and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire were chosen to provide a measurement of psychological well-being. Prevalence rates for various types of cyberbullying roles (cyber bullies, victims and bully/victims) are presented, as well as differences for psychological well-being, friendship quality and cyberbullying involvement. In addition, regression models were used to determine the associations between gender, age, friendship quality and involvement in cyberbullying with psychological well-being. The results are considered in terms of the current literature and directions for future research are suggested. (shrink)

Ethical dimensions of friendship have rarely been explicitly addressed as aspects of friendship quality in studies of children's peer relationships. This study identifies aspects of moral virtue significant for friendship, as a basis for empirically investigating the role of ethical qualities in children's friendship assessments and aspirations. We introduce a eudaimonic conception of friendship quality, identify aspects of moral virtue foundational to such quality, review and contest some grounds on which children have (...) been regarded as not mature enough to have friendships that require virtue, and report a qualitative study of the friendship assessments and aspirations of children aged nine and ten. In focus group sessions conducted in ten schools across Great Britain, moral qualities figured prominently in children's assessments of friendship quality. The findings provide evidence of children having friendships exhibiting mutual respect, support, and valuing of each other's good character. (shrink)

Friendship is commonly assumed to reduce strategic uncertainty and enhance tacit coordination. However, this assumption has never been tested across two opposite poles of coordination involving either strategic complementarity or substitutability. We had participants interact with friends or strangers in two classic coordination games: the stag-hunt game, which exhibits strategic complementarity and may foster “cooperation”, and the entry game, which exhibits strategic substitutability and may foster “competition”. Both games capture a frequent trade-off between a potentially high paying but uncertain (...) option and a low paying but safe alternative. We find that, relative to strangers, friends are more likely to choose options involving uncertainty in stag-hunt games, but the opposite is true in entry games. Furthermore, in stag-hunt games, friends “tremble” less between options, coordinate better and earn more, but these advantages are largely decreased or lost in entry games. We further investigate how these effects are modulated by risk attitudes, friendship qualities, and interpersonal similarities. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This article falls into two parts: the first is an analysis, in the light of my earlier discussions of and of the Homeric usage of and the second, an attempt to show that, as in the case of the effects of Homeric usage persist to a considerable degree in the moral philosophy of Aristotle. In the earlier discussions I have argued that the higher value placed upon the competitive in Greek entails that co-operative relationships, even when valued and necessary, take (...) the form dictated by the more valued qualities, the The most general words to denote co-operative relationships in Greek are and its derivatives: my purpose here is to show how the Homeric usage of these words is related to the Homeric standard and to Homeric society, and to sketch in the outline of a wider discussion, which I hope to be able to fill in later. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between friendship and morality. Two ideas have been influential in the history of moral philosophy: the impartial standpoint and close friendship. These two perspectives on thought and action can conflict, however, and such a case is presented here. In an attempt to resolve these tensions, and understand the assumption that gives rise to it, I explore an alternative conception of moral conduct and friendship suggested by early Confucian thought. Within this account, moral (...) conduct is that which aims at harmony, understood as the appropriate blending of different elements. This suggests a conception of friendship that realizes harmony through a focus on shared activities, and the quality of interaction achieved between people as they participate in shared social events. This account offers a novel way of conceptualizing friendship, which also avoids the tension between the impartial standpoint and close friendship. (shrink)

This article falls into two parts: the first is an analysis, in the light of my earlier discussions of and of the Homeric usage of and the second, an attempt to show that, as in the case of the effects of Homeric usage persist to a considerable degree in the moral philosophy of Aristotle. In the earlier discussions I have argued that the higher value placed upon the competitive in Greek entails that co-operative relationships, even when valued and necessary, take (...) the form dictated by the more valued qualities, the The most general words to denote co-operative relationships in Greek are and its derivatives: my purpose here is to show how the Homeric usage of these words is related to the Homeric standard and to Homeric society, and to sketch in the outline of a wider discussion, which I hope to be able to fill in later. (shrink)

This chapter, ‘Friendship and the Moral Life in Iris Murdoch’s Novels’ revisits the subject of sexual relationships, not from the problematic perspective brought to them in Anne Rowe’s earlier chapter, but in a positive light. In his analysis of the educational potential of friendship and sexuality Robert Baker contends that sexual intimacy teaches Murdoch’s characters not only about themselves and their own identity but also about the reality of the other person. It thus acts as a force for (...) learning to attend to the world outside the self which is the desideratum of Murdoch’s moral pilgrimage. He surveys the apparent acceptance by Murdoch scholars that such moral development is necessarily a solitary and lonely endeavour before juxtaposing that impression—given prominence in the M and D scenario Murdoch creates in The Sovereignty of Good (1970)—with the relationships she portrays in her novels. Close readings of the friendship of Tom MacCaffrey and Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor in The Philosopher’s Pupil (1983) and of Harvey Blackett’s relationship with Sefton Anderson in The Green Knight support Baker’s contention that physical affection can be a guide to the good. Borrowing an image from the latter novel he claims that in her fiction ‘Murdoch represents the moral life not as a lonely pilgrimage toward reality, but as a passeggiata with others in which one gives way to a movement larger than and beyond oneself’ (177), a viable interpretation which reads the passeggiata with an interestingly different slant from other current critics such as Rebecca Moden, who regards it as Murdoch’s ‘metaphor for the nature of human existence’ and ‘a troubling image of the impoverished quality of human consciousness in the late twentieth century’. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to describe three different attempts, which have been made by philosophers, to define what quality of life is; and to spell out some of the difficulties that faces each definition. One, Perfectionism, focuses on the capacities that human beings possess: capacities for friendship, knowledge and creative activity, for instance. It says that the good life consists in the development and use of these capacities. Another account, the Preference Theory, urges that satisfying (...) one's preferences, or desires, is what improves one's quality of life. And a third account, Hedonism, sees life-quality as consisting in the enjoyment of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. The paper describes and evaluates objections to each of these views, thereby displaying their weaknesses and strengths. Since no view comes out as the right one there is a choice to be made. At the end of the paper it is being discussed how well each of the views cohere with different methodologies used in quality of life research. Also it is suggested that considerations about what the research is to be used for are relevant. (shrink)

This article falls into two parts: the first is an analysis, in the light of my earlier discussions of and of the Homeric usage of and the second, an attempt to show that, as in the case of the effects of Homeric usage persist to a considerable degree in the moral philosophy of Aristotle. In the earlier discussions I have argued that the higher value placed upon the competitive in Greek entails that co-operative relationships, even when valued and necessary, take (...) the form dictated by the more valued qualities, the The most general words to denote co-operative relationships in Greek are and its derivatives: my purpose here is to show how the Homeric usage of these words is related to the Homeric standard and to Homeric society, and to sketch in the outline of a wider discussion, which I hope to be able to fill in later. (shrink)

The dynamic qualities of friendship sometimes require friends to assess their relationship in light of reasons of reciprocity or moral considerations. Friends sustain their relationship partly by assessing the terms of reciprocity. Sometimes friends must also consider how moral reasons bear on their friendship; friends need to resolve occasional clashes between the demands of friendship and rival moral considerations, and friends must sometimes serve as a moral stewards for each other. I discuss how friends may monitor their (...) relationship without undermining the trust and mutual regard appropriate to friends. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DE ORDINE CARITATIS: CHARITY, FRIENDSHIP, AND JUSTICE IN THOMAS AQUINAS' SUMMA THEOLOGIAE JEAN PORTER Vanderbilt Divinity School Nashville, Tennessee IS IT POSSIBLE to identify the :lioundational or characteristic content of Christian love? According to Gene Outka, the normative content most often ascribed to Christian neighbor-love, or agape, is equal rega.rd.1 On this aiooount, agape commits us to aot at all times out of a regard for the neighbor (...) that is stable and independent of a particular response from the other. Each individual is to he valued simply as a human person, and not on the basis of his or her particular merits, attractiveness, or functional value to others. In short, the qualities of the other that are of primary significance in determining how that person should be treated are those that he or she has in common with everybody else, and not those that set him or her apart. This view is well expressed by Kierkegaard: The category neighbor is just like the category human being. Every one of us is a human being and at the same time the heterogeneous individual which he is by particularity; but being a human being is the fundamental qualification... No one should be preoccupied with the differences so that he cowardly or presumptuously forgets that he is a human being; no man is an exception to being a human being by virtue of his particularising differences, He is rather a human being and then a particular human being.2 An Outka describes it, the claim that Christian ethics is grounded in a commitment to equal regard is a substantive 1 Gene Outka, Agape:.4.n Ethical Analysis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), p. 260. 2 Quoted by Outka, p. 15. 197 198 JEAN PORTER claim, in that it is meant to identify the core content of a particular ethical tradition. But this substantive claim raises an historical question: Has Christian neighbor love actually been understood in this way, at least by some major Christian thinkers? Obviously, the substantive aµd historical questions raised by Outka's normative analysis of agape are interrelated. At least, it would be difficult to defend the claim that Christian neighbor love enjoins equal regard in the face of evidence that great numbers of Christians ha.ve not actually understood their fundamental commitments in this way. By the same token, the ca:se for interpreting the second great love commandment as enjoining equal regard would be strengthened if it could be shown that some segments of the Christian tradition, or some of its leading expositors, have held substantially the same view. Nonetheless, I do not know of any attempt to examine in detajl the ethical thought of an important classical figure in light of Outka's searching normative analysis of the different interpretations that have been given to agape. This essay is a modest attempt to begin to fill that gap through an examination of Thomas Aquinas' account of charity in the Summa Theologia.e. But my purpose in this essay is not limited to answering the question," Did Thomas understand charity as equal regard?" As we will see, that question can be answered all too quickly. Once it has.been answered, however, it provides an unexpected entree into Thomas' remarkable concept of charity. And by spelling out some of the implications of this concept, we learn something, not only about Thomas, but about the nature of Christian neighborlove as well. I. De ordine caritatis At the outset, it will be helpful to summarize the main points in Thomas' acoount of charity. Along with faith and hope, charity is one of three theological virtues that directs the human person to God as the supernatural fulfillment of human life (ST la2ae 62.l, 3; 110.3. All further references to Aquinas THE ORDER OF CHARITY IN AQUINAS 199 are to the Summa Theologiae). It is the greatest of the theological virtues because it directs the human person to friendship with God (2a2ae 23.1), That is, it directs him or her to union with God as he is in himself, and not simply as the source of a.II created good, or even as the author... (shrink)

What makes a friendship a good friendship? One way of answering that question, taken by Aristotle and many philosophers since, is to describe an ideal friendship, and then say that a friendship is a good friendship insofar as it resembles the ideal. An ideal of friendship, so presented, is intended to capture the qualities that all good friendships share, regardless of who the friends are and regardless of their circumstances. This approach to good (...) class='Hi'>friendship, I argue, fails to capture the variety of good kinds of friendship and the role of friendship in real human lives. I propose an alternative approach, on which a good friendship is one that improves the lives of the friends by bringing to those lives some of the many disparate values especially associated with friendship. On this view, there are many forms of good friendship, often mutually incompatible; no single kind of friendship is a model for all others; and the point of friendship is to improve the lives of humans as they are, with all their distinguishing weaknesses, limitations, and needs. (shrink)

In this analysis of his thought on friendship, I begin first by arguing that for Nietzsche friendship is undesirable or impossible with or between four human types. Insight on this point is valuable, because it provides clear vision of what friendship is not. Second, I will argue that Nietzsche takes superior friendship to be possible but rare, since it requires its participants to balance three pairs of opposing qualities that are difficult to keep in equilibrium. Third, (...) I will show that Nietzsche takes friendship in its highest form to aim at a goal, appropriately named "truth." Here I draw upon both "middle-period" texts and Beyond Good and Evil, the latter to show that a concern for friendship pervades Nietzsche's oeuvre. Fourth, I show that Nietzsche differs most from ancient authors in his uncompromising insistence that if friendship is to serve truth rather than comfort or illusion, it is necessarily agonistic. A final section argues that if true friendship is to be nourished rather than destroyed by opposition, the virtue of "sympathy" must be present. Sympathy in Nietzsche's sense cannot be conflated with pity, since it is related to the "shared joy" that he identifies as the crown of friendship. (shrink)

The aim of the current study was to investigate important pathways of the Environmental Stress Hypothesis concerning the role of peer relations. First, we examined (1) the mediating role of peer problems in the association between the motor performance in daily activities and internalizing problems as a main pathway of the Environmental Stress Hypothesis. Furthermore, we explored the role of (2) children’s popularity as a mediator and (3) best friendship quality as a moderator path of the effect of (...) motor performance on both peer problems and internalizing problems. The non-clinical sample of the present study consisted of 189 children (48.6% females) aged nine to eleven years (Mage = 9.69, SDage = 0.46). Parents reported on their child’s motor performance in daily activities by completing the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire. In addition, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire was used to assess peer problems as well as internalizing problems. The Self Description Questionnaire provided a measure of children’s self-reported popularity. Finally, the Friendship Quality Questionnaire was used to investigate children’s best friendship quality. Results of a structural equation model suggest that peer problems fully mediated the association between the motor performance in daily activities and both popularity and internalizing problems. However, no evidence for the mediating effect of popularity in the association between peer problems and internalizing problems was found. Further, best friendship quality had small but non-significant positive moderating effect on the relation between peer problems and internalizing problems. The mediating role of peer problems highlights the importance of peer relations in the motor performance of daily activities. Possible reasons for the lack of some of the expected mediating and moderating effects as well as practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

I take friendship to be a practical and emotional relationship marked by mutual and (more-or-less) equal goodwill, liking, and pleasure. Friendship can exist between siblings, lovers, parent and adult child, as well as between otherwise unrelated people. Some friendships are valued chiefly for their usefulness. Such friendships are instrumental or means friendships. Other friendships are valued chiefly for their own sakes. Such friendships are noninstrumental or end friendships. In this paper I am concerned only with end friendships, and (...) the challenge they pose to consequentialism. In an end friendship, one loves the friend as an essential part of one's system of ends, and not solely, or even primarily, as a means to an independent end - career advancement, amusement, philosophical illumination, or greater happiness in the universe. In such love, one loves the friend for the person she is, i.e., for her essential rather than incidental features. These include both her character traits - the fundamental intellectual, psychological, moral, and aesthetic qualities that constitute an individual's personality - and her unique perspective on herself and others: her view of the important and unimportant, her interest in herself and others. Thus in end friendship the friend cannot be replaced by another, for no other can have her essential features. Nor can she be replaced by a more efficient means to one's ends, or abandoned on their achievement, for it is not as a means that one 2 loves her. It is this necessary irreplaceability that most obviously marks off end friendship from means or instrumental friendship, in which the friend is replaceable.i Hence to love a friend as an end is to place a special value on her - to believe that her value is not outweighed, say, simply by the greater needs of others - or the needs of a greater number of others ("Sorry dear, there are more drowning on this end").ii End friendship (hereafter simply "friendship") is a cardinal human value.. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this analysis of his thought on friendship, I begin first by arguing that for Nietzsche friendship is undesirableor impossible with or between four human types. Insight on this point is valuable, because it provides clear vision of what friendship is not. Second, I will argue that Nietzsche takes superior friendship to be possible but rare, since itrequires its participants to balance three pairs of opposing qualities that are difficult to keep in equilibrium. Third, I (...) will show that Nietzsche takes friendship in its highest form to aim at a goal, appropriately named “truth.” Here I draw upon both “middle-period” texts and Beyond Good and Evil, the latter to show that a concern for friendship pervadesNietzsche’s oeuvre. Fourth, I show that Nietzsche differs most from ancient authors in his uncompromising insistence that if friendship is to serve truth rather than comfort or illusion, it is necessarily agonistic. A final section argues that if true friendship is to be nourished rather than destroyed by opposition, the virtue of “sympathy” must be present. Sympathy in Nietzsche’s sense cannot be conflated with pity, since it is related to the “shared joy” that he identifies as the crown of friendship. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Ethical care is beginning to be recognised as care that accounts for the views of those at the receiving end of care. However, in the context of palliative and supportive district nursing care, the patients’ and their carers’ views are seldom heard. This qualitative research study explores these views. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 26 patients with palliative and supportive care needs receiving district nursing care, and 13 of their carers. Participants were recruited via community nurses and hospices (...) between September 2010 and October 2011. Post-structural discourse analysis is used to examine how discourses operate on a moral level. One discourse, ‘busyness’, is argued to preclude a moral form of nursing care. The discourse of friendship is presented to contrast this. Discussion explores Gallagher’s ‘slow ethics’ and challenges the currently accepted ways of measuring to improve quality of care concluding that quality cannot be measured. (shrink)

For ten years, between 1903 and 1913, Gertrude Stein saw human relationships as painful mathematical puzzles in need of solutions. Again and again, she converted the predicaments of her personal life into literary material, the better to solve and to exorcise them. The revelation that relationships had a structural quality came to her during the composition of Q.E.D. , when she grasped the almost mathematical nature of her characters' emotional impasse. Stein's persona in the novel comments on their triangular (...) affair, "Why it's like a piece of mathematics. Suddenly it does itself and you begin to see."1 The theory encouraged her to examine such situations as if they were case histories: she continued to study the same piece of mathematics from different angles in Fernhurst , Three Lives , and The Making of Americans . But whatever the sexual arrangements in these triangles, the powerful generally managed to impose their wills upon the less powerful, and the triangles resolved themselves into oppositional structures, pitting two against one. Gradually, when the couple began to replace the triangle as her structural model, Stein composed numerous verbal portraits of couples and their relationships. In two of these, "Ada" and "Two Women," Stein applied her general theory of relationships to the particular puzzle of female friendships because, I think, she felt that women's characters were most intensely molded in same-sex involvements. Although she attempted to "prove" these theories in distanced, deliberately depersonalized prose, we as readers must examine "the complex interplay of self-discovery and writing" from which her portraits emerged.2Stein's portraits of women entangled in familial and erotic bonds seem to invite us into "the process whereby the self creates itself in the experience of creating art"; to read them, we must "join the narrator in reconstructing the other woman by whom we know ourselves."3 This task of reconstruction implies that we must also rethink the place of biography—generally dismissed by New Criticism and its subsequent post-structuralist permutations as "mere" biography—in feminist critical projects. If it is true that "in reading as in writing, it is ourselves that we remake," then feminist critics have a special stake in understanding the biographical, and autobiographical, impulses at work in these activities.4 Stein's portraits, which hover between fiction and biography, raise important questions about the ways in which biographical information can justify our suspicion that female writers may be "closer to their fictional creations than male writers are."5 Recently, feminist critics have adapted psychoanalytic theory to examine the particular closeness of female characters in women's writing or to suggest a related closeness between the female author and her characters. We find it useful to speak of the pre-Oedipal structures and permeable ego boundaries that seem to shape women's relationships. Although Stein used very different psychological paradigms, she approached these same issues in her own studies of female friendships. Realizing that she preferred to write about women, she observed, "It is clearer…I know it better, a little, not very much better."6 In spite of her qualifications, she knew that she could see the structuring principles of relationships with greater clarity when writing from her own perspective.1. Stein, "Fernhurst," "Q.E.D.," and Other Early Writings, ed. Leon Katz , p. 67.2. Elizabeth Abel, "Reply to Gardiner," Signs 6 : 444. For a very useful critical discussion of this complex issue, see Abel, "Merging Identities: The Dynamics of Female Friendship in Contemporary Fiction by Women," and Judith Kegan Gardiner, "The es of dentity: a Response to Abel on 'Merging Identities,'" in the same issue of Signs .3. Gardiner, "The es of dentity," p. 442.4. Jonathan Morse, "Memory, Desire, and the Need for Biography: The Case of Emily Dickinson," The Georgia Review 35 : 271. See also J. Gerald Kennedy's suggestive remarks on the "tension between personal confession and implacable theory" in Barthes' later work .5. Abel, "Reply to Gardiner," p. 444.6. Stein, The Making of Americans, cited in Richard Bridgeman, Gertrude Stein in Pieces , p. 78.Carolyn Burke, an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for Research on Women, Stanford University, has published articles on French feminist writing and on Mina Loy, whose biography she is now completing. The theoretical implications of this essay will be explored in her related study in progress on feminist biography. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore challenges of the Aristotelian friendship (philia) in multicultural society and in the specific industrial and organizational contexts. Data was collected from forty-eight participant interviews with managers and employees of four mining companies in Indonesia with twelve informants from each company, both management and employees. The paper found that the virtue of friendship within the mining companies has several drawbacks when an imbalance of power exists between managers and employees. This paper suggests that to (...) understand virtue of friendship in a multi-ethnic and multicultural context, it is essential to ground the conceptual framework in both Aristotle’s views and specific cultural sensitivities, as only then can the full story be grasped. Thus, this paper contributes to bring insights into an under-explored, complex and, at times, paradoxical context, explaining that Aristotelian virtue ethics encounters cultural aspects and a specific context of human relationships which make challenges for business organizations to be virtuous. More importantly, this paper also paves the path towards further discussions and studies on virtue ethics to set a conceptual framework in both virtue ethics and specific cultural sensitivities for business ethics. Practically, this paper provides a valuable insight for business organizations especially business leaders, human resources (HR) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practitioners, as it offers practice on how to avoid moral lapses in their day-to-day working relationships inside the organization as well as their relationships with the community. (shrink)

In The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought, Dennis Rasmussen reminds us that ‘Hume believed that “the first Quality of an Historian is to be true & impartial; the next to be interesting”’ (p. 72). Rasmussen meets both criteria in his history of the friendship of Hume and Smith, two luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment. The Infidel and the Professor lays out the facts carefully, showing both the depth (...) of Hume and Smith’s warmth and respect for each other as well as the extent of their shared intellectual interests and mutual influence. But while he is ‘true & impartial,’ just as Hume would want, Rasmussen also tells a lively and engrossing story. In a well-paced and beautifully written narrative, he demonstrates the same wit and genuine affection for his subjects that he proves characterized their relationship. (shrink)

I. Introduction: Political Friendship Proverbial wisdom has bequeathed us the dictum “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Contained within this adage is a progression of oppositional distinctions resulting in an emergent complicity. Two actors are identified in addition to the subject—my enemy, and my enemy's enemy. The latter actor takes on a new meaning for me by the mere coincidence of exact formal similitude exhibited by the relationships existing between each of ourselves and our common enemy. But (...) is this all that is needed for the engendering of friendship? It seems that it is…. (shrink)

I began this project with a few thoughts on one topic, and they grew into many on a larger one. I wanted to say something about vulnerability and discovered that there was much to say about human dignity. Once a rather die-hard Kantian, I have made over the last decade or so a fairly radical transition to a basically Aristotelian way of thinking. Persistent thoughts over the status of personal ties in the moral life first led me away from Kant (...) and toward Aristotle. Though I think some of the criticisms of Kant regarding friendship, for example, are misguided, in the end I do not think Kant gives us a very satisfactory way of thinking about what is most important to us in personal relationships. What Kant is supposed to give us, however, is an insightful way of thinking about human dignity and the worth of persons. I do not believe he does. In fact, I think that Kant and his predecessors, the Christians and the Stoics, deeply mislead us about our dignity. In this sense, this book is an attack on a certain tradition and what is thought to be its greatest strength. I hope, however, that what emerges is more positive than negative, that what I say provides some insight into what we actually do value in ourselves and others. (shrink)

Relationships are central to human life strategies and have crucial fitness consequences. Yet, at the same time, they incur significant maintenance costs that are rarely considered in either social psychological or evolutionary studies. Although many social psychological studies have explored their dynamics, these studies have typically focused on a small number of emotionally intense ties, whereas social networks in fact consist of a large number of ties that serve a variety of different functions. In this study, we examined how entire (...) active personal networks changed over 18 months across a major life transition. Family relationships and friendships differed strikingly in this respect. The decline in friendship quality was mitigated by increased effort invested in the relationship, but with a striking gender difference: relationship decline was prevented most by increased contact frequency (talking together) for females but by doing more activities together in the case of males. (shrink)

The present study investigated the mediating role of negative emotion in the relationship between cybervictimization and non-suicidal self-injury, and the moderating role of friendship quality in the indirect relationship. This model was tested with 1,326 Chinese adolescents who suffered from cyberbullying in the last 1 year; 727 were boys and 591 were girls, and their mean age was 13.67 years. Participants filled out questionnaires regarding cybervictimization, negative emotion, friendship quality, and non-suicidal self-injury. After demographic variables were (...) controlled, cybervictimization was significantly positively associated with non-suicidal self-injury. Mediation analysis revealed that negative emotion partially mediated the association between cybervictimization and non-suicidal self-injury. Moderated mediation analysis further indicated that the mediated path was weaker for adolescents with higher levels of friendship quality. These findings underscore the importance of identifying the mechanisms that moderate the mediated path between cybervictimization and non-suicidal self-injury among adolescents. (shrink)

Friendship is the foremost form of human individual relation, a demanding community of ethical courage and reciprocation of the measure of life in the ethico-existential dimension. The said relation is of autotelic nature, being no substitute for other forms of human co-existence, however it contributes to solving issues insurmountable in other forms of human relations. It opens up the human’s existence to wider dimensions of co-existence and cofeeling. In the human community a man’s development – of an individual and (...) that of a member of the society – is determined by their gradual realization of stable humanistic values, constituting the fundamental criterion of their attitude towards reality. The human closeness and reciprocating the measure of life are the basic features of friendship and community. That makes those qualities compatible both existentially and practically. The abovementioned forms of human existence have to be clearly distinguished from the passing conventional reciprocity, founded on the societally-accepted concept of “the idol of the market”. The relevance of the will to authenticity of the co-existing human beings, finding its expression in practicing equivalency in acts of reciprocity and shaping a mutually adequate measure of life, has to be strongly emphasized. (shrink)

In the Lysis, Socrates claims to be looking for an account of what kind of quality in another person or object stimulates friendship or love (philia). He goes through a series of proposals, refuting each in turn. In the end, he throws us back to the point from where the arguments started, declaring an aporetic outcome. What is the purpose of this apparently futile and circular inquiry? Most interpreters try to reconstruct a theory of friendship or love (...) from the arguments of this dialogue. Against such a doctrinal reading, this essay defends an “aporetic reading” of the dialogue and connects it to its protreptic function. Starting with a preliminary discussion of what defines an aporetic dialogue and what distinguishes indirect protreptic from explicit protreptic discourse, the essay then analyzes the aporetic method of the Lysis, distinguishing it from aporetic discourse in some of his earlier dialogues. Finally, it analyzes how, and for what kind of audience, the Lysisfunctions as an indirect protreptic. This includes a comparison with the protreptic use of aporetic argumentation in the Euthydemus. (shrink)

This book comprises essays centered on Aristotle’s objectivist conception of eudaimonia, especially the roles played in it by activities of theoretical and practical intellect and the quality of our relationships with one another. Common objections to grounding this conception in the “proper function” of a human being are answered by appeal to the role played by Aristotle’s teleologically driven essentialism. His struggle to reconcile living in accordance with distinctively human virtues with the ideal of living a “divine” contemplative life (...) is explored, along with puzzles about how to reconcile his conception of eudaimonia as the ultimate end of human action with the parallel requirements that virtuous agents choose to engage in virtuous action “for itself” and that friends love their friends “for themselves.” Readings of Aristotle’s “eudaimonism” as a form of rational egoism are challenged by appeal to an original account of the ideal friend as an “other self,” one that stresses appreciation of the friend’s character “for itself” (apart from any relationships in which it happens to stand to the agent’s own needs and/or tastes) but acknowledges the role played by pleasure in “character friendship.” The friend’s good is not, as on “colonizing ego” readings, part of the agent’s own. Rather, the ideal friend recognizes the value her friend’s activity has for him and she take pleasure in his activity as such. This explains why even the maximally self-sufficient (and so most godlike) agent, who needs nothing from a friend, will nevertheless want to have at least one. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein, who died in Cambridge in 1951, is one of the most powerful influences on contemporary philosophy, yet he shunned publicity and was essentially a private man. His friend Norman Malcolm (himself an eminent philosopher) wrote this remarkably vivid personal memoir ofWittgenstein, which was published in 1958 and was immediately recognized as a moving and truthful portrait of this gifted, difficult man.This edition includes also the complete text of the fifty-seven letters which Wittgenstein wrote to Malcolm over a period (...) of eleven years. Apart from the quotations in the Memoir these letters are previously unpublished. They reveal how much friendships mattered to Wittgenstein, and how concerned hewas for the health and well-being of his friends. His human qualities become evident; he advises, warns, jokes. and is grateful and affectionate.The volume also features a concise biographical sketch by another leading philosopher who was a friend of Wittgenstein, Georg Henrik von Wright.Much has been published about Wittgenstein since his death, but nothing brings us closer to the man himself than this modest classic of philosophical biography. (shrink)

In the 21st century, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) remains one of the key figures in the field of analytical psychology - and Psychological Types, or The Psychology of Individuation, published in 1921, is one of his most influential works. It was written during the decade after the publication of Psychology of the Unconscious (1912), which effectively ended his friendship and collaboration with Sigmund Freud. Whereas the earlier work had clearly marked Jung's psychoanalytical divergence from Freud it is the Psychology (...) of Types that fully clarifies and presents the nature, quality and characteristics of his analytical psychology. The work, which was in part a consequence of his need to reconcile the competing theories of Freud, whom he regarded as extraverted, and Alfred Adler, whom he saw as introverted, develops his concept of descriptive categories for understanding the human mind in terms of the two essential attitude types: introversion and extraversion. These basic attitudes operate in tandem with four principal interacting functions of consciousness which Jung identifies as sensation and intuition, which are functions of perception, and thinking and feeling, which are functions of judgment. The eight resulting psychological types are then explored, described, identified, characterised and explained in considerable detail, with a soaring range of examples drawn from the whole of human history, culture and experience. In his efforts to explore and illuminate the nature of the unconscious mind and indeed the collective unconscious, he investigates the problems posed by the differing psychological types and how these have manifested from classical and medieval times to the 20th century. His observations range from Aristotle, Socrates and Plato to Tertullian and Origen, and from Abélard and Master Eckhart to Martin Luther and the problem of transubstantiation. Jung takes the listener on an odyssey of human thinking. He considers the problem of types in the works of Schiller and Goethe, and Spitteler and his treatment of the Prometheus myth. He contrasts idealism and realism, the Apollonian and the Dionysian in Nietzsche, and explores a host of philosophical and religious sources from the Bible to Taoism to Brahminism. He considers the nature of the reconciling symbol in Spitteler before analysing the nature of types in modern philosophy, aesthetics and biography, giving detailed consideration to William James' characteristic pairs of opposites and Furneaux Jordan's 'character sketch of the emotional types'. Jung goes on to fully identify and describe the characteristic differences between the extraverted and introverted types and provides an extensive chapter on definitions to fully clarify the meaning of the language he employs and make his meaning more accessible. Authoritatively read by Martyn Swain for Ukemi Audiobooks, Psychological Types is an inexhaustible treasure chest of ideas and creative inspiration worth listening to time and time again. (shrink)

In _The Company We Keep_, Wayne C. Booth argues for the relocation of ethics to the center of our engagement with literature. But the questions he asks are not confined to morality. Returning ethics to its root sense, Booth proposes that the ethical critic will be interested in any effect on the ethos, the total character or quality of tellers and listeners. Ethical criticism will risk talking about the quality of _this_ particular encounter with _this_ particular work. Yet (...) it will give up the old hope for definitive judgments of "good" work and "bad." Rather it will be a conversation about _many_ kinds of personal and social goods that fictions can serve or destroy. While not ignoring the consequences for conduct of engaging with powerful stories, it will attend to that more immediate topic, What happens to us _as we read_? Who am I, _during the hours of reading or listening_? What is the quality of the life I lead in the company of these would-be friends? Through a wide variety of periods and genres and scores of particular works, Booth pursues various metaphors for such engagements: "friendship with books," "the exchange of gifts," "the colonizing of worlds," "the constitution of commonwealths." He concludes with extended explorations of the ethical powers and potential dangers of works by Rabelais, D. H. Lawrence, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain. (shrink)

In _The Company We Keep_, Wayne C. Booth argues for the relocation of ethics to the center of our engagement with literature. But the questions he asks are not confined to morality. Returning ethics to its root sense, Booth proposes that the ethical critic will be interested in any effect on the ethos, the total character or quality of tellers and listeners. Ethical criticism will risk talking about the quality of _this_ particular encounter with _this_ particular work. Yet (...) it will give up the old hope for definitive judgments of "good" work and "bad." Rather it will be a conversation about _many_ kinds of personal and social goods that fictions can serve or destroy. While not ignoring the consequences for conduct of engaging with powerful stories, it will attend to that more immediate topic, What happens to us _as we read_? Who am I, _during the hours of reading or listening_? What is the quality of the life I lead in the company of these would-be friends? Through a wide variety of periods and genres and scores of particular works, Booth pursues various metaphors for such engagements: "friendship with books," "the exchange of gifts," "the colonizing of worlds," "the constitution of commonwealths." He concludes with extended explorations of the ethical powers and potential dangers of works by Rabelais, D. H. Lawrence, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain. (shrink)

This paper argues that environmental virtue ethics requires the adoption of an ethical ideal in order to guide the identification and practice of virtues. I recommend friendship as one such ideal due to emphasis such an ideal places upon the quality of the relationship with nature rather than the evaluation of individual actions. After describing the value of friendship as an ethical ideal, I respond to some of the objections that have been raised against it in the (...) context of environmental virtue. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently revived the study of the ancient Greek topics of virtue and the virtues—justice, honesty, temperance, friendship, courage, and so on as qualities of mind and character belonging to individual people. But one issue at the center of Greek moral theory seems to have dropped out of consideration. This is the question of the unity of virtue, the unity of the virtues. Must anyone who has one of these qualities have others of them as well, indeed all (...) of them—all the ones that really do deserve to be counted as virtues? Even further, is there really no set of distinct and separate virtuous qualities at all, but at bottom only a single one—so that the person who has this single condition of “virtue” is entitled also to the further descriptions “honest” and “well-controlled” and “just” and “friendly” and “courageous” and “fostering” and “supportive,” and so on, as distinguishable aspects or immediate effects of his unitary “virtue”? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Tolerance Among the Virtues by John R. BowlinLaura YordyTolerance Among the Virtues John R. Bowlin PRINCETON, NJ: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016. 280 pp. $39.50John Bowlin has produced a comprehensive and fine-grained analysis of, and argument for, the virtue of tolerance in contemporary Western democratic societies. His account relies heavily on Thomas Aquinas, yet he believes that the case for tolerance should have force beyond Christian communities because liberal (...) democracies are necessarily concerned about maintaining just relationships among people with different understandings of the good. This is a precise and thorough treatment of an important quality in these contentious times.Bowlin argues, first, that criticisms of tolerance often arise from mistaking the virtue for one of its semblances, typically a sort of truculent self-restraint. In response, drawing on Aquinas and Wittgenstein, he makes an extended case for true tolerance as part of the virtue of justice. Tolerance is necessary to any human life ("natural" in Aquinas' terms) because of the social nature of humanity and the inevitable rise of interpersonal or intergroup differences. The virtue consists of "patient endurance of objectionable difference" for the sake of peaceful society and shared autonomy (130). Peaceful society and autonomy are goods shared in common by members of a democratic society, and so all are owed tolerance in respect of that membership. Obviously, not all differences should be tolerated. Tolerance as a virtue includes the ability to distinguish between what is truly objectionable and what is not, along with between what is objectionable and what is unendurable. The accuracy of these distinctions, of course, depends on circumstances and context.When Bowlin returns to the issue of opposition to tolerance (chap. 5), he points out that disputes about tolerance are actually often about a particular community's lists of what is tolerable and what is not. Tolerance, therefore, is not a possession of either the political right or left, for any human group develops and exercises tolerance for some of the inevitable differences among its members. Rather, the right and the left cling to different lists of what is properly tolerated. This section of the book seems particularly helpful, as it provides an instructive perspective on differences that often seem unfathomable.Finally, Bowlin discusses the relationship between "(1) tolerance annexed to justice and acquired by natural means; (2) forbearance as a perfection of friendship's love; and (3) a forbearance that, by Christian confession, comes by grace, expresses God's love, and participates in God's life" (207). Drawing [End Page 189] on Paul here, Bowlin asserts that though natural tolerance has limits, gracious forbearance—grounded in love—does not. Even if sinners must be restrained by just coercion, they must at the same time be patiently endured while their forbearing community hopes for their transformation through grace.Bowlin has written a strong argument for tolerance as an important virtue. The latter chapters are broadly accessible, whereas the earlier sections require at least some familiarity with Thomistic assumptions and methods. This is an excellent contribution to virtue ethics, political theology, and scholarship on pluralism and democracy.Laura YordyBridgewater CollegeCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Cicero, Lucullus 38: ‘…non potest animal ullum non adpetere id quod accommodatum ad naturam adpareat …’ From earliest childhood every man wants to possess something. One man collects horses. Another wants gold. Socrates has a passion for companions. He would rather have a good friend than a quail or a rooster. In this way, Socrates begins his interrogation of Menexenus. He then congratulates Menexenus and Lysis for each having what he himself still does not possess. How is it that one (...) gets a friend, Socrates asks? Since the nineteenth century many who have read these lines have found them repulsive. Scholars have damned the Lysis for its selfish egoism, for regarding persons as personal belongings. At the turn of the century some sought to discredit the dialogue as a forgery and a calumny. Others debated the dating of the dialogue as Socratic or Platonic, seeking whom to blame rather than whom to credit. And those who have regarded the dialogue as Platonic have tried to redeem it by detecting hints of Plato's theory of Forms. A few have attempted to salvage reputations by understanding the argument of the Lysis as a reductio of egoism, or else by invoking the loyalty of Socrates' friends and the history of Plato's friendship for Dion of Syracuse to speak up for their defence. Guthrie has condemned the dialogue as a failure of method and presentation , and Vlastos has pronounced it a failure of love: ‘The lover Socrates has in view seems positively incapable of loving others for their own sake, else why must he feel no affection for anyone whose good-producing qualities he did not happen to need?’ The Lysis appears to make no positive contribution to the Greek tradition on friendship when compared to the Symposium or the Phaedrus. And in the subsequent tradition, whatever Aristotle might have borrowed from the dialogue he uses for his own purposes. Aristotle too is quite critical of specific points raised in the Lysis. Now it might seem that Aristotle made a place for the selfish love of the Lysis in his own theory, as an inferior grade of utility love. But even this cannot be so, if we are to agree with recent studies of Aristotle's ethics. According to Aristotle, if a client is friendly to his benefactor because of the latter's usefulness, this utilitarian motive must accompany a genuine concern for the benefactor's own interest in that relation, if they are to be friends. Inferior and genuine friendship may differ in purpose but not in regard for the well-being of the beloved. This respect for the object of one's love has no parallel in the Lysis, according to the standard reading of the dialogue. (shrink)

Why and under what conditions are individuals altruistic to family and friends in their social networks? Evolutionary psychology suggests that such behaviour is primarily the product of adaptations for kin- and reciprocal altruism, dependent on the degree of genetic relatedness and exchange of benefits, respectively. For this reason, individuals are expected to be more altruistic to family members than to friends: whereas family members can be the recipients of kin and reciprocal altruism, friends can be the recipients of reciprocal altruism (...) only. However, there is a question about how the effect of kinship is implemented at the proximate psychological level. One possibility is that kinship contributes to some general measure of relationship quality (such as ‘emotional closeness’), which in turn explains altruism. Another possibility is that the effect of kinship is independent of relationship quality. The present study tests between these two possibilities. Participants (N= 111) completed a self-report questionnaire about their willingness to be altruistic, and their emotional closeness, to 12 family members and friends at different positions in their extended social networks. As expected, altruism was greater for family than friends, and greater for more central layers of the network. Crucially, the results showed that kinship made a significant unique contribution to altruism, even when controlling for the effects of emotional closeness. Thus, participants were more altruistic towards kin than would be expected if altruism was dependent on emotional closeness alone – a phenomenon we label a ‘kinship premium’. These results have implications for the ongoing debate about the extent to which kin relations and friendships are distinct kinds of social relationships, and how to measure the ‘strength of ties’ in social networks. (shrink)

Why do people in more unequal societies have worse health and shorter lives than those in less unequal ones? Why do more unequal societies tend to have more violence and weaker community life? This paper discusses the research evidence on the psychosocial pathways which suggest how and why we are affected by inequality.How big income differences are in any society seems to serve as an indicator of the scale of social differentiation and social distances within it. The evidence shows that (...) more hierarchical societies incur a wide range of social costs reflecting the corrosive effects of inequality. But why are we so sensitive to inequality? Epidemiological research on health inequalities and the social determinants of health has demonstrated that the quality of the social environment has powerful effects on health. Particularly important are social status, friendship and early childhood experience. The indications are that poor health may share causal pathways with many other social problems associated with relative deprivation - including violence.Summarizing my recent book, The Impact of Inequality , this paper provides an account of how inequality gets under the skin to affect both health and wellbeing. Rather than making comparisons with some impractical state of complete equality, all the evidence presented shows the importance of the differences in inequality between different states of the USA or between different developed market democracies: it shows that even small increases in equality matter. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently revived the study of the ancient Greek topics of virtue and the virtues—justice, honesty, temperance, friendship, courage, and so on as qualities of mind and character belonging to individual people. But one issue at the center of Greek moral theory seems to have dropped out of consideration. This is the question of the unity of virtue, the unity of the virtues. Must anyone who has one of these qualities have others of them as well, indeed all (...) of them—all the ones that really do deserve to be counted as virtues? Even further, is there really no set of distinct and separate virtuous qualities at all, but at bottom only a single one—so that the person who has this single condition of “virtue” is entitled also to the further descriptions “honest” and “well-controlled” and “just” and “friendly” and “courageous” and “fostering” and “supportive,” and so on, as distinguishable aspects or immediate effects of his unitary “virtue”? (shrink)

The topic of homonymy, especially the variety of homonymy that has gone under the title, “focal meaning,” is of fundamental importance to large portions of Aristotle’s work-not to mention its central place in the ongoing controversies between Aristotle and Plato. It is quite astonishing, therefore, that the topic should have gone so long without a book-length treatment. And it is all the more gratifying that the new book on homonymy by Christopher Shields should be so comprehensive, and of such uniformly (...) high quality.’ Everyone who cares about Aristotle will be in his debt. Shields’s book falls into two parts. In the first, he is concerned to lay out the basic structure of Aristotle’s views about homonymy; in the second part, we are led through the various applications of the idea, to the analysis of friendship, for example, the homonymy of the body, the account of goodness and, not least, the homonymy of being. Shields’s book brings out well how the topic of homonymy weaves in and out of the fabric of Aristotle’s thinking in a variety of areas. I will resist the temptation to follow Shields through these various subject-matters, and instead take up essentially two topics. First, (I), the basic outline of Aristotle’s notion of homonymy, more or less independently of its different applications (here, I follow Shields’s example in the first half of his book). Thereafter, I discuss a single application: the homonymy of being (this is the subject of Shields’s last and longest chapter). Here, I will be interested (II) in how homonymy relates to the theory of the categories; and (III) in the application of homonymy to the analysis of substance in the Metaphysics. (shrink)

Despite the initial promise of social media platforms as a means of facilitating discourse on matters of civic discourse, in practice it has turned out to impair fruitful conversation on civic issues by a number of means. From self-isolation into echo chambers, to algorithmically supported filter bubbles, to widespread failure to engage politically owing to psychological phenomena like the ‘spiral of silence’, a variety of factors have been blamed. I argue that extant accounts overlook the importance of interpersonal relationships to (...) sustaining quality civic discourse on social media. Drawing on an Aristotelian account of friendship with an emphasis on the value of interpersonal difference plus the influence of interactions on individual character, I argue that a common scapegoat for the failure of civic discourse online—the variety of “unfriend” disconnection tools offered on various platforms—actually show promise at promoting better-quality civic conversation and overcoming the obstacles present on social media platforms. (shrink)

Philosophers have turned their attention in recent years to many previously unmined topics, among them love and friendship. In this collection of new essays in philosophical and moral psychology, philosophers turn their analytic tools to a topic perhaps most resistant to reasoned analysis: erotic love. Also included is one previously published paper by Martha Nussbaum.Among the problems discussed are the role that qualities of the beloved play in love, the so-called union theory of love, intentionality and autonomy in love, (...) and traditional issues surrounding jealousy and morality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 31.1 (2007) 133-141MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Virtue EthicsBen Lazare Mijuskovic California State University, Dominguez HillsIt has been suggested that the roots of virtue or character ethics ultimately reach back to Plato and especially to Aristotle's discussion of moral character as proposed by G. E. M. Anscombe's essay, "Modern Moral Philosophy," originally published in 1958.1 Thus it was maintained that virtue or character ethics emphasized traditionally neglected (...) topics, such as motives, education, training, temperance (phronesis), happiness, (eudaimonia), magnanimity, and especially the cardinal virtue of friendship as all deriving from certain dispositional qualities in the person, from a relatively constant state of character, from a stable personality.2In terms of Plato, it is the early, aporetic, Socratic dialogues that are indicated as especially concerned with character. And that may be but clearly in these conversations Socrates concludes, as a negative revelation, that a condition for virtue (Virtue as Knowledge of the Good) requires the realization that one does not know what virtue is, that conceited ignorance (amathia) first must be recognized before proceeding positively toward the unchanging Form of Goodness. And just as certainly, although, in the Republic, Socrates does emphasize the relation of happiness to justice, nevertheless it is fairly obvious that for Plato the truly happy and just man is so only in so far as he is able to intellectually and intuitively grasp the eternal Form of the Good as his criterion. However, this is hardly an emphasis on character. Similarly, we can say that as far as Aristotle is concerned, despite the fact that he does focus on the dispositional attributes of a virtuous or happy [End Page 133] character (or life), nevertheless the Philosopher is very specific in stating that there is an absolutely right thing to do in each circumstance and it is grounded in the mean between two vices. The mean, for instance, between cowardice and rashness is courage. Thus, there is an absolute (albeit contextual) criterion for a boy, a girl, a man, a woman, an old man, an old woman, etc., an objective measure for each in various situations requiring courage. This standard, which is based in the immediate perception of pleasure or pain, which directly follows an act, may be developed by training; but certainly Aristotle has more to say about the mean and how to achieve it than he does about training, except for the brief statements that we become virtuous by doing virtuous acts and good by the practically wise choices we make. Thus, for Aristotle, it is possible to evaluate specific, particular acts by invoking the measure of the mean. Essentially for both Plato and Aristotle, the criteria "subsist" independently of the act, person or polis. Hence, both Plato and Aristotle remain predominantly rule-oriented.By contrast, in Homerian ethics—as opposed to Platonic or Peripatetic guidelines—it is the whole person who is admirable, not the act; it is the "being" of Achilles, it is his "substance" that is praiseworthy and not whether or not he weeps for his departed companion. It is the entire man that expresses the standard of value. And just as obviously there are times and instances when an agent or an action misses the Aristotelian mark or the "mean" and yet we do not criticize the individual as either morally or psychologically deficient precisely because we consider instead the overall person, we take other factors into consideration, features deeply embedded in his or her personality, including how he or she handled the situation and not whether or not the individual measured up to some abstract, independent, theoretical standard. The noble or laudable hero or heroine does not concern himself or herself with dissecting and separating himself or heself from their actions, from their motives or emotions, as if the latter could stand apart from themselves. And thus it appears to be a mistake to think that the Homeric character would obsess about either the consistency, conformity, or applicability of a rule in regard to their actions and responses.And here we might interject an interesting... (shrink)

Three kinds of emotional consciousness are distinguished in this article: feeling awareness, intellectual awareness, and bare awareness. All are important to three moral properties that emotions may have: epistemic, practical, and relational. The bulk of this article is devoted to the third dimension of moral value, that emotions are constitutive of personal relationships such as friendship, enmity, good and bad parenthood, and collegiality. The conception of emotions as concern-based construals (Roberts, 2003) is put to work to explain how felt (...) and intellectually conscious emotions are constitutive of the qualities of such relationships. The relational value of emotions interacts with their epistemic and practical values. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Little Eternities: Henry James’s Horatian Sense of Time KATHLEEN RILEY Summer’s lease hath all too short a date. —Shakespeare, Sonnet 18 On a visit to Bodiam Castle in Sussex in 1908, Henry James remarked to Edith Wharton: “Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”1 The potency of those two words derives from their immediate evocation of an arrested (...) moment between the day’s halcyon perfection and its imminent dying fall. Small wonder that those same words were later used to mythologize an Edenic Edwardian England poised on the brink of war, to preserve in aspic the fancy of a gilded innocence and order, and the promise of “blue remembered hills,”2 careless of the teeming, tumultuous reality of an England already in the shadow of the Tree of Knowledge. James’s masterpiece of 1881, The Portrait of a Lady, begins with a luxuriously redolent depiction of a summer afternoon, of the hours before dusk that constitute a pleasurable little eternity, of the languorous rhythms and rituals of what Disraeli called “the sustained splendour of [a] stately life.”3 Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not—some people of course never do,—the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one’s enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o’clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure.4 This passage, it strikes me, is essentially Horatian in its Epicurean delight in the passing moment. For the Augustan poet Horace, this delight, which is intrinsically elegiac, is expressed in the sympotic pleasures of wine and friendship, in the freedom aestivam sermone benigno tendere noctem (“to prolong the summer night with genial conversation,” Epistles i.5.11). For Henry James, it rests in “the ceremony known as afternoon tea,” in the lengthening shadows on an English lawn by “the reedy, silvery Thames” (PL 32). In both cases the evanescence of these simple pleasures is deeply felt and pleasure itself heightened by an undertone of melancholy, by a nostalgic apprehension of the present. LOCI AMOENI in his review of Augustus J. C. Hare’s Days near Rome (1875), Henry James commented: “The smallest pretext for quoting from Horace—the most quotable of the ancients— should always be cultivated.”5 His own facility for quoting from Horace was evident from his earliest published works, and belied an “extraordinarily haphazard and promiscuous” education shuttling, at his father’s restless instigation, between New England, Britain and Continental Europe.6 James’s biographer, Leon Edel, recorded the family legend that William James (Henry’s Irish grandfather), “who was eighteen in 1789, when he set foot in the New World, 22 little eternities brought with him a ‘very small sum of money,’ a Latin grammar and a desire to visit the fresh battlefields of the Revolutionary War.”7 Young Henry’s instruction in Latin grammar seems to have begun in the Old World, under a private tutor in London in 1855, a Scotsman named Robert Thomson who later ran a small school in Edinburgh attended by Robert Louis Stevenson. It... (shrink)

Introducción. La tutoría académica concreta el proceso educativo sustentado en estándares de calidad, características y necesidades de aprendizaje del estudiante; se desenvuelve confrontando actividades pedagógicas y consolida solidaridades. En este contexto, el estudio se realizó con el propósito de realizar la analítica de la solidaridad que surge de la relación tutorial. Método. Desde el ámbito de la hermenéutica, se realizó un estudio en cuatro fases: analítica, comprensiva, reconstructiva, crítica. Se construyó el concepto de solidaridad en la relación tutorial con propuestas (...) de Gadamer, Habermas, Adela Cortina y Edgar Morín. Las categorías de análisis fueron: construcción social del sentido en la relación tutorial, relación tutorial de naturaleza epistémica, compleja, infinita y cambiante; y práctica tutorial generadora de solidaridades. Resultados. La solidaridad como praxis humana orientada al cuidado del otro promueve el encuentro con el estudiante. La tutoría académica regula la experiencia vital de la dualidad enseñar-aprender; articula la decisión del docente y alumno con la responsabilidad solidaria. El docente concreta un asentimiento aconsejado por la amistad de estar-ahí-con el estudiante, acompañándolo, posibilitando elecciones y decisiones entre posibilidades para una vida sustentable mediante la virtud de la phrónesis. Conclusiones. La solidaridad en la relación tutorial como horizonte de sentido engarza la cosmovisión del binomio docente-estudiante en la relación tutorial. Dado el vínculo social, se ubica en el escenario de la relación tutorial el sentido originario de la amistad y la solidaridad con los siguientes baremos: compasión, saber hacer, confidencialidad, confianza, conciencia de sí mismo y del otro, tacto, escucha atenta y solícita, comprensión del otro. Introduction. Tutoring specific educational process based on quality standards, characteristics and needs of student learning; it operates confronting educational activities and strengthens solidarity. In this context, the study was conducted with the purpose of performing analytics solidarity arising from the mentoring relationship. Method. From the field of hermeneutics, a study was conducted in four phases: analytical, comprehensive, reconstructive, critical. The concept of solidarity is built with Gadamer, Habermas, Adela Cortina and Edgar Morín proposals. The categories of analysis were: social construction of meaning in the mentoring relationship, relationship epistemic tutorial, complex, infinite and changing nature; tutorial praxis generating solidarities. Results. The solidarity as praxis oriented caring for others promotes the meeting with the student. Tutoring regulates the vital experience of duality teaching-learning; articulates the decision of the teacher and student with joint liability. The teacher specifically advised by a nod of friendship being-there-with the student, accompanying, allowing choices and decisions between possibilities for sustainable living by virtue of phronesis. Conclusions. The solidarity as horizon of meaning engages the worldview of the teacher-student duo in the mentoring relationship. Given the social bond is at the stage of the tutorial regarding the original meaning of friendship and solidarity with the following rates: compassion, expertise, confidence, trust, awareness of self and other, touch, attentive listening and caring, understanding others. (shrink)

I first started reading Derrida during the 1970s. Like many others, I was initially perplexed, confused, and sometimes downright infuriated. I could not make sense of what he was “up to” or why there was so much fuss about him. Frankly, I wondered if it was worth the effort. Much of his writing seemed like overindulgent word play. But I stuck with it. A primary reason was my wife, Carol. She is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Bryn (...) Mawr College and is a great admirer of Derrida. Because of my respect for Carol’s intelligence and insight, I was determined to discover for myself what she found so intriguing and exciting. The breakthrough came when I read his classic essay, “Metaphysics and Violence,” one of the most sensitive, perceptive, and illuminating discussions of Emmanuel Levinas. Many thinkers “discovered” Levinas because of Derrida’s essay. There is a special quality about this eloquent essay that riveted my attention. It is an act of profound friendship and extremely moving. Derrida not only beautifully and delicately explores the intricacies of Levinas’ intellectual development, but also probes the crevices in Levinas’ thought. I still find this essay to be an intensely exquisite tribute to Levinas—a thinker that deeply influenced Derrida’s own ethical thinking. When I first read “Metaphysics and Violence,” I felt that its passion and seriousness did not “fit” with the popular image of Derrida as an irresponsible and irritatingly playful nihilist. So I started to read him again. I began to notice something that few commentators discussed: the way in which ethical-political themes are woven into the texture of virtually all his writings. There is a pervasive—almost obsessive—concern with response, responsibility, and decision. (shrink)