Introduction: Many individuals and families are currently experiencing a high level of COVID-19-related stress and are struggling to find helpful coping mechanisms. Mindfulness-based interventions are becoming an increasingly popular treatment for individuals experiencing depression and chronic levels of stress. The app draws from scholarly evidence on the efficacy of mindfulness meditations and builds on the pre-existing apps by incorporating techniques that are used in some therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.Methods: Participants were randomly assigned to a (...) 4-week mindfulness and self-compassion-based cognitive smartphone intervention or a wait-list control group. They were instructed to engage in self-compassion and mindfulness practices and a cognitive restructuring task. They also completed measures that evaluated their levels of depression, stress, anxiety, self-compassion, wisdom, psychological well-being, and subjective well-being. The intervention group was also instructed to track their weekly engagement with the app. Standardized effect sizes for between-group differences were calculated using Cohen's d for complete case analyses.Results: Complete case analyses from baseline to the end of this randomized controlled trial demonstrated significant moderate between-group differences for depressive symptoms and decisiveness. Moderate between-group differences were also found for self-compassion such that significant improvements in self-kindness, common humanity, mindfulness and decreases in self-judgement, isolation, and overidentification were observed. A small between-group difference was found for emotional regulation. Moreover, a significant moderate within-group decrease in stress and anxiety symptoms was also observed in the intervention group.Conclusions: Serene is an effective intervention that promotes increased levels of self-compassion and emotional regulation. Engaging with Serene may help reduce depressive symptoms through mindfulness, self-compassion, and cognitive restructuring which help reduce overidentification with one's negative emotions. As individuals rebalance their thinking through cognitive restructuring, they can identify the varying stressors in their life, develop action plans and engage in adaptive coping strategies to address them. Serene may promote greater self-understanding which may provide one with a more balanced perspective on their current upsetting situations to positively transform their challenges during the pandemic. (shrink)

This book establishes a defence of human rights that can be shared by both non-religious and religious people.

This article explores Alan Gewirth’s argument for a secular foundation for the idea 2 of human rights as a possible response to Michael J. Perry’s claim “that the idea of 3 human rights is…ineliminably religious.” I examine Gewirth’s reasoning for constructing 3 a theory, namely that existing theories are fundamentally flawed and leave the idea of human rights without a logically consistent foundation, before considering in detail his claims for the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC). Having looked at his critique (...) of numerous other theories, as well as at his own argument about human action grounding basic rights to freedom and well-being, I then offer a critique of Gewirth’s PGC. Ultimately my conclusion is that Gewrith's 3 theory relies too heavily on the notions, first that we have a meta-desire not to contradict ourselves and, second, that we are unable to find persuasive justifications for our behavior that might allow us to avoid self-contradiction. If one is not troubled by charges of self-contradiction or, as is more often the case, one does not recognize that one’s victim is as much a human being as oneself, Gewirth’s theory 5 V 3 will not seem particularly persuasive. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A28BB025 00003. (shrink)

Faced with charges of impiety and corruption of the youth, Socrates attempts a defence designed to vindicate the philosophic way of life. In this he seems to be successful, as Socrates is today highly regarded for his description of the good life and for his unwillingness to live any other sort of life, a position that is most obviously exemplified by his defence in the Apology. After his sentencing, Socrates’ arguments and actions—in the Crito and the Phaedo—also lend considerable support (...) to the idea that the philosopher is committed to living a particularly good sort of life. While the sequence of dialogues that culminates in Socrates’ execution might seem to be the most obviously critical of the life of the philosopher, these dialogues actually serve to enshrine the character of Socrates as the quintessential moral hero. (shrink)

The idea of heroism has become thoroughly muddled today. In contemporary society, any behavior that seems distinctly difficult or unusually impressive is classified as heroic: everyone from firefighters to foster fathers to freedom fighters are our heroes. But what motivates these people to act heroically and what prevents other people from being heroes? In our culture today, what makes one sort of hero appear more heroic than another sort? In order to answer these questions, Ari Kohen turns to classical (...) conceptions of the hero to explain the confusion and to highlight the ways in which distinct heroic categories can be useful at different times. Untangling Heroism argues for the existence of three categories of heroism that can be traced back to the earliest Western literature – the epic poetry of Homer and the dialogues of Plato – and that are complex enough to resonate with us and assist us in thinking about heroism today. Kohen carefully examines the Homeric heroes Achilles and Odysseus and Plato's Socrates, and then compares the three to each other. He makes clear how and why it is that the other-regarding hero, Socrates, supplanted the battlefield hero, Achilles, and the suffering hero, Odysseus. Finally, he explores in detail four cases of contemporary heroism that highlight Plato's success. Kohen states that in a post-Socratic world, we have chosen to place a premium on heroes who make other-regarding choices over self-interested ones. He argues that when humans face the fact of their mortality, they are able to think most clearly about the sort of life they want to have lived, and only in doing that does heroic action become a possibility. Kohen's careful analysis and rethinking of the heroism concept will be relevant to scholars across the disciplines of political science, philosophy, literature, and classics. (shrink)

Faced with charges of impiety and corruption of the youth, Socrates attempts a defence designed to vindicate the philosophic way of life. In this he seems to be successful, as Socrates is today highly regarded for his description of the good life and for his unwillingness to live any other sort of life, a position that is most obviously exemplified by his defence in the Apology. After his sentencing, Socrates' arguments and actions -- in the Crito and the Phaedo -- (...) also lend considerable support to the idea that the philosopher is committed to living a particularly good sort of life. While the sequence of dialogues that culminates in Socrates' execution might seem to be the most obviously critical of the life of the philosopher, these dialogues actually serve to enshrine the character of Socrates as the quintessential moral hero. (shrink)