Chapter 9 asks how we can critically evaluate competition in this kind of society, particularly from within its own terms of reference - that is, as an ‘immanent critique’. The premise that domesticated competition is a work of human artifice implies that it is something we have some control over and can shape. I argue that the pervasive image of the rule-governed game, and ideas such as ‘the level playing field’, encode the basic cultural resources from which any criticism must be constructed. Moreover, competition works best within certain bounded spheres of practice - e.g. business, democracy, science - and its worst distortions are often a result of competition transgressing these boundaries, as when money interferes with politics. I argue that maintaining such separation and balances of power among distinct institutional spheres, arenas of competition, is critical for liberal society.

This chapter argues that As You Like It draws from early modern and classical educational theory to stage the acquisition of virtues such as courage, justice, and sympathy, which are, in turn, central to the romance’s resolution. The play explores a classroom exercise known as ethopoeia (or “character-making”), which frequently asked students to inhabit, write from, and perform from the subject position of other genders. Inhabiting other genders can prime students’ capacities to sympathize across categories of difference, enlarging prosocial other-orientation by cultivating the sense of justice necessary to understand how hardship affects people differently and the courage to give voice to the feelings of others. The analysis closes by considering the value of ethopoeia in contemporary liberal education.

Is “patience a virtue” in Shakespeare? Yes, this chapter argues—though Shakespeare also fully acknowledges how the word and the virtue itself can be abused. For an example of the more troubling ways in which patience is invoked by Shakespeare, consider Petruchio’s promise to see Katherine become “a second Grissel,” an icon of patient wifely submission. Or take the jarring way Prince Ferdinand, in The Tempest, reaps romantic rewards for “patient” labors of the same sort that the enslaved Caliban has long unwillingly and unprofitably endured. Such scandalous appeals to patience invite us to read into Shakespeare a modern critique of this virtue: a critique that has been prominent ever since Nietzsche called patience one of Western culture’s key “fabricated ideals,”a constraint on human potential. To show why the abuse of patience discourse is not the whole story in Shakespeare, this chapter recalls how classical and Christian traditions envision patience as not a loser’s but a winner’s virtue. In classical ethics it is a practice of acting deliberately rather than reactively. And in Christianity, patience not only builds confidence in a better world to come, but—as Marina’s perseverance in Pericles shows—can also further meaningful change in this one.

Chapter 2 concluded that coherence is linked to legal reasoning, but where exactly within the process of legal reasoning does coherence fit? Chapter 3 presents and contrasts two views about how legal reasoning is deployed — the positivist view and the non-positivist (interpretivist) view. Both agree that the law carries expectations with respect to the achievement of certain values, i.e., legal certainty and substantive correctness (justice). But they disagree about the relationship between those two values when it comes to legal reasoning, hence the different models for coherence that each view gives rise to. The positivist view gives rise to a model of ‘double coherence’, whereas the non-positivist view gives rise to a model of ‘single coherence’. The chapter ultimately sides with the latter view. Two grounds are offered for this conclusion. Firstly, the core assumptions of the positivist view regarding the different processes of legal reasoning allegedly at play when one is deciding easier and harder cases do not seem to hold. Secondly, following the positivist view may result in certain methodological pitfalls for adjudicators which the non-positivist view seems to avoid.

This chapter ties together several moral strands under the notion of justice, where equals should be treated equally. It opens by pointing out certain facts, such as that the most likely predictor of success is parental wealth, that women earn only 86 percent of men’s income for comparable jobs, and that there are significant racial disparities at higher levels of management. The concepts of equity (merit), equality, and need are examined, as the basis for allocating resources and rewards. Libertarian views, which hold personal choice as the overriding principle, are explained and contrasted with egalitarianism which favors equal opportunities for all. Discrimination is defined in terms of power relations, and subsequently gender and racial discrimination is examined in detail, including the implications of implicit bias. Recent work in intersectionality, where individuals identify with multiple groups, is discussed as are Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives. Examples from Starbucks show the promise and difficulties in promoting equality in the workplace. The final case covers discrepancies in insurance rates and the moral jeopardy of categorizing aggregated data into groups.

This essay explores references to military dictatorships in the Southern Cone of Latin America in Roberto Bolaño’s novels, most specifically in Nazi Literature in the Americas, Distant Star and By Night in Chile. Much of Bolaño’s writing referencing the human rights abuses in the Southern Cone unpacks the relationship between literary ethics and literary politics in relation to repressive political regimes. Although his poetics have been shaped by the legacies of military terrorism and impunity in Latin America, Bolaño distances himself from other writers of post-dictatorship literature in two ways: he does not employ reparation narrative as a means of coming to terms with trauma, nor does he attempt to speak on behalf of victims. His fictions only rarely center on traumatized victims who seek a suitable language for restitution. Instead, his literary mind charts the social web that allowed violence and disappearances to seize hold of the society following the reasoning of the military state. I contend that spectral haunting is the essence of Bolaño’s writing and that his unsettling literary accounting of violence conjures up a ghostly world of the disappeared that shows his readers how to hear and listen to those ghosts.

The rhetoric of royal legitimacy emphasised divine selection and personal merit, but the proof of these qualities lay in the ruler’s measured but effective exercise of his power. For mirror-writers, evidence of fitness to rule depended on not only military success but also, and more particularly, the stability and prosperity of the realm. Foremost among the principles of governance, for many mirror-writers, was justice, understood partly in legal terms – the ruler was responsible for upholding the law – and partly in terms of the king’s judicious management of the multiple constituencies who made up his realm. The four texts in this chapter address the underlying supports of royal authority and the principles that rulers should adopt in their governance. Justice, central to the theory of virtue, appears in this context as central to the theory of governance. In enumerating the pillars necessary for the support of sovereignty, the authors represented in this chapter emphasise, in addition to justice, religion, force, wealth and kindness. The texts are drawn from Pseudo-Aristotle, Sirr al-asrār; al-Māwardī, Tashīl al-naẓar wa-taʿjīl al-ẓafar; Niẓām al-Mulk, Siyar al-mulūk; and al-Ṭurṭūshī, Sirāj al-mulūk.

In book I of De re publica Cicero famously defined the res publica as res populi, the business or the interest of the people, and then went on to flesh out what we should understand to constitute a people: ‘a collection of a great number of human beings, joined in partnership through agreement or unanimity of law or justice or right (iuris consensu) and through sharing in advantage (utilitatis communione)’. ‘Sharing in advantage’ seems clear enough. But my disjunctive rendering of iuris consensu, with its repeated ‘or’ and unconvincing ‘of’, is intended to give an indication of the difficulty translators and other interpreters have had in grasping what Cicero meant by the expression. This chapter offers a fresh attempt at the problem.

The selections in this chapter discuss the management of the realm and the importance of specific royal practices. Ensuring the prosperity of the rural and urban populations, the productivity of the land, the proper maintenance of the army and sound financial management feature prominently among the king’s responsibilities. Many mirrors emphasise the necessity of constant royal oversight, particularly of the officials involved in the collection of taxes. Strict and consistent oversight, accompanied by swift dismissal when cases of abuse came to light, were the only measures that would protect the revenue-producing categories on whose labour the entire edifice of government depended. In cases of injustice, it was the ruler’s obligation to provide a means of redress, through the practice of listening to the petitions of his subjects and restoring to them any property that had been wrongfully seized. In many instances, the practices of good governance urged upon the wise and virtuous ruler reflect the principle of maṣlaḥa, the common good. The texts are drawn from al-Māwardī, Tashīl al-naẓar wa-taʿjīl al-ẓafar; Niẓām al-Mulk, Siyar al-mulūk; and al-Ṭurṭūshī, Sirāj al-mulūk.

In his De re publica and De officiis, Cicero discusses the conditions that must exist for a war to be justly commenced and waged. In developing his account, Cicero lays the groundwork for many of the principles of the later just war tradition. However, commentators have detected inconsistencies between Cicero’s account of ‘the justice of going to war’ and his reliance on the competitive honor code of the ancient Mediterranean world, which undergirds much of his account of conduct within war. Commentators usually see Cicero’s commendation of wars undertaken for the sake of glory as inconsistent both with the legal and religious principles undergirding his account and with the Stoic account of justice derived from Panaetius, whom Cicero follows in De officiis. In this chapter, I reconstruct Cicero’s account of just war theory and explain why he could plausibly see coherence where the modern commentators see incoherence.

Many of the formulas dealing with conflict highlight formal courts and judicial processes. Others represent extrajudicial settlements. In this respect they match, though in an entirely lay context, the picture of early medieval dispute settlement visible in other sources. They make particularly clear, however, that judicial and extrajudicial settlements were points on a complex and intertwined continuum. They also tell us that people – both litigants and authority figures – could manipulate and abuse judicial processes for their own purposes. The formulas are particularly interested in interpersonal violence. We find men assaulting each other on the road and taking each other’s property. We find men killing others for a variety of reasons. Those who committed homicide not only negotiated the payment of the required blood price, but actually paid it – and had their payment recorded in a security that protected them from any further trouble. Women too are accused of homicide, sometimes by poison or sorcery but sometimes by more active means. In the end, the formulas suggest that a culture assuming a right to personal violence was alive and well in the Carolingian period, despite strenuous efforts especially by Charlemagne and Louis the Pious to regulate it.