The book’s epilogue takes the first steps to applying the conclusions of the work to other current social and cultural contexts, like the Black Lives Matter movement and white Christian Nationalism in the United States. After demonstrating the way the book’s arguments help highlight the stakes of these movements, I proceed to question the utility of a martyrdom during our era of ever-increasing global interconnection, and whether it is time to be done with martyrs once and for all.

Chapter 6 turns to later revisions of Kydian revenge drama on the early Jacobean stage in the hands of idealistic playwrights who sought to reform the ambiguous theatrical experience of the original play by restoring its tragic dignity within a reconstituted Christian morality of patient suffering or rational Stoic forbearance. Looking to Chapman’s The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois and its kindred play, Cyril Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy, this chapter explores the resulting tension when playwrights reintroduce Stoic-Christian idealism into the theatrical experience of revenge which the play’s performance ethics utterly confound morally and causally. If Chettle and Middleton explore the violence underpinning any attempt to yoke Christian moral idealism onto living and suffering human subjects, in these later plays, this process is re-examined from the idealist point of view and its sustainability.

Greek popular thought is pervaded by the assumption that one should help one’s friends and harm one’s enemies. These fundamental principles surface continually from Homer onwards and survive well into the Roman period, and indeed to the present day, especially in international relations. They are firmly based on observation of human nature, which yields the conclusion that most human beings do in fact desire to help their friends and harm their enemies, and derive satisfaction from such behaviour. Thus Xenophon’s Socrates can count benefiting friends and defeating enemies as one of the things which bring the ’greatest pleasures’.

The sexual culture of eighteenth-century Philadelphia was relatively open, particularly when compared with other North American colonial cities. This was due in part to its diverse, multi-national and multi-racial population and traditions, as well as to a steady stream of new ideas. During this period perceptions about gender, sexuality, and marriage were evolving, influenced by new scientific theories, Enlightenment thought, and republican ideology, disseminated by its changing population and the availability of printed sources. In addition, many laws changed as the colony became a state, and within the city new prisons and almshouses were built. Nevertheless, rape, as now, was seldom reported or prosecuted, and especially in the nineteenth century Black women and women considered ‘unrespectable’ were often blamed for enticing men. During the eighteenth century men and women easily moved in and out of relationships, sexual relationships outside marriage were frequently tolerated, and women had some sexual freedom. Prostitution was not confined to one section of the city; neither were the births of illegitimate children. Women could obtain abortifacients, and erotic literature was widely read. However, by the nineteenth century such behaviour was increasingly considered deviant, and Philadelphia was a much less tolerant place.

This chapter considers the debate over biblical law and the so-called wisdom literature (mainly Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes), as well as questions about whether biblical law derives from early wisdom sayings or vice versa. It also shows how we lack information necessary to answer other related questions.

In this Introduction, a summary of the whole book is provided. The main concepts are defined and the main historical figures, such as Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Putin, Marquis de Sade, Jane Addams, Andrew Carnegie, and Oscar Schindler, are mentioned.

This chapter tackles postmodern and poststructuralist outlooks on ethics and how these have impacted educational theory. To fulfill this task, the chapter indicates how such outlooks differ from other perspectives on the relationship of philosophy, education, and ethics. After some basic definitions, clarifications, disclaimers, and caveats that familiarize the reader with the related discourses and their challenges, the chapter shows how postmodern/poststructuralist basic assumptions beneath the corresponding ethics differ from other perspectives on (educational) normativity. Then the chapter discusses the distinction between the ethical and the moral that makes the impact of postmodern/poststructuralist ethics on educational theory most visible. It concludes with critical remarks on the current status of this impact and on the challenge of rethinking educational ethics “after post-isms”.

In our contribution to the debate on African ethics and education, this chapter provides the reader with some insights into the interplay between African ethics and education through the fundamental principles of Ubuntu. Despite some of the criticism raised against Ubuntu as moral philosophy, this chapter shows how the principles of Ubuntu influence character formation in education in Southern Africa. It is through education that morally appropriate behavior is transmitted from one generation to the other. To avoid generalization on a culturally diverse continent like Africa, the chapter makes specific reference to the sub-Saharan countries of Zimbabwe and, to a lesser extent, Botswana and Zambia. The chapter claims that Ubuntu, as a conduit for moral development, has not been given adequate attention in the field of education. Ubuntu is important in creating the kind of citizens Africa needs, individuals who are critical thinkers, whose allegiance is to humanity rather than to personalities and localities. Transmitted through education, Ubuntu helps citizens to embrace democracy and diversity. Ubuntu principles of communalism, justice, love, humility, tolerance, and honesty can be used to address challenges besetting education in Africa and society in general and to promote national and human development.

This chapter summarises the book, focusing on our analyses of ethical challenges based upon the three core ethical perspectives we presented in Chapter 1: moralist, libertarian and relativist. The moralists, who contend that suicide is always unacceptable and must be prevented, have occupied the mainstream position through a long period of history. Attacks on the moralistic point of view were highlighted in the twentieth century by the libertarian writings of such anti-psychiatrists as Szasz, who argued that all suicide prevention should be abandoned, and thereafter by more philosophical critics such as Foucault. Today, relativist approaches often predominate, where some people are seen as needing suicide prevention and with others, their wanting to die is ignored or facilitated, as in the case of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), euthanasia and assisted suicide. Suicide prevention should be seen as a central issue that has to be assessed alongside the anti-paternalism promotion of freedom of choice. The concern of this book has not been to find a middle ground. We have sought a social and moral conscience that mandates a duty to respond to suicide and the desire to end life prematurely, first and foremost, by responding to cries for help, rather than to a clarion call for freedom

This chapter outlines several threads of personality psychology to explore what it can tell us about virtue science. Personality psychology includes structural approaches (e.g., Big 5 and HEXACO), process approaches (e.g., the Cognitive-Affective Processing System or CAPS), integrations of structural and process approaches (e.g., Whole Trait Theory and the Three-Tiered Framework of Personality), and an emerging focus on systematic changes in personality through the lifespan. This research has clarified that traits exist and are measurable, that traits relate predictably to meaningful outcomes, that informant reports correlate to self-reports on personality, and that personality emerges cross-culturally. CAPS was developed to account for situational variation in personality expression. The systematic developmental changes in personality suggest that individuals mature as they adopt important roles in life, such as work and mating relationships. The integrative approaches to personality highlight its multidimensional nature and make it reasonable to consider merging the study of personality and virtue. The chapter concludes by arguing that virtues and personality dimensions are sufficiently different because virtue science emphasizes morality, choice, and practical wisdom, whereas personality theory and research do not. It suggests that traits may be best understood as a genus with at least two species: personality and virtue.

Chapter 8 shows how close Galen is to the style and language of a practical moralist by focusing on the previously neglected moral aspects of Prognosis. The rich ethical material that Galen includes on the way his society functions and the role of physicians is construed as moral reportage, which also enables him to provide the image he constructs of himself as a medic with profoundly moral features. The essay’s preface stresses the quest for truth and the exercise of correct judgement as moral principles advocated by Galen for physicians and all other professionals as thinking beings. This, I suggest, has a strong theoretical background expounded upon in Galen’s ethical work, pointing to his ideological coherence on ethics and its uniform application across texts of a (seemingly) different purpose. The preface is also informed by Galen’s perception of the morality of doctors addressed in the Therapeutic Method, which I see as a sibling account of Galen’s conceptualisation of medicine as a virtuous art. Furthermore, the delineation of moral character is made central to Galen’s notion of the proper physician, which explains the fact that he formulates his text in such a way as to distinguish himself and his peers from charlatans and sophists, a group of moral outsiders traditionally depicted as quarrelsome and vainglorious. This Chapter also discusses the sophisticated discourse on malice and contentiousness that Galen sets up within the context of some of his medical case histories. The analysis of the writing technique and structure of the case histories as much as of the characters involved offers unique insights into Galen’s account of emotions, especially their causes, consequences, theorisation and phenomenology. This Chapter concludes by stressing how in these instances Galen’s medical activity impinged on the formation and sometimes the development of his moral ideas. In Prognosis ethics emerges as a robust area of thought, study and professional performance in Galen.

Studies have shown that eating disorders (EDs) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have a high rate of comorbidity. Childhood anxiety disorders have been found to predict the onset of EDs. Researchers propose that OCD and EDs are part of the same spectrum of disorders, with AN being a specific type of OCD similar to body dysmorphic disorder. Malnutrition is a primary factor leading to complications in this presentation as it can compromise medical safety, worsen cognitive functioning, hinder insight and perception of reality, and increase obsessionality. Both groups experience symptoms such as intrusive cognitions, perfectionism, avoidance, and ritualistic behavior, which require specific interventions and complex clinical expertise for positive treatment outcomes. Maladaptive perfectionism is common in both disorders, leading to self-defeating behavior and daily impairment. Avoidance and ritualistic behavior are common in both disorders and are motivated by maladaptive cognitions related to catastrophic outcomes and beliefs about morality, achievement, and identity. These behaviors serve to alleviate anxiety associated with these cognitive domains.

This chapter focuses on the essays of Transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Margaret Fuller who used writing as a spiritual and philosophical tool. This special form of prose allowed them to write themselves, and thus Transcendentalism as a movement, into being, creating a flexible, open-ended, and experimental instrument for the radical self-fashioning of an emergent sensibility: the American individual as a freestanding soul, entire in (him)self, capable of encompassing all the potential of the cosmos. The resulting works forever stamped this most antinomian of genres with the Transcendentalist’s indelible signature. The chapter traces the movement back to Harvard College in the 1820s and ’30s, where students and faculty discussed spirituality, philosophy, and the art of writing. The chapter traces the influence of this convergence and of key figures like the Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing on the burgeoning movement. The chapter’s final pages highlight how central Transcendentalism has been to the American essay tradition, with writers today of greatly varying backgrounds absorbing its lessons and style into their own writing.