In the spate of scholarship on boredom over the past two decades, the moral character of boredom has received little attention (Elpidorou, ). This is striking because boredom’s ancient precursor, acedia, was considered to be one of the deadliest vices and the source of several other destructive vices, including gluttony, lust, and anger (Bunge, ). In this respect, modern boredom arguably parallels acedia, as it is also casually linked to numerous problematic, arguably immoral behaviors. The state of boredom is morally significant because it adversely impacts both moral reasoning and the vision of flourishing that guides moral reasoning. Boredom is not simply a mood we must endure but a state of mind (certainly impacted by circumstances) that we need not be captive to. Its moral significance also needs to be underscored because there is something at stake: We can do something about what we find to be boring (boredom assessment) and how we contend with this mood state (boredom endurance).

The previous chapters, in exploring various aspects of human rights and the implications of seeing social work as a human rights profession, have touched on many important practice issues in relation to social work. The issues are not new. Ethics, social control, the place of policy and advocacy, professionalism, the role of expertise, linking the personal and the political, cultural relativism, need definition, empowerment and so on are all familiar and are frequently contested within social work. In the preceding chapters, however, they have arisen not out of a consideration of social work per se but rather out of a discussion of human rights and the possible implications of a human rights approach to practice. Various social work practice principles emerged from these discussions, and the purpose of this chapter is to bring these together in order to derive an overall picture of human rights-based social work. This will be done around three organising themes: theoretical foundations, empowerment and contextual/universal issues.

In Chapter 1 I discuss the available evidence in evolutionary biology, psychology, palaeontology, anthropology and neuroscience on the origins of Homo sapiens’ normative orientations. I review plausible interpretations of the evolutionary emergence of these normative orientations in the histories of humankind and its predecessors. This normative endowment was probably our best-fitting quality, explaining our capacity to emerge as the most effective predator on earth. It is likely that without a long-evolved disposition towards cooperation, humans would never have achieved a stage of civilisation in which it is possible to ask the question ‘how is cooperation possible?’. The chapter also reviews the evidence on whether early political institutions derived from preceding different types of institutions or co-evolved with them.

Meyer discusses the intensely debated topic of Nietzsche’s philosophical naturalism and thinks that the key is Nietzsche’s study of Schopenhauer. For Meyer Nietzsche’s argument has to do with completing the project of naturalism that Schopenhauer thinks cannot be completed. Meyer thinks that Nietzsche’s naturalism in TSZ leads him to endorse the truth of cosmological eternal recurrence and that this truth entails for Nietzsche a kind of fatalism that leads us beyond a morality of good and evil and beyond the conception of agency that underlies this morality. Meyer thinks that Nietzsche constructed a narrative in which Zarathustra comes to abandon his non-naturalized conception of himself and his agency, thereby attaining a childlike state of innocence beyond good and evil.

This chapter summarized the theoretical and empirical relationships between wisdom and morality. Wise individuals are able to think carefully and rationally about moral dilemmas, recognizing their own intuitive impulses but not necessarily following them in making decisions. As they think about complex moral dilemmas, they aim to balance the different perspectives, interests, and needs optimally. Their value orientations are focused on a greater good that does not just include members of their own family or group but humanity and the world at large. Because they are good at thinking about moral issues and at dealing with the emotional and social aspects of complex situations, they are likely to also act ethically in difficult situations. Many of the great wisdom exemplars in history stood up for a just cause and accomplished major societal changes by peaceful means. We believe that the ethical aspect of wisdom is particularly important in a time where the world needs good decisions that do not focus on the needs of any particular nation or group. If we want to overcome serious world problems, such as climate change, global pandemics, and rising inequality, we need ethical and wise leaders.

Central to a number of manifestations of antisemitism is anti-Zionism, which in our time has become not only intellectually fashionable but morally required: One cannot be deemed morally good without supporting those who are bent on the annihilation of the Jewish state. This is the topic of Chapter 7. Like most manifestations of antisemitism, but although it is one that has the explicit endorsement both of the left-wing elite and of Islamic Jihadists, anti-Zionism is cloaked in the self-righteous garb of moral indignation. Here anti-Zionism is understood as an opposition not to the policies of the Jewish state but to the existence of the Jewish state. The chapter explains how notions of Holy Land and sacred history are tied to anti-Zionism, how anti-Zionism is tied to a contempt for Judaism, and what this has to do with the demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state. Once again, we find that demonization introduces a metaphysical dimension that will not tolerate any compromise or half-measures. Like most manifestations of antisemitism, but one that has yet distinct from them in that it has become intellectually fashionable, anti-Zionism is cloaked in the self-righteous garb of moral indignation.

This chapter presents the book’s framework and overall argument. It also describes the book's implications for the field of social movement studies and for the understanding of the consequences of neoliberal globalization. In addition, it includes a brief description of the case of study, an outline of the project’s methodology, and an overview of the chapters ahead.

Salomon Maimon argues in “The Moral Skeptic” (1800) that Kant’s conception of freedom as the capacity of the power of choice to be determined by reason independently of sensible determinations is an empty concept, or, as Maimon puts it, a “term without a concept.” He holds that a determinate capacity is inconceivable without laws through which its efficacy is invariably determined. Although we might conceive of laws of nature as the determining ground of immoral action and the moral law as the determining ground of moral action, there is no law to determine which of these two opposed grounds is to become the determining ground of action in a given case. Thus, the actual determination of the power of choice would be left to chance, which is absurd since chance indicates the lack of a determining ground. Maimon’s critique is embedded in a broader treatment of the difference between the moral skeptic and the moral dogmatist in view of the Critical philosophy.

Chapter 1 demonstrates that the nineteenth-century medical record undermines the idea that each person could have only one sex. Throughout the period, several doctors made a stand for “true hermaphrodism,” many more could not identify the sex of their living patients, and “experts” constantly disagreed not only about findings, but also about how best to establish sex in unclear cases. Precisely because no one method for determining sex proved entirely foolproof, doctors and medical forensics experts often relied on narrative to support their claims – a narrative that closely mirrors the one being developed simultaneously in contemporary fiction, and especially, but not exclusively, by realist fiction. Herculine Barbin’s memoirs (the only extant memoirs of a nineteenth-century intersex person in Europe) find their literary corollary in popular fiction that shares much with the creativity and exploitation of narrative techniques in the medical record. Newly uncovered case studies challenge the longstanding representation of the rigidly polarized binary in nineteenth-century France as well as the Foucauldian thesis of “true sex.” Patients sometimes made their own sex determinations, or sought out multiple doctors in order to meet their needs.

In Chapter 4, the author highlights the role of morality in camouflaging exploitative aspects of criação. Conceptually, she constructs the idea of a moral assemblage (moral ideologies, beliefs, and repertoires) that persuade filhas de criação to reframe their exploitation as morally righteous and encourages them to forgive, forget, or accept their treatment as second-class family members. Adding complexity to traditional representations, she illustrates how filhas de criação evaluate the morality of white men under the logic of “good masters,” especially when they are juxtaposed with their “evil” wives. Ultimately, the author argues that a strong sense of moral obligation (forged by a complex constellation of practices, discourses, and emotions) provides the justification for filhas de criação to sacrifice everything for the protection and reproduction of their adoptive family members.

“Tragic Implication” looks at the links between the first and last essays in Must We Mean What We Say? Cavell’s concept of acknowledgment as it emerges in the last two essays in this collection has received a fair amount of attention. This essay, by contrast, looks at his work on and in ordinary language philosophy as it emerges in this first extension and radicalization of Austin’s work in the title essay, and shows the latency of tragedy in that early work, even as Cavell goes on to find Austin’s work unable to accommodate tragedy. It thus links Cavell’s earliest work on Austin, with his latest work in A Pitch of Philosophy, and returns to Cavell’s reading of Lear to show that it is King Lear that teaches him his differences with Austin.

The frayed links of the WTO must be made into the lasting links of what the WTO was originally intended to be. The international cooperation essential to making these lasting links can only be achieved if countries see their enlightened self-interest in taking the broader and longer view. This is a prerequisite to trade action, climate action, and all the other global actions necessary for achieving human flourishing through sustainable development.

Collective action is a pervasive aspect of political life in the 21st century. In the past 20 years, it has also been increasingly studied as a psychologically mediated and consequential form of political behaviour. Initial research focused primarily on the collective organisation of action. This was appropriate: collective action is inherently a group phenomenon. However, this chapter adapts the framework provided by Duncan (2012) to take a broader perspective to examine contemporary scholarship in relation to the individual, group, and contextual factors shaping collective action and its outcomes. We review literature emphasising a key role for individual differences in ideological beliefs and moral conviction, in shaping engagement in collective action. Life experiences such as contact with members of disadvantaged groups, and mobilising interactions (online and offline) have allowed people to co-act across ostensible category boundaries. The depth and breadth of the contemporary literature suggests the need for a broader meta-theory, drawing on the principles of dynamic interactionism, to allow us to more fully articulate what kinds of situations elicit mobilisation potential, and for whom.

Associating a social or political attitude with one’s subjective sense of moral right and wrong (i.e., imbuing the attitude with 'moral conviction') is related to a variety of positive and negative consequences. For example, holding an attitude with moral conviction predicts greater political engagement such as voting – a normatively positive outcome. However, it also predicts greater political intolerance – a normatively negative outcome. In this chapter, we review literature exploring moral conviction’s consequences and note that the majority of them are normatively negative. We propose two possible explanations for this 'negativity bias' in the past research. On the one hand, the asymmetry in favour of negative consequences could be due to moral conviction having more negative rather than positive outcomes. On the other hand, the asymmetry could result from researchers selecting particularly polarised issues that lead to negative outcomes rather than issues with moral consensus, which may have positive outcomes.

Chapter 2 deals with the critique of the aesthetical stage by focusing on Either/Or. It is shown that this critique offers an original answer to the “why be moral?” question relevant to contemporary debates on amoralism and practical moral skepticism. Specifically, Either/Or develops an original critique of amoralism that escapes a difficult dilemma associated with justifications of morality. According to this dilemma, any such justification must either offer moral or nonmoral (prudential) reasons for being moral. But the former seems circular and question begging, whereas the latter seems like the wrong kind of reasons, which could only support egoism and legality, not altruism and morality. However, Kierkegaard develops three different argumentative strategies that all escape this dilemma, providing strong motivation and reasons for assessing ourselves morally. He thus offers a powerful critique of amoralism that is relevant to contemporary concerns, while being rooted in historical discussions of Kantianism, German Romanticism, and idealism.

Chapter 4 discusses Kierkegaard’s elusive critique of ethical eudaimonism. It is shown that Kierkegaard develops and radicalizes an influential Kantian critique of eudaimonism, according to which ethical eudaimonism entails egoism and instrumentalism concerning virtue that make morality second to self-interest. In the late twentieth century, discussions of this familiar critique have been renewed by the reemergence of virtue ethics and eudaimonism. Still, many share the worry that eudaimonism involves an objectionable egoism and instrumentalism concerning virtue. Although Kierkegaard’s critique of eudaimonism is controversial and more successful against hedonistic eudaimonism (Epicureanism) than Stoicism or Aristotelianism, it still seems largely defensible. At least, reconstructions indicate that genuine (noninstrumental) other-regard is incompatible with eudaimonism’s focus on personal happiness (eudaimonia) as the highest good. Kierkegaard thus seems to succeed in weakening ethical eudaimonism and in developing a noneudaimonistic view that is broadly Kantian.