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Political science research aims for greater transparency. Authors are increasingly expected to share their data and methodology so that readers and reviewers can follow their line of argument and replicate their findings. However, citations of books, articles, and other secondary sources in the discipline are still predominantly general, referring to entire works rather than specific parts of them. This article addresses the problem of the overuse of general citations as a disciplinary norm in political science. An analysis of articles published in five top-tier journals in 2019 reveals that only around 10% of the citations in these articles provide detailed source information (e.g., page numbers and location information) and identifies some of the causes for this scarcity. The article calls for more transparent citation norms in the discipline, suggests preliminary steps toward this goal, and proposes solutions for the challenges posed by the increasing use of digital sources.

This project problematizes hegemonic conceptions of language by looking at the construction of ‘English’ in a nonprofit, community-based adult ESOL program in New York. I use ethnographic observation and interviews to uncover the discursive and pedagogical practices that uphold these hegemonic conceptions in this context. I find that the structural conditions of the program perpetuate a conception of ‘English’ shaped by linguistic racism and classism, despite the program's progressive ideals. Linguistic authority is centralized through the presentation of a closed linguistic system and a focus on replication of templatic language. This allows for the drawing of linguistic borders by pathologizing forms traditionally associated with racialized varieties of English, pointing to the persistence of raciolinguistic ideologies. Nevertheless, students destabilize these dominant ideas, revealing a disconnect between mainstream understandings of language and the way adult immigrant learners actually use language, and pointing to possibilities for alternate conceptions and pedagogies. (Language ideology, raciolinguistics, Standard English, adult ESOL)

Between 1459 and 1474, the duke of Burgundy ordered the construction of an entirely new residence in Lille, known as Palais Rihour. It was Philip the Good’s most ambitious architectural project, which set new standards for the display of princely magnificence. Among the new architectural features were a regular plan, a long gallery, a square stair tower with straight flights, and brick-and-stone masonry. The design had a significant impact on the development of court architecture in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spain and northern Europe. Despite its importance, Rihour has received little scholarly attention, the major work by Max Bruchet being almost a century old. The study of Philip’s residence is hampered by the loss of most of the structure. Following damage by two major fires in the eighteenth century, the entire complex was demolished in the mid-nineteenth century and today only the chapel and the relocated monumental stair tower survive. However, extensive archival research allows for a detailed reconstruction of Rihour’s phases of construction. The exceptionally numerous surviving letters offer a rare insight into the planning process and reveal the close involvement of Philip (1396–1467), and later his son Charles the Bold (1433–77), in the construction. Both Valois princes were concerned with minute details, and their frequent changes of mind caused despair among the building’s administrators, the auditors of the Chambre des Comptes of Flanders. The administrators advocated a more pragmatic approach, proposing cheaper alternative solutions to balance cost with the speed of construction. The innovative design was thus also the product of compromise.

Hayek’s seminal contribution to theoretical neurosciences,The Sensory Order(1952) remains neglected in current efforts at integrating the neurosciences, psychology and economics. I defend the view that Hayek presents the case for an evolutionary alternative to leading paradigms in the field and look at two in more detail: the good-based model in neuroeconomics and the dual systems approach in behavioural economics. In both cases, essential Hayekian insights remain valid in the context of modern neuroscience, allow for taking account of recent research, and sketch a dynamic and selectionist model of choice.

Leo Strauss, in Philosophy and Law (1935), offers Platonic theocracy as a more just and stable political alternative to both liberalism and authoritarianism. Rather than merely a scholastic investigation of medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy, I read the book as a programmatic endorsement of a morally perfectionist political order: a divinely legitimated and rationally justified “true” or “beautiful” state. Since human beings require political community to suppress their evil inclinations and promote their disposition toward the good, Strauss criticizes liberalism for contending that government should remain neutral regarding good and evil and modern authoritarianism for effectively committing idolatry by politically instrumentalizing theology. I demonstrate that Strauss’s long-neglected book is particularly relevant for our own “postsecular age,” an age when adherents of religious orthodoxy increasingly demand concessions from liberal democracies and resurgent state authoritarianism frequently cloaks itself in religious trappings.

Economic ordeals are allocation mechanisms that impose non-financial ‘deadweight costs to qualify for a transfer’ (Nichols and Zeckhauser 1982: 372). Examples include long waiting times, travel and form-filling as conditions for certain healthcare services. Appropriately designed, ordeals can enhance target efficiency so that the goods being allocated better reach the intended recipients. The logic behind this is simple: ‘Say one welfare eligible would receive 100 utiles from a particular transfer, yet another would receive only 10. Then an ordeal that imposes an 11 utile loss in order to qualify for the transfer will be an effective sorting device’ (Nichols and Zeckhauser 1982: 376). In other words, recipients who would receive smaller benefits are expected to be dissuaded by the ordeal and refrain from requesting the good, whereas recipients who would receive larger benefits from the transfer are expected to seek out the good even if there is a deadweight cost. Moreover, unlike financial participation, which can similarly dissuade users with relatively little to gain from the good in question, ordeals are in no direct way financially regressive: the poor are not necessarily more dissuaded by losing time or by having to fill in a form than the rich are.

This paper examines the law on good character evidence in criminal trials through a discussion of the important but under-analysed case of Hunter, in which a five-judge Court of Appeal sought to clarify the law on good character directions to the jury. However, it is argued here that the judgment conflicts with the leading House of Lords decision in Aziz. The paper considers how the court misinterpreted the law and, in particular, the defeasible nature of the rule in Aziz and the impact of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. As a result, the circumstances in which a good character direction will be provided have diminished significantly. It is argued that this has important implications for the right to a fair trial, as good character directions act as a ‘backstop’ against miscarriages of justice. They also form a vital part of the ‘framework of fairness’ considered necessary, in lieu of reasoned jury verdicts, by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Taxquet v Belgium. Accordingly, it is contended that Aziz rather than Hunter should be followed so that, where there is evidence of good character, a direction is normally provided as a matter of law.

In an article in this issue, Kenneth Pearce suggests a novel solution to the ‘logical problem of evil’. That is, he defends the consistency of the obtaining of evil with the existence of an omnipotent and good creator. The basic idea of Pearce's solution to the logical problem of evil is that according to the teleological theory of intentionality, which is self-consistent and consistent with the claim that God exists, some evil is necessary for the existence of created minds, and this evil is outweighed by the good that is involved in the existence of created minds. The present article argues that this suggestion fails to solve the problem.

In the 2010s, Hillary Clinton emerged as a central character not only in American political life but also in its imagined political scenarios. This article considers the centrality of Clinton as a model for women's legal and political empowerment in CBS dramaThe Good Wife(2009–16), arguing that the show's generic blend of the television procedural with melodrama and soap is key to both its normative portrayal of women in the corporate workplace and its positioning of Clinton as an aspirational figure for white liberal feminists. A similar tension is also central to Clinton's bid for the presidency in 2016, and this article dissects the ways in which Clinton's anticipated victory has provided a powerful but ultimately misleading “feminist” fantasy for many television shows of the last decade. A final section concludes this article with a brief analysis ofThe Good Wife's 2017 spin-offThe Good Fight, to argue that this show pivots from a fantasy of women's empowerment to a much more interesting dystopic picture, tapping into the surrealism of the present moment to convey the difficulty of women's aspiration under a Trump administration in ways that more directly, if still imperfectly, tackle the failings of liberal feminism to account for racial and economic difference.

The Federal Constitutional Court’s ultra-vires case law—especially its most recent iterations—has more than its fair share of bad parts. It went from non-existence to global prominence in an alarmingly short period of time. Fortunately, the doctrine contains some extraordinarily good parts. Within the case law, there are three beautiful, elegant, and highly expressive elements that are buried under a massive tower of good intentions and hard luck: First, the principle of distinction between the two concepts of responsibility and accountability, second, the ban on transferring blanket empowerments, and third, the idea of a “program of integration” as a good medium for expressing vague ideas. In combination, these elements constitute a constitutional mechanism that does not play hell with European law, but truly complements any union based on multi-level cooperation. Focusing on the good parts—and avoiding some bad parts—might help prospective ultra-vires reviews to steer clear of wreaking havoc. The subset of good parts can serve to shift the constitutional case law towards reliability, readability, robustness, foreseeability, and, if nothing else, explicability.

Iris Murdoch believes that unselfing is required for virtue, as it takes us out of our egoistic preoccupations, and connects us to the Good in the world. Love is a form of unselfing, illustrating how close attention to another, and the way they really are, again, takes us out of a narrow focus on the self. Though this view of love runs counter to a view that those in love often overlook flaws in their loved ones, or at least down-play them, I argue that it is compatible with Murdoch's view that love can overlook some flaws, ones that do not speak to the loved one's true self. Unselfing requires that we don't engage in selfish delusion, but a softer view of our loved ones is permitted.

While appropriate to deal with the health and economic impacts on populations, both locally and globally, it is concerning that we seem to have set aside the hard-won understandings of the benefits of social justice and welfare that lead to greater equity among people and have forgotten those who have fought long and hard to provide support and services in an effort to overcome disadvantage High officials and local community leaders were, in turn, expected to take care of members of their communities Casson (1998, p 16) states ‘[b]oth the government and private individuals tried to alleviate the situation by instituting child-assistance programs’, and goes on to tell of a wealthy woman of Terracina who made a bequest in the memory of her son which provided enough money to support 100 boys and 100 girls until the boys were 16 years of age and the girls 14 years old The Bible indicates concern for children and their well-being with passages referring to the obligations that children have to parents and that parents have to children (Pachuau & Sarathy, 2015), as well as referring to acts of kindness and support that provide examples of Christian behaviour (for instance, the Good Samaritan story)

In comparison to many parts of post-war Europe, Ireland's wars between 1919 and 1923 were not as lethal as they might have been. This article addresses some of the possible reasons why, reasons that were quite specific to the immediate Anglo-Irish context but reasons that may also have been due to broader transnational understandings of what it was to be a soldier, what it was to fight at that time. But while comparative fatality rates may leave Ireland somewhat overshadowed, this article considers what Ireland's wars still share with other conflicts and looks at some of the dimensions of Irish violence that were, irrespective of numbers killed, still fundamentally the same as violence experienced in other periods and places. Tackling some of the challenges of contemporary comparisons, the article suggests other possible comparisons ranging far beyond the inter-war period that may prove more fruitful, and asks whether the nature of violence shapes our perceptions of a conflict far more than fatality rates do.

Many philosophers have thought that human beings do or pursue only what we see as good. These “guise-of-the-good” views face powerful challenges and counterexamples, such as akratic action, in which we do what we ourselves believe we ought not do. I propose a new way for guise-of-the-good views to address this central counterexample by appealing to conflicting beliefs. I then answer concerns that this appeal is insufficiently explanatory, attributes too much conflict, leaves out an essential asymmetry in action against one’s “better” judgment, attributes systematic error about one’s own beliefs, and is too implausible.

When I was asked to serve as Governor General of Canada, I discovered I had much to relearn. Despite my background as a law student, professor, and dean, I had to revisit the legal principles and conventions of our constitution, especially as they relate to the authority and function of the Crown in Canada. My re-education enabled me to develop an even deeper admiration for how precious the rule of law is in our country, how thin and vulnerable its veneer can be, and how vital it is in moving closer to justice. Even more, my re-education revealed for me anew that the study and practice of law is a hollow pursuit if we do not use it to strive toward justice.

Is the ancient Confucian ideal of he 和, ‘harmony,’ a viable ideal in pluralistic societies composed of people and groups who subscribe to different ideals of the good and moral life? Is harmony compatible with accepting, even encouraging, difference and the freedom to think differently? I start with seminal characterizations of harmony in Confucian texts and then aim to chart ways harmony and freedom can be compatible and even mutually supportive while recognizing the constant possibility of conflict between them. I shall point out how the Confucian notion of harmony resonates with the Indian King Asoka's project of promoting religious pluralism. Along the way, I will make some comments of a ‘meta’ nature about the kind of interpretation I am offering of harmony in the Confucian texts and the use to which I am putting this interpretation by setting it in the context of societies that in important respects are quite different from the ones from which concepts of harmony originally emerged.

The hit American TV show The Good Place has garnered quite a following in recent years. Its main premise implies a scorekeeping view of the afterlife. People who have collected enough credits in their earthly lives will make the cut and go to the Good Place, while those who do not will be banished to the Bad Place. We suggest that such a premise would have to come to terms with Ted Sider's puzzle about the compatibility of a binary afterlife with God's divine attributes.

Autonomous ships are gaining in importance and are expected to shape the future of the global shipping industry. This evolutionary shift raises serious issues about compliance with the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea 1972 (COLREGs). This paper reviews the literature on autonomous ships from the perspective of the obligations of good seamanship imposed by COLREGs. The authors conclude that to facilitate the introduction of autonomous ships, the application barriers presented by COLREGs need to be analysed. With this goal, this paper presents a perspective from navigational practice. Four nautical scientists and two deck officers were invited to give their opinions. The analysis indicates that COLREGs require further elaboration and amendments to eliminate uncertainty of interpretation. In particular, the paper highlights the need to amend the ‘look-out’ rule (COLREGs Rule 5) to permit look-out by ‘computer vision’ alone while, at the same time, preserving the distinction between vessels navigating in restricted visibility and in sight of one another.

This year marks the centenary of the birth of Iris Murdoch (1919–99). She has been celebrated as one of Britain's most important postwar writers with twenty-six prose fiction novels to her name. Murdoch was also an ancient philosopher who was primarily interested in issues of moral philosophy. Pinning down her place in the Anglo-American analytic tradition of philosophy, however, is not a straightforward task. On the one hand she cut a conventional figure, holding a tutorial fellowship at St Anne's College, Oxford, from 1948 to 1963. On the other hand, her philosophical writing increasingly departed from the coordinates of analytical philosophy. As Martha Nussbaum notes in her deeply ambivalent review of Murdoch'sThe Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists, Murdoch is ‘a novelist whose best work is deeply philosophical, a philosopher who has stressed…the special role that beauty can play in motivating us to know the good, …a Platonist believer in human perfectability, and an artist.’ Nussbaum points us towards understanding two key elements in Murdoch's thought: her commitment to Plato and the manner in which Murdoch's activity as philosopher and novelist should be considered as interdependent.

How do authoritarian states define and communicate notions of appropriate work conduct and professional excellence? This article examines three channels of communication used by the Chinese state to signal professional expectations to the bar: the bar exam, the administrative rules governing lawyers, and the state-sanctioned National Outstanding Lawyer Award. We find that China’s state narrative about “the good lawyer” celebrates lawyers willing to work closely with the authorities and asks more stringent critics to separate private beliefs from public behavior. In contrast to assumptions often made in research on authoritarian law, this article highlights how lawyers can participate in politics without opposing the regime and how much work goes into curating an appealing state strand of legal professionalism rather than relying on coercion alone. We end with a call for future work on “varieties of legal professionalism” to better understand which state signals are most visible and persuasive to different segments of the Chinese bar, as well as the conditions under which alternate ideas about professionalism gain traction.

A famous section of 1 Corinthians and some influential passages in the work of Iris Murdoch seem to suppose a significant connection between the higher human love of agape and moral knowledge: that, perhaps, the former may provide access to the latter. Following some sceptical attention to this possibility, this paper turns to a more modest suggestion of Plato's Symposium that the ‘lower’ human love of eros might be a transitional stage to higher moral love or knowledge of the good. Still, while conceding that this may be so, the present paper argues that any moral transformations of such loves would need to be informed by moral wisdom or knowledge rather than vice versa. However, the paper concludes that there are ultimately deep and perhaps irreconcilable tensions between the epistemic and agapeic dimensions of moral life.

In this article, I critique the moral theory developed in Philip Pettit's The Robust Demands of the Good: Ethics with Attachment, Virtue, and Respect (2015). Pettit's theory, which I label Robust-Goods Consequentialism, aims to avoid the problems but retain the attractive features of traditional consequentialist theories. The distinctive feature of Robust-Goods Consequentialism is a value theory that attempts to accommodate what Pettit calls rich goods: certain moral phenomena that can be categorized under the headings of attachment, virtue and respect. I argue that Robust-Goods Consequentialism fails because it implies very implausible value judgements.

The reconstruction of ensemble d–f of the Akhmîm Papyrus, better known as the Strasbourg Papyrus, which attests approximately eighteen of the over seventy new lines of Empedocles’ physical poem, has drawn the attention of scholars over recent years. Thanks to the good condition of the papyrus and the coincidence with two Empedoclean lines, already known from the indirect tradition, ensemble d–f 1–10a presents a well-restored text and an intelligible sense. In contrast, because of the damaged state of the papyrus, the restoration of d–f 10b–18 is more complicated. These lines seem to describe a life-generative process, but what process was Empedocles talking about? Some resemblances between these papyrus lines and the lines of another Empedoclean fragment, DK 31 B 62, have suggested to scholars, notably to A. Martin and O. Primavesi in 1999 and M. Rashed in 2011, that the lines of the papyrus depict, just like DK 31 B 62, the generation of whole-natured beings (οὐλοφυεῖς; cf. B 62.4). Other scholars, however, such as R. Janko in 2004 (see n. 1) and A. Laks and G.W. Most in 2016, show more caution and leave the possibility open that Empedocles is here talking about the generation of something else.

Over a hundred instances of the word ὕμνος from extant archaic poetry demonstrate that the Greek hymn was understood broadly as a song of praise. The majority of these instances comes from Pindar, who regularly uses the term to describe his poems celebrating athletic victors. Indeed, Pindar and his contemporaries saw the ὕμνος as a powerful vehicle for praising gods, heroes, men and their achievements—often in service of an ideological agenda. Writing a century later Plato used the term frequently and with much the same range. A survey of his usage reveals instances of ὕμνοι for gods,daimones, heroes, ancestors, leading citizens, noble deeds, sites and landscapes. Despite abundant evidence of Plato's own practice, studies of the Greek hymn posit an extreme narrowing of the genre in the classical period and cite the philosopher as the sole witness to, if not the originator of, this development. Two passages in particular, one from theRepublicand one from theLaws, are seen to support the claim that by the fourth centuryb.c.e.the term ὕμνος refers exclusively to songs for gods. InRepublicBook 10, we find the memorable edict on poetic censorship: ‘But we must know that of poetry only ὕμνοι for the gods and ἐγκώμια for the good must be admitted into our city.’LawsBook 3 offers what appears to be an even more straightforward pronouncement: ‘Back then our music was divided according to its various types and arrangements; and a certain type of song was prayers to the gods, and these were called by the name ὕμνοι.’ From these two statements has arisen the consensus that Plato saw a divine recipient as the defining feature of the ὕμνος and, moreover, that this position reflects thecommunis opiniofrom at least the fourth centuryb.c.e.onward.

Many ancient traditions recognise certain people as exemplars of virtue, the models for the good or flourishing human life. Certain traditions, however, incorporate a cosmic mode of emulation, where the virtues are manifestations, in human form, of qualities or aspects of the ground or source of the world. I defend this claim using the sustained case study of the forms of Daoist exemplarity found in theBook of Zhuangzi, then consider the charge that the aspiration to cosmic emulation is inhumane. It emerges that there are forms of emulation where the ultimate model for the good or flourishing life as manifested by the exemplar is nothing human.

In 1409 Ludovico Barbo arrived at the monastery of Santa Giustina in Padua, intent on its reformation. Since the late fourteenth century, the scriptorium at Santa Giustina had produced some of the most significant collections of polyphonic music to survive from the period, specialising in copying the avant-garde repertories of the Ars nova. Yet the reforms Barbo sought to introduce – reforms based on ideals he and a cohort of Venetians had been living out on the island of S. Giorgio in Alga – eschewed outward ostentation, and centred on prayerful engagement with the scene of Christ's Passion. Barbo's initiatives would seem at odds with the tradition of secular polyphony cultivated at the monastery in the years before his arrival. Official documents from the reform prohibit the practice of cantus figuratus and paint a picture of a uniformly spare music aesthetic.Manuscript and material evidence from Santa Giustina and dependent houses tells a different story, and suggests that communities found use for the monastery's musical past within the reformed practice of prayer and meditation. Vestiges of this past appear in the most unlikely of places: the Good Friday rituals that Barbo himself worked to strip of polyphonic accoutrement. The efforts of individual monks, musicians and scribes – here Rolando da Casale, whose musical expertise Barbo enlisted in the copying of new liturgical manuscripts, and Johannes Preottonus – emerge as telling examples of the ways in which institutional histories come under the pressure of their individual actors.

Normative ethics asks: What makes right acts right? W. D. Ross attempted to answer this question inThe Right and the Good(1930). Most theorists have agreed that Ross provided no systematic explanatory answers. Ross's intuitionism lacks any decision procedure, and, as McNaughton (2002: 91) states, it ‘turns out after all to have nothing general to say about the relative stringency of our basic duties’. Here I will show that my own Rossian intuitionism does have a systematic way of explaining what makes right acts right. Deontological theories have struggled to say what internal to acts could make them right. From Price to Ross, the striking but uninformative answer has beenthe natureof the act. In this paper I will provide a Rossian theory of the moral natures of acts. It contains a set of self-evident principles of moral stringency and other considerations that can assist agents in deciding what prima facie duty overrides what.

According to the guise of the good thesis, we desire things under the ‘guise of the good.’ Here I sympathetically articulate a generic formulation of the guise of the good thesis, and address a problem for the view, which I call the problem of partiality. The problem is, roughly, that our partial pro-attitudes–for example, our special concern for ourselves–do not correspond to what is absolutely good. I criticize three solutions to the problem, and propose an alternative strategy, on which partial pro-attitudes constitute a species of illusion.

In this essay, I consider a particular version of the thesis that the blameworthy deserve to suffer, namely, that they deserve to feel guilty to the proper degree (a thesis I call "Desert-Guilt"). Two further theses have been thought to explicate and support the thesis, one that appeals to the non-instrumental goodness of the blameworthy receiving what they deserve (in this case, the experience of guilt), and the other that appeals to the idea that being blameworthy provides reason to promote the blameworthy receiving what they deserve (again, in this case, the experience of guilt). I call the first "Good-Guilt" and the second "Reason-Guilt.” I begin by exploring what I take to be the strongest argument for Good-Guilt which gains force from a comparison of guilt and grief, and the strongest argument against. I conclude that Good-Guilt might be true, but that even if it is, the strongest argument in favor of it fails to support it in a way that provides reason for the thesis that the blameworthy deserve to feel guilty. I then consider the hypothesis that Reason-Guilt might be true and might be the more fundamental principle, supporting both Good-Guilt and Desert-Guilt. I argue that it does not succeed, however, and instead propose a different principle, according to which being blameworthy does not by itself provide reason for promoting that the blameworthy get what they deserve, but that being blameworthy systematically does so in conjunction with particular kinds of background circumstances. Finally, I conclude that Desert-Guilt might yet be true, but that it does not clearly gain support from either Good-Guilt or Reason-Guilt.

As Kristina Daugirdas points out in her article on the role of reputation in international organizations (IOs), peacekeeping operations include a multitude of actors with varying interests. These actors have competing priorities, which forces IOs to balance the needs of the actors involved in peacekeeping missions. Because IOs often depend on member states as implementing agents, this could cause IOs to suppress their own interests in favor of member states, which could ultimately negatively affect the communities in which the peacekeepers operate. This dynamic is present in UN peacekeeping operations. While Daugirdas seeks to align the incentives of the UN and the states that contribute peacekeepers so as to harness reputation as a force to encourage the good behavior of all involved, I argue that this alignment rarely happens because of IOs’ reliance on member states. Through the dynamics of UN peacekeeping operations, I show that the UN reliance on states to provide police officers and troops suppresses the UN's own interests in favor of the contributing states’ interests. I also identify a carrots and sticks approach to balancing incentives. As Paul Stephan does in his essay for this symposium, I draw on a rational-choice, actor-based theory to identify the mixed motives of the various actors who staff and operate peacekeeping missions. The framework proposed here, I contend, provides a way to better understand the sources of the tension that exist when evaluating reputation as a disciplinary tool for IOs.

This paper takes a closer look at the Constitution of the United States of America (USA) and its role in shaping the American aspiration which is generally referred to as the ‘American Dream.’ Essentially, this paper reviews key contributions by noted scholars with reference to the American Dream. For the purposes of this research, two definitions of the American Dream are proposed; both of which are traced back to the pre-colonial American spirit. The working definitions are: 1. The American Dream is ‘an indigenous belief in the unbridled freedom and unique heritage of a people’ and 2. The American is ‘the belief in self-actualization of the good fortunes, guaranteed by American liberties, opportunities and freedom.’ Those definitions are examined in line with the scholarly works which were reviewed for this research. Above all, this paper can be seen as a continuation of the discussion on the American Dream.

In spite of its dominance, there are well-known problems with Rawls’s method of reflective equilibrium (MRE), as a method of justification in meta-ethics. One issue in particular has preoccupied commentators, namely, the capacity of this method to provide a convincing account of the objectivity of our moral beliefs. Call this the Lack-of-Objectivity Charge. One aim of this article is to examine the charge within the context of Rawls’s later philosophy, and I claim that the lack-of-objectivity charge remains unanswered. A second aim of this article is to examine the extent to which, despite Rawls’s express intention to avoid reliance on Kant’s moral philosophy, supplementing Rawls’s political constructivism with some Kantian elements, in particular Kant’s idea of a universal principle of right, not only addresses some of the issues raised by the lack-of-objectivity charge, but also does so without compromising the ability of the Rawlsian account to accommodate the pluralism of conceptions of the good, which he takes to be a fact of modern democracies. I argue for a revised justificatory methodology, which combines Rawls’s MRE and Kant’s Critical Method.

Pedro Galvão claims that, on the ideal rule-consequentialist code, all sentient humans have rights, whereas animals do not. Because agents are not impartial, total well-being would be lower if they were aware of a general disposition to harm in order to promote the good. Animals cannot be aware of that disposition, so it would be justified to harm them when that is best. Galvão also claims it is wrong to help an animal, even when optimific, if that harms another animal. I argue he is misguided. First, impartial agents would err in the moral calculus, causing falsely optimific harms. To compensate for that, all sentient individuals must have rights – though those protecting some humans may be stronger. Second, when helping is optimific, it is at least permitted. Moreover, since most sentient beings are wild animals with net negative lives, agents should be generally disposed to intervene in nature on their behalf.

In their recent bookUnfit for the Future, Persson and Savulescu make a heartfelt plea for the increasing necessity of “moral enhancement”, interventions that improve human capacities for moral behaviour.3They argue that, with all the technological advances of the 20thand 21stcenturies, the sheer scope of horror that humans can now potentially wreak on their neighbours or the world is staggering. Hence, we are morally obliged to use interventions at our disposal to prevent such atrocities. However, as we learn more about human behaviour and decision-making, the argument that we are morally obligated to morally enhance our friends, neighbours, or countrymen starts to fall apart. For us to be more moral requires more than sharpening our reasoning capacities so that we can more effectively recognise what is better or increasing personal motivation so that we are more likely to do what is good. It requires that we all agree on what the good is and how to achieve it, and that there are no social, cultural, physical, or psychological impediments that prevent us from recognising the good or acting on it. To illustrate my position, I use the phenomenon of self-radicalised terrorists as a case study. In particular, I focus on how historians, psychologists, sociologists, criminologists, and political scientists understand the process of self-radicalisation, who self-radicalises, and why, and what all this tells us about it should be “treated”. Part of my purpose in working my way through this case study is to demonstrate that many philosophers misunderstand or over-simplify the science behind so-called immoral actions; consequently, their discussions of whether to enhance someone's morality miss their mark.

In Catholic doctrine, church and state are two different and autonomous institutional subjects, but they are mutually linked. Therefore, a believer, as a citizen, is a subject simultaneously of two legal systems; the state is bound to recognize the confessional dimension of its own members, and the church is called to realize its proper ends within a precise political-social context. The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) constitutes for the Catholic Church a point of change and renewal. It did not limit itself to affirming the coexistence of the two systems in their independence, but it declared the necessity of a mutual alliance for the good of citizens and believers.Therefore, the church offers its own contribution to the state, favoring in this way the right to religious liberty; and the state allows the church to establish itself and carry out its proper mission in an institutional form, guaranteeing the protection of the rights of citizens as believers for the free expression of their faith, whether in a private dimension or in an organized form. Vatican II abandons, therefore, the concept of “state religion” in the classic sense of the term, and thus the privilege reserved to one among numerous religious expressions, and opens an authentic collaboration between parties as a prerequisite for the good not only for individual believers and religious organizations, but also for society itself. In particular, religious liberty finds its foundation no longer in the concept of truth (that legitimized the exclusion of other confessions in that they were “not true”), but in the concept of the dignity of the person, which must be protected as such.

If space explorers discover a biosphere supporting life on an off-Earth body, should they treat that life as possessing intrinsic value? This is an ethical quandary leading to a further question: how do we ground a universal moral norm to which the astroethicist can appeal? This article closely analyses various forms of responsibility ethics and finds them weak because they commit the naturalistic fallacy – that is, they ask nature to definethe good. The good, however, is self-defining and not derivable from nature. Even so, a revised responsibility ethic could ground its universal norms on the fact that life and only life can experience and appreciate the good. Conclusion: living creatures possess intrinsic value both on Earth and elsewhere in the Universe.

Moral theories that demand that we do what is morally best leave no room for the supererogatory. One argument against such theories is that they fail to realize the value of autonomy: supererogatory acts allow for the exercise of autonomy because their omissions are not accompanied by any threats of sanctions, unlike obligatory ones. While this argument fails, I use the distinction it draws – between omissions of obligatory and supererogatory acts in terms of appropriate sanctions – to draw a parallel with psychological perfectionism. Through this parallel, I demonstrate thatrequiringwhat is morally best is in fact counter-productive. Thus, by its own lights, a theory that wants us to do what is best ought at the very least to tell us to believe that some actions are supererogatory. As the old adage goes, the best is the enemy of the good; I argue here that the supererogatory is the solution.

Parsis (Indian Zoroastrians), a small traditionally endogamous group, are well known in India for their philanthropic giving. The Parsis of Mumbai are beneficiaries of hundreds of Parsi public charitable trusts today, and this article will show how trusts, as particular forms of giving, establish perpetual communal obligation connecting the past and present. It will show how the circulation of personal assets through customary inheritance within a family is replaced by the trust with the circulation of communal obligations in perpetuity. While this mechanism of giving has a marked endurance, what has changed is what constitutes ‘the good’ within these deeds. Moving away from traditional philanthropic practices of subsidizing education, medical care, and welfare to the poor, the focus of giving has shifted to the pursuit of communal reproduction, both biological and social.

Character plays a crucial role in US law. This article explores flaws in how moral character requirements determine who can work in licensed occupations, who can practice law, and who can immigrate to the United States or become a citizen. Section I summarizes psychological research on character, which raises questions about a central legal premise that individuals have a settled disposition capable of accurately predicting their behavior independent of situational influences. Section II examines the role of moral character as an employment credential. Almost a third of the workforce is covered by licensing laws that typically require proof of good character and often unjustly penalize the seventy million Americans with criminal records. Section III examines the idiosyncratic and inconsistent application of moral character requirements for lawyers. Section IV focuses on similar flaws in immigration contexts. Section V identifies reform strategies to improve the fairness of character-related decisions in the law.

This essay reviews the following works:Representing the Good Neighbor: Music, Difference and the Pan American Dream. By Carol A. Hess. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xix + 303. $49.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780199919994.Chilean New Song: The Political Power of Music, 1960s–1973. By J. Patrice McSherry. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015. Pp. xxii + 229. $44.95 paper. ISBN: 9781439911525.Negro Soy Yo: Hip Hop and Raced Citizenship in Neoliberal Cuba. By Marc D. Perry. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 284. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822358855.Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico. By Petra R. Rivera-Rideau. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 224. $23.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822359647.Song and Social Change in Latin America. Edited by Lauren Shaw. Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2013. Pp.vi + 249. $70.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780739179482.

The above quotations from two of the books under review here took me back to the early 1970s and my first weeks in Hungary. As a graduate student in sociology, struggling to get to grips with my surroundings, I distinctly remember thinking that what was needed was an anthropology for large-scale industrial society to explain their foreignness and remoteness. Everything in the metropolis of Budapest followed a different logic, and in the academic division of labour, anthropologists are those with the skills to interpret the meanings of societies which operate according to a logic different to that of industrialised West. But in those days anthropologists still tended to focus on pre-industrial societies outside Europe. I had not yet readThe Good Soldier Švejk, but a Hungarian sociologist told me was that I would never understand communist Eastern Europe without readingŠvejk. I did, and he was right.

It has been argued that moral bioenhancement is desirable even if it would make it impossible for us to do what is morally required. Others find this apparent loss of freedom deplorable. However, it is difficult to see how a world in which there is no moral evil can plausibly be regarded as worse than a world in which people are not only free to do evil, but also where they actually do it, which would commit us to the seemingly paradoxical view that, under certain circumstances, the bad can be better than the good. Notwithstanding, this view is defended here.

In the latter part of thenineteenth century future or speculative fiction became big business in Britain. It was a safe haven for invasion narratives, for socialist paradises or hells, for worlds ruled by benevolent machines, or worlds ruined by mechanical dependence. Themes and plots were varied, but they always reflected some facet of contemporary society. The future was not a bubble, untouched by time or trouble, but a field of battle, where ideas could be tested and philosophies given a test drive. The future was a place where the mistakes or triumphs of today dictated the course of human progress. I argue in this essay that the nascent ideas about euthanasia of the early and middle Victorian period became full-fledged philosophies in the late-Victorian period and that Malthusian philosophy and Darwinian-informed theories were manipulated by novelist and theorist-turned- novelists, resulting in euthanasia becoming a tool in class warfare and in the fight to eradicate social undesirables for their good and for the good of society.

Meursault, the protagonist of Camus's The Stranger, was unable to experience grief at his mother's death—and was in fact condemned for this inability. Should Meursault's inability to grieve be pitied, or should it be welcomed inasmuch as grief is a painful and highly distressing experience? With the assistance of Augustine's remarks on grief in his Confessions, I argue that Meursault's plight is to be pitied. The emotional pains of grief are genuine and cannot be recast either as masochistic pleasures or as instrumental costs to be borne in exchange for grief's benefits. These pains are instead experienced as good inasmuch as they are components of a complex valuable experience. More specifically, because we experience grief at the deaths of those with whom we stand in identity-constituting relationships, grief is both a powerful source of, and motivator for, substantial self-knowledge.