It is impossible to understand Kant’s essay “On a Supposed Right to Lie” without a sense of how Kant’s theory of truth and truthfulness developed over time; and it is impossible to trace the development of Kant’s thought without a clear sense of the conceptual framework that he took as his starting point. This chapter examines the early modern debate with its distinction between morally objectionable lies (mendacia) and morally innocent falsified assertions (falsiloquia) and then presents Kant’s thoughts on the topic in his lectures and in his major writings on moral philosophy. He endorses the distinction between unobjectionable and objectionable falsehoods in the early lectures; in his later publications, he rejects it.

The details of the example of the ‘murderer at the door’ – as it is commonly, if inaccurately called – are more complicated than most interpreters assume. This chapter is dedicated to the details of the case, many of which surface only in the light of other eighteenth-century versions of the story. Does the would-be murderer know that the person hiding his intended victim knows about his murderous intentions? Why are the options of the person asked about the victim’s hiding place restricted to yes or no, and how would this restriction work in practice? What are the reasons or motives of someone who intends to lie to a would-be murderer? And what are Constant’s ‘intermediate principles’, which he introduces to defuse the problem case? The chapter also explores Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s discussion of the case in his 1798 System of Ethics. Fichte and Kant agree that lying is not a legitimate option; but Fichte is by far the more radical moralist of the two.

The so-called Holiness Code of Leviticus highlights the importance of ethical living if Israel is to be holy as God is holy. This chapter discusses the historical-critical arguments around the composition of the Holiness Code but focuses mainly on bridge Leviticus creates between the holiness of Israel’s tent and God’s tent. Ethical purity is as important as ritual purity in Leviticus and requires holiness in every aspect of Israel’s life.

Kant’s 1784 lectures on Achenwall is commonly known as the Feyerabend lectures because the manuscript was attributed to Gottfried Feyerabend. These lectures range over the topics eventually treated in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals (1798), which include both right and ethics. From these lectures we learn how Kant thought about the concepts of end in itself, self-sufficient end and human dignity just prior to writing the Groundwork (1785). Kant accepts much of what he finds in Achenwall, but also advances criticisms of the concept of obligation found in Achenwall and also in Baumgarten. He also rejects Achenwall’s attempt to justify coercion of duties of right simply through the distinction, common in the tradition since Pufundorf, between perfect and imperfect duties. The present discussion concludes that in the 1780s Kant’s position on the relation of right to ethics was still unclear. He appears to base right on the ethical value of humanity as end in itself, but also worries that grounding right on an ethical principle cannot explain why duties of right may be coerced.

Chapter 10 returns to broader issues of the cultural politics of metaphor, examining the tensions between ethics and aesthetics in illness experience and healing. While the focus on language allows us to mobilize the richness of literature to explore illness experience, in doing so we may inadvertently downplay the material circumstances that determine health disparities and inequities. Against this apparent opposition, I argue that attention to the aesthetics of language and the creative functions of imagination and poeisis can help us understand the mechanisms of suffering and affliction and devise forms of healing that better respond to the needs of individuals within and across diverse cultures and contexts. Every choice of metaphor draws from and points toward a form of life. The critique of metaphors that begins with an appreciation of the qualities they confer on experience, and then moves out into the social world to identify ways that systems and structures are configured, rationalized, and maintained. A critical poetics of illness and healing can contribute to efforts to improve our institutions and achieve greater equity not only by recognizing and respecting difference and diversity but also by engaging with the particulars of each person’s experience.

There is a conflict in law and in journalism ethics regarding the appropriateness of truthful but scandalous information: What should be published and what should be edited out? In the past, judges routinely gave the press the right to make such determinations and often sided with journalists even in surprising situations in which the privacy of the individual seemed clear. In modern internet times, however, some courts are more willing to side with the privacy of individuals over First Amendment press freedoms – and the case brought by professional wrestler Hulk Hogan against the Gawker website for publishing his sex tape without permission is one example. This chapter uses that scenario to explore the clash between an individual’s privacy rights and the rights of the press to decide what is news.

This chapter examines the formal relationship between medical professionalism and compassion, looking at codes of ethics and practice guidelines, chiefly for medical professionals but also with reference to other healthcare workers. The chapter starts by exploring the importance accorded to compassion in ethical guidance for doctors in the United Kingdom (UK), Ireland, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. It then examines guidance specifically aimed at psychiatrists, including documents published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK, the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland, and the American Psychiatric Association. Many of these guides emphasise the importance of compassion and related values, with the Royal College of Psychiatrists providing particularly detailed suggestions about building and sustaining compassion in mental healthcare. Compassion and related values also feature commonly in codes of practice and ethical guidance for other clinical professionals, such as nurses, midwives, social workers, occupational therapists, and others. This chapter concludes that, taken together, these statements of practice values and ethical principles reflect a welcome and growing emphasis on compassion in guidance for healthcare professionals across many clinical domains.

Chapter III delves into the discursive mechanisms through which former Israeli conscripts in this study understood, justified and/or distanced themselves from the violent regime in which they serve(d) – relating this to the broader context of ‘moralised militarism’ so frequently attributed to the Israeli military. Through analysis of the speech acts, moralisations and emotive articulations by former and current soldiers, I argue that traits of emotional expression, reflection and critique – far from being anomalies of militarised masculinity in this context – are central to its legitimation and idealisation, enabling the soldier, and society more broadly, to retain their sense of humanity amidst enduring violence. Rather than performances of stoicism and emotional control with which ‘traditional’ forms of militarised masculinity are normatively associated, a more philosophical, emotive, and cerebral approach to violence appears to be celebrated and encouraged within Israeli militarism – consolidating the supposed relation between militarism, masculinity, and moralism in the settler-colonial state.

In recent years, Grete Hermann (1901–1984) has been rediscovered as a principal figure in the history and philosophy of quantum physics. In particular, her criticism of Johann von Neumann’s so-called “no hidden variables” proof is a focal point of interest. Did she really find a mistake in this proof? We argue that the whole debate is misleading. It fits too well with the image of a forgotten woman who disproved a result of a mathematical genius, but it is neither historically nor systematically justified. Despite Hermann’s challenging thoughts on quantum physics, her impressive and important achievements were in ethics and politics. We offer a new and broader reading of Hermann’s interpretation of quantum physics and try to build a bridge between her works on quantum physics and ethics. In doing so, we focus on her interpretation of Heisenberg’s cut as a methaphorical device to argue against Leonard Nelson’s theory of free will and for freedom and responsibility as cornerstones of any democratic society.

This chapter brings the book to a close by reflecting the complexity of contemporary local–global relations, focusing on questions of positive relationality, sustainability, productivity, and vitality. It responds to the compounding crisis of our time, a manifold crisis which encompasses processes of ecological, economic, political, and cultural unsettling. The argument presented here is that a manifesto for positive local–global relations needs to confront the contemporary human condition in all its interconnected crises and wonders. It needs to be able to project into the future as well as provide guidance for present activities. And it needs to remain a heuristic and negotiable framework for continuing dialogue over principles rather be fixed as a set of edicts or targets. Rather than providing a blueprint for change, the chapter presents manifesto making as a method. Nevertheless, it presents a series of fundamental principles that are suggestive for rethinking the present human condition.

This chapter investigates what Primo Levi called the space “which separates the victims from the persecutors.” It uses historical examination, an anthropological approach to morality, and a historiographical review of writing to assess such “gray zones.” These can include stealing food, the role of Jewish physicians, the Sonderkommandos, or decisions made by prisoner functionaries.

There are dozens of examples used in the literature to develop lessons-learned surveys of the difficulties of external humanitarian interventions. Here the normal concept of ‘interventions’ means external, state-based, usually military interventions into places and events that entail activities generating violent consequences across jurisdictional borders. My argument here is that intervention is currently framed by increasingly abstract practices in such a way as to inevitably undermine humanitarian intervention efforts, however well intentioned. Materially we now live in the age of drones and guided missiles, commanded by communications technologies that abstract time and space, that disembody the war-machine, and unsettle the boundaries between combat and assassination (laid out in Chapter 3). Ideationally, we now pick selectively through the enumerated sections of abstract codes of conduct (such as R2P) while emptying out virtue-based ethics through passionate speeches in parliament or congress about the need to act in the name of ‘humanity’. This does not mean intervention should not occur – but it does suggest that the terms of intervention have to be fundamentally changed.