Moral philosophy can and ought to be a source of moral wisdom. Wisdom is a special kind of understanding, in particular, an ethical understanding of what it is to be a success as a human being, a healthy and fully formed specimen. Such understanding involves both a delicate grasp of the grammar of moral concepts and an appreciation of their import for a human life, including the philosopher’s. Virtue ethics is an important department of moral philosophy, especially for the philosophical goal of becoming wise. It consists in a careful investigation of the concepts of moral virtues (generosity, justice, the sense of duty, and so forth), both in their conceptual contours and in their importance for a human life.

Practical wisdom is caring understanding of the good in the situations of a human life. Our emotions are rational to the extent that we care about the real good and are truthful about the facts. The two main kinds of virtues – the virtues of caring and the enkratic virtues – embody different aspects of practical wisdom. On the one side, in compassion, generosity, justice, and sense of duty, we care about and understand our good in its varieties and aspects. On the other side, we know about and know our practical way around ourselves, our shortcomings and the ways they may be mitigated and repaired by use of courage, patience, perseverance, and self-control. The virtues of caring form a coherent ensemble and overall picture of the good, a practical wisdom by which we see our situations in the perspective of a whole life.

This chapter explores the rap debates of philosophical aesthetics, where early academic discourse on rap was at its most active. Rap aestheticians (led by Richard Shusterman) accentuated rap’s nature as an “art form”. The chapter examines the key issues within this debate, including the aesthetic experience of rap, flow (Mtume ya Salaam), the need for public support (and Herbert Grabes’ criticism of this position), and rap’s affinities with the Harlem Renaissance (Marvin Gladney). Rap’s engagement with other cultural practices, like driving and everyday culture, was discussed very early within philosophical aesthetics. Right from the beginning the debate was very international, with many of the authors coming from the Nordic Countries (Esa Sironen, Stefán Snaevarr, Martti Honkanen). It argues that there is still a lot to learn from aesthetic discussions on rap, and these philosophical debates are an interesting historical phenomenon, which rap scholars should know more about.

The chapter discusses the issue of the evaluation of the validity of international legitimacy. This issue is important because it concerns how true international legitimacy can be distinguished from false international legitimacy, especially in the midst of change. This chapter concentrates on this matter, with its philosophical resonance, by looking into when international legitimacy, established or changing (change of/in an international system and its legitimacy), can really be considered valid or legitimate. Specifically, the following questions are addressed: First, does it make sense to examine the issue of the evaluation of international legitimacy (established or changing)? Second, if indeed it makes sense, what are the criteria that can be used to evaluate the validity of a claim or belief of international legitimacy? Third, what are the relevance and the modalities of application of this normative approach to international legitimacy (established or changing) across various periods and cultures?

This chapter focuses on four aspects of a critical philosophy of international law. First, there is a paradoxical relationship between international law and philosophy, at the same time natural and a bit tense, if not conflictual. Second, the assumptions at the heart of international law are comprised of notions/values and distinctions: universal/particular, hierarchy/equality, inclusion/exclusion, self/other, and public/private. Third, these assumptions and their interactions have three major characteristics: they have a structuring power that plays a crucial role in the determination of issues of legitimacy; the assumptions are presented as true, but this quality of truth is more posited than demonstrated; the assumptions at the core of international law are not only descriptive but also prescriptive. Fourth, all of this has an impact in terms of the legitimacy of international law. The assumptions/distinctions influence the nature, organization, and practice of the building blocks of international law and its sense of legitimacy.

Explores two instances early in the Metamorphoses where chaos exerts itself on the formed world, namely the climate crises triggered by the flood and Phaethon narratives. These narratives frequently occur as a pair in philosophical discourses, where conflagrations and floods are seen as part of a regular cosmic cycle, whereby the world moves between phases of increasing and decreasing entropy, such as in the Stoic theory of the Great Year or in Empedocles’ cosmogony. In such cases, the Phaethon and flood narratives are seen as myths that can be mined for evidence of a ‘true’ scientific doctrine. In the Metamorphoses, however, the narratives of Phaethon and the flood do not indicate a stable cycle but rather are expressions of a world continually veering towards a chaotic collapse. This becomes evident when reading these narratives through the cosmic theories of Empedocles, Plato, and Lucretius.

Begins by examining the sculpture Daphne by the artist Kate MacDowell, which is a carefully crafted illusion of the destruction of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne. Umberto Eco’s concept of the ‘open work’ which responds to such Baroque art is discussed as a potential theoretical framework before the scene is set for a discussion of how Ovid responds to the works of Greek and Roman philosophy.

Considers how chaos in the Metamorphoses is a non-linear state and force that disturbs the structural hierarchies that we tend to associate with the formed world. Beginning with a rereading of the cosmogony from book 1 of the Metamorphoses, we observe Ovid combining a range of different philosophical systems including materialist physics and creationist cosmogony. Ovid introduces a Platonic demiurge, whose role it is to place order onto this chaotic system; however, his introduction is a false dawn, as chaos, far from being banished to a primordial past, continually intervenes in the created world, disturbing any sense of a fixed or stable reality. This is matched by the intertextual chaos encountered by the reader, who is left to restitch the cosmos from disparate elements, including conflicting philosophical systems and mythological narratives. The Timaeus provides an important counterweight to Ovid’s cosmogony; on the one hand, the recourse to a more perfect and eternal realm beyond the experience of the physical senses is ripe for deconstruction by Ovid. When read alongside the opening of the Metamorphoses, Plato’s creationist cosmogony appears less fixed and more playful than has been traditionally considered.

This chapter examines how the Holocaust affected thinking about the humanities and social sciences throughout the West. It offers an intellectual history of key responses to the Holocaust, with an emphasis on political philosophy and social theory. Major intellectuals (Arendt, Adorno, Agamben), as well as less well-known thinkers (Günther Anders, Moishe Postone) are considered. The trajectory of post-Holocaust thought forms the throughline. In the first postwar decades, the Jewish genocide was considered as part of a broader eruption of war and totalitarian violence, while more recent thinkers have tended to subsume the entire history of Western violence, perhaps even “the West” itself, under the sign of the Holocaust.

This introduces the principal methodological and substantive arguments of the book, with a particular focus on what is meant by ‘character’ as part of a historiography of philosophy, and on briefly articulating MacCormick’s character in particular. The chapter also gives an overview of the chapters in the book and includes a note on the book’s sources.

The environments we create for the infants and toddlers in early childhood education (ECE) settings are critically important because they shape the daily lived experience of children and educators, and create the conditions for children’s interactions, wellbeing, engagement, learning and development. ECE environments are not neutral, nor are they natural. They are constructed in specific ways for specific purposes and are a representation of our philosophy that ‘speaks’ to children, educators and families about our image of the child, about the value we place on family, culture and community, and about our beliefs regarding teaching and learning. ECE environments are political because they influence the possibilities for interactions, relationships, empowerment and agency.

This short epilogue concludes the book, with a brief reflection on MacCormick’s final book, Practical Reason in Law and Morality (2008), where MacCormick confronted his own impending death from cancer, and where he once again articulated a relational approach to ethics, politics, and law.

This chapter examines the intellectual, especially philosophical, context of MacCormick’s education as a philosopher, including his relationships with his teachers and their ideas. MacCormick’s own education is placed in a broader historical context, mainly by reference to the influential history published on it while MacCormick was studying: George Davie’s The Democratic Intellect (1961). While at the University of Glasgow, MacCormick was taught by a number of philosophers who had a considerable impact on his interests and orientations, including Robin Downie, David Raphael, and WD Lamont. This chapter discusses the work of these philosophers and considers how MacCormick related to them. There is a particular emphasis on Lamont and his concept of authority, as well as how he related law and morality.

Abstract: Anne attended Vassar College as an undergrad. In college, Anne played basketball, field hockey and lacrosse. After winter break, she no longer felt like herself, stayed in her room listening to the Rubber Soul album on repeat, and had violent thoughts. One morning, overcome by a panic, Anne ran outside screaming. Her friends raced after her and forced her to go to the little health center on campus. After a while, a psychiatrist asked Anne about the problem. She said nothing, but after a few days, it was clear she would not be let out until she talked. She told the psychiatrist she wanted to kill people. He asked Anne what she wanted to do in life, and she told him she wanted to be a doctor. He said it was a bad idea; she should take some time off from school. Eventually, her depression, which lasted for months, stopped on its own, but it was not the last time she would be depressed. Anne spent summers in Chicago working at local hospitals. Anne got good grades. She was a chemistry major and philosophy and art history minor. Anne’s pediatrician suggested she apply to institutions offering a combined MD/PhD program so she could work in the lab and/or with patients. She graduated summa cum laude in chemistry and thirteenth in the 1969 class of 400.

Cicero and his brother, Quintus, went on a two-year study tour of Greece and Asia Minor, visiting major centers such as Athens and Delphi and seeking training from the leading teachers of rhetoric and philosophy. This enabled Cicero to rebuild his oratorical technique so that he could speak with less exertion. Upon his return, Cicero resumed his career at the bar and then stood for the office of quaestor. Duly elected, he was allotted a post in Sicily, where he served for a year. When he returned to Rome, he took his seat in the senate and continued pleading in the courts, mostly for unimportant clients, and publishing his speeches.

Cicero was born in Arpinum, a town some sixty miles southeast of Rome, on January 3, 106 bce. His family was well-to-do (of equestrian status) but previously involved only in local politics. His brother, Quintus, was one to four years younger. Their father took care to see that they received the best education available, first in grammar and rhetoric, later in philosophy, supplemented by observing the activities of a leading jurist. Cicero was a keen student and began writing, with poetry, a book on rhetoric, and a translated book on philosophy to his credit by the mid-80s. At the end of the decade, he began pleading in the courts and publishing his speeches. He won Terentia, an upper-class woman, as his wife and started a household.