bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sacred Gifts, Profane Uses? Transfers and the Roman Religious Sphere
Authors: García Morcillo Marta
Published: June 2023

In ancient Rome, gifts made by individuals were subject to moral considerations about the aims and nature of these practices. Beyond the debate about their altruistic or utilitarian purposes, legal texts of the imperial age viewed donations and gift exchange as mechanisms that channelled the acquisition and transfer of wealth, an action that facilitated economic profit and that could both enrich and impoverish. The aim of protecting inheritances and avoiding conflicts on the right of possession ultimately explains why donations needed to be measured and evaluated in monetary terms. Their pecuniary value opened the door to the transformation of gifts into marketable commodities, as well as to the acceptability of coins as valid forms of gifts. In legal literature, gift-giving was essentially regarded and discussed as an instrument of wealth that was fully integrated within the monetary economy. But what happened when donations transcended private affairs and relationships between individuals and entered into the realm of the sacred? Were they submitted to the same norms and considerations? This chapter looks at private donations made with a religious purpose, including votive gifts, monetary contributions, and acts of private generosity, or liberalitas, addressed to sacred places with the aim of distinguishing the different levels of abstraction perceived by the Romans within a practice that was not only defined by the aim of the actors, but also by its capacity to transform the nature and function of objects in various ways.
Economic Implications of Roman Religious Systems
Authors: Woolf Greg
Published: June 2023

This final chapter provides a concluding discussion assessing the state of the field and looking ahead to a research agenda for the interrelationship of Roman religion and the economy.
Basic Desert
Authors: King Matt
Published: June 2023

This chapter argues that the blameworthy deserve blame. The desert in question is understood in terms of a kind of fittingness, wherein blame and praise fit the blameworthy and praiseworthy, respectively, by being accurate in their appraisals. One who is blameworthy is responsible for something bad. To blame them is to think badly of them in light of being responsible for that bad doing. Put crudely, since blame is a negative appraisal of the doer in light of the thing done, it fits the blameworthy because the blameworthy are responsible for the bad thing. The blameworthy deserve blame in the same way that the fearsome deserve fear and the admirable deserve admiration. (Praise and praiseworthiness are perfectly parallel.) The chapter also considers two potential objections from opposed directions. First, that blameworthiness involves a more demanding notion of desert, one that would justify hard treatment or sanction. Second, that a theory of responsibility ought to dispense with desert. In response to the first concern, the chapter argues that it is a mistake to think of blame as a sanction or as necessarily requiring hard treatment, and that nothing much about the justification of punishment follows from being blameworthy. In response to the second concern, it contends that any theory of responsibility must give an account of the worthiness relation, and preserving some connection to desert, even if somewhat revisionary, is advantageous.
Intellectual Traditions
Authors: Northrup David
Published: June 2023

Beginning some 2,600 years ago, seminal thinkers created new intellectual systems that succeeded in crossing cultural boundaries and endured into present times. These included the ways of thinking, now called philosophy, that originated in South and East Asia and the Hellenic world, early mathematics and scientific inquiry, and two new religions founded in the Near East by Jesus and Mohammad. Focusing on Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Hellenism, Christianity, and Islam, and the links among them, and the influences that spread or confined them, the chapter explores how still-current thinking about what is now called science and about religion originated in Eurasia in the period concerned.
Renaissances, Reformations, and Mental Revolutions
Authors: Lucena-Giraldo Manuel
Published: June 2023

New, often violent encounters on Atlantic coasts and islands, where European explorers, slavers, and missionaries first experienced the shock of meeting previously undocumented and unreported peoples in the fourteenth century, launched a process of mutual adjustment and discovery in which more and more peoples took part, and which led most of them to the conclusion that ‘humankind is one’. From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, globalization occurred in slow, multidirectional phases, as different cultures became gradually acquainted and fitfully communicative. The worldwide mental revolutions of the early modern period happened only because of the emergence of vast frameworks of common understanding—at least at some level—and accepted codes of translation, in huge new spaces or arenas of communication, where ideas and institutions could incubate, reproduce, and deploy. Global empires supplied these prerequisites not so much by fomenting conflict as by forging community.
Connected by Emotions and Experiences
Authors: Singh Anjana
Published: June 2023

The chapter displays the extent of interconnections across the Afro-Eurasian world in early modern times. Port cities of Mediterranean Europe, Arabia, east coast Africa, west and east coast India, Southeast Asia and China were points of conjuncture—spaces for movements to start from and cross-cultural encounters to happen. Seas have almost always connected people. When knowledge of the earth and larger universe was limited and technology only allowed small concessions, environment, especially wind systems and natural harbours, dictated routes and timings. Empires were arenas of exchange. The irruption of European traders and freighters into the Indian Ocean made it possible for Westerners to exploit the economic opportunities of the East, while the appropriation of New World resources by European powers hugely improved Westerners’ access to wealth: to that extent, the rise of the West to global hegemony can be said to have started with the first establishment of Atlantic empires and trade routes in the sixteenth century.
Necessity
Authors: Stevens Robert
Published: June 2023

A number of different kinds of claim have been grouped together in support of a general principle that expenditure incurred in circumstances of necessity for another are recoverable. These include: the discharge of the obligations of another; the reciprocal duty to reimburse bailees compelled to incur expenditure on behalf of a bailor; general average; maritime salvage; and necessaries supplied to those incapable of contracting. When examined, the rules governing these disparate categories of case are quite different. These differences reflect the different underlying justifications for these different rules, which cannot be generalised so as to create a new unified category of claim.
Equity: General
Authors: Stevens Robert
Published: June 2023

Before it can be understood when constructive and resulting trusts arise, or why ‘tracing’ in Equity is possible, it is necessary to consider the nature of equitable property and equitable rights more generally. Equitable property rights can only be understood as rights in relation to other rights, rather than as rights in relation to things good against the rest of the world. The subject matter of a trust is always a right, never a physical thing, still less ‘value’. The necessary and sufficient condition for a trust to arise is that a rightholder is under a duty not to use a right for their own benefit. A universally recognised example is that of the vendor-purchaser constructive trust, but also explains more complex examples such as the Quistclose trust.
Equity: Restitution
Authors: Stevens Robert
Published: June 2023

Where the performance from plaintiff to defendant consists of the transfer of a right, if that right has been conveyed without justification, the defendant ought to reconvey that right. This gives rise to a trust over the right that ought to be reconveyed. Before such an obligation to reconvey can be imposed, however, it is a necessary condition that the defendant knows of the facts giving rise to the obligation to reconvey. After the acquisition of such knowledge, the defendant is potentially liable for ‘knowing receipt’. Once the basic conditions have been understood, it is possible to determine why and when it is possible to ‘trace’ in Equity and the meaning of and limits upon subrogation. The rules in Equity appear quite different from those applicable at common law. The reasons for these differences can only be understood once the different form of equitable rights are understood.
Improvements
Authors: Stevens Robert
Published: June 2023

The bona fide possessor of a thing who improves it, unaware of the prior title of another may justifiably be entitled to a title to the thing, which may be asserted against the party with prior title until reimbursed. In England, in relation to land, the law of improvements is generally dealt with through the doctrine of proprietary estoppel. This is unfortunate. Different senses of estoppel have become confused. First, a party may be estopped from asserting a fact, this is a rule of evidence. Second, a party may be estopped from asserting a right, which is the classic form of so-called ‘equitable estoppel’. Third, over recent decades ‘estoppel’ has become extended to become a freestanding cause of action. In this form, ‘estoppel’ is a misnomer. Claims of this form, where justifiable, in turn take two forms, either undertakings in relation to particular rights, or to reimburse the value of work done. The latter would be better seen as being claims for restitution, rather than as based upon an extended, and distorted, estoppel principle.
Wrongs
Authors: Stevens Robert
Published: June 2023

When, if ever, is a gain-based remedy for a wrong available? When and why is a gain-based award available for torts, breach of contract, or equitable wrongdoing? This requires careful consideration of the meanings of ‘wrong’, ‘loss’, ‘gain’, ‘general damages’, and ‘special damages.’ For most wrongs, the purpose of the primary duty does not include the prevention of gain being made by the party subject to the duty. As such, consequential gain is ordinarily ‘too remote’ to be recoverable. The limited group of cases when a gain-based response is appropriately available are those where the purpose of the protected right is to allocate a gain to the rightholder.
Damages
Authors: Stevens Robert
Published: June 2023

Damages are not always measured by reference to the counterfactual consequential loss suffered by the plaintiff. Sometimes an award is justifiably made for the wrong itself. This distinction is traditionally labelled as being that between special and general damages. For torts in relation to things, whether goods or land, general damages are usually measured by reference to the market value of the right infringed. Sometimes, however, there is no such market, and such a figure must be constructed. The best method for doing so is to construct a hypothetical market: what would a reasonable seller and buyer have agreed as a release fee. This quantification is unrelated to any actual gain that the defendant has made from the wrong committed. It does not follow however that such an award is properly available for all wrongs. In some cases no reasonable rightholder would agree to such a release fee, in others the purpose of the right is to protect against consequential loss, meaning that any award exceeding such loss in inappropriate. Damages in lieu of specific relief were introduced, and are still justifiable, in order to prevent multiplicity of actions. They are not justifiably quantified by reference to principles other than those applicable to damages generally.
Illegality
Authors: Stevens Robert
Published: June 2023

Illegality is not, or at least not just, a defence. Where a party to litigation seeks to rely upon their commission of an offence that is malum in se (murder, theft, bribery, etc) the court should refuse to lend them its assistance. Claims for restitution should not differ in this regard from any other. Courts should not order to be done that which the law prohibits. This includes the making of restitution. The effect of statutory regulation is, all the way down, a matter of the correct construction of the effect of the relevant legislation by the court. There is no sensible point at which the effect of ‘statutory illegality’ ends and a different set of rules governed by ‘common law illegality’ begins. The purpose of making the entering into or performance of a contract illegal will often point in favour of the reversal of any performance rendered. The most common case where it will not do so is where the illegality rule exists in order to protect the defendant. The extent to which English law now departs from these principles is uncertain. In some cases, the legislature’s purpose of making conduct illegal may justify restitution, and not merely operate as a defence.
Religion
Authors: Fletcher Stella
Published: June 2023

This chapter begins with those aspects of religious experience which were shared by the inhabitants of Christian Europe and ends with minority interests and experiences, whether in the elite or popular ranges of the social and cultural spectrum. The spirituality of the period is explored with reference to concepts of holiness and sanctity, including cults such as that of Mary, the choice of candidates for canonisation, and the understanding of contemporary events through the prism of religious belief. Liturgy was part of the lives of all Christians, so patterns of changes and continuity in worship are explored, which leads to a consideration of texts (including biblical scholarship), music, and architectural settings.
The Civilization of the Renaissance
Authors: Quiviger François
Published: June 2023

This chapter is a conceptual analysis of the Renaissance. It begins with a consideration of identity and individualism in Renaissance civilization, including a reassessment of the model proposed by Jacob Burckhardt. There is an analysis of the ways in which the people of early modern Europe experienced and ordered the world, particularly in fields such as medicine, philosophy, and religion. The clearest expressions of the tastes, ideas, aspirations, and pleasures of religious and political elites are to be found in the arts of the Renaissance and in social gatherings such as academies. Visual representations of women by male artists are seen as a prism through which subjects such as female spirituality and pornography can be understood. The arts of the banquet, which include silverware, casting, folding, table decoration, the sequence of courses, wine, and performing staff, are used to show how such activities can reflect the attitudes of participants and observers.
Art and Architecture in Italy and Beyond
Authors: Ames-Lewis Francis
Published: June 2023

This chapter explores the principle that underlies Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, that the central purpose of Italian Renaissance artists and architects was to reappraise or adapt the forms and motifs of classical antiquity with a view to constructing a new classical artistic language with which to create buildings and works of art. The first two sections focus on ways in which architects and artists responded to and re-evaluated the heritage of classical antiquity, the reasons for re-workings of classical forms, and the meanings and messages that these revisions of classical exemplars might have carried. In the section on architecture, attention is paid in particular to the ways that Renaissance architects adapted classical Roman building types to suit new expectations, and redeployed classical architectural language, notably the Orders, and to explore what they might imply about the cultural ambitions of their patrons. In the second section, discussion focuses on how the sculpture of classical antiquity was studied and reinterpreted, especially in artists’ treatment of the human figure as a paradigm of artistic exploration. The expansion of secular art to complement the continuum of religious art production leads to the further exploration of human figures as actors in works with secular narrative subjects, especially those based in classical mythology and history. The notion of man as individual is seen to underlie the dramatic rise of portraiture in the Renaissance.
The Renaissance of Science
Authors: Findlen Paula
Published: June 2023

This chapter considers how the evolution of scientific knowledge in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries laid the foundations for the landmark accomplishments of the mid-sixteenth century. The science taught in early modern universities was based on the logic, metaphysics, and natural philosophy of Aristotle, understood through the prism of the commentaries and translations of Averroes. The dislodging of Aristotle was accomplished by the recovery of Greek texts of works by figures such as Galen, Ptolemy, Plato, and Euclid. The dissemination of science was facilitated by the printing of both medieval and contemporary scientific works, including translations of Arabic and Hebrew texts. Developments in mathematics facilitated refinements in mapping and astronomy, and figures such as Mercator developed spherical geometry. Finally, in the early 1540s Copernicus’s On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, Vesalius’s On the Fabric of the Human Body, and Fuchs’s Notable Commentaries on the History of Plants offered a new understanding of nature.
Woman Much Missed
Authors: Ford Mark
Published: June 2023

This book explores the many poems that Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) wrote about his wife Emma Hardy (1840–1912). These poems were nearly all composed in the wake of her death. It opens with a detailed analysis of what poetry meant to Hardy, focusing on his concept of poetry as allied to romance and on his quest to portray in verse what he called ‘the other side of common emotions’. Subsequent chapters offer close readings of the poems inspired by his chance meeting with Emma in St Juliot in Cornwall in 1870, by their courtship on the Cornish coast, and by their famously unhappy marriage. Particular attention is paid to Hardy’s use of classical sources such as Virgil and Ovid and to his reconfiguration of the conventions of elegy. This book also reveals the extent to which various Hardy poems were inspired by his reading of Emma’s memoir, Some Recollections, and by her so-called Black Diaries, which contained bitter denunciations of both Hardy and his family. The ‘Poems of 1912–13’ sequence (published in 1914) contains many of Hardy’s best-known poems about Emma: Woman Much Missed offers fresh interpretations of these elegies, while also weaving them into accounts of the many other Emma-related poems in the Hardy corpus. It concludes with a consideration of his peculiar verse-play The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall (1923), which it reads as an attempt to incorporate into the poetic narrative of his life both Emma and his much younger second wife, Florence Hardy (1879–1937).
Interpretive Ghosts
Authors: Falasca-Zamponi Simonetta
Published: June 2023

Chapter 2 digs deep into ordinary diarists’ ideological and philosophical ambivalences. It analyzes the semantic challenges presented by the “enemy”—a label that diarists found hard to assign and that further confounded the issue of fascism’s historical responsibilities. Who was the enemy—the Germans, the Anglo-Americans, or the Italian fascists of the RSI? The chapter also argues that people’s difficulties at separating fascism from the “fatherland” steered attention away from two decades of Mussolini’s dictatorship, demonstrating the effectiveness of the regime’s ideological work in promoting patriotism and imperialism. Ultimately, diarists’ tendency to evaluate fascism by divorcing its objectives from actual results led to emphasizing fascism’s supposed ethical posture and purity of intentions against its inability to achieve those ideals. In this scenario, corruption came to play the role of justificatory trope. Admittedly, contemporary historical reality was an interpretive nightmare, and in poignant lines diarists voiced their incapacity to comprehend it. The ongoing civil war especially gave way to deep anguish. Particularly powerful are the stories of prisoners of war. Although caught in feelings of shame at the collapse of the Italian military, IMIs (Internati Militari Italiani) refused to collaborate with the “eternal enemy.”
The Diary as Alibi
Authors: Falasca-Zamponi Simonetta
Published: June 2023

Adding a comparative perspective to the diaries of ordinary Italians, the last two chapters consider thirteen journals authored by prominent national and local figures among Italian journalists, novelists, and politicians (referred to as “intellectual diarists”). Chapter 4 focuses on the sense of civic duty and the drive to bear witness that motivated a group of diarists to transform the private status of personal reflections into a potentially public record. How did the authors’ original determination to reach an audience and publish their diaries affect their ultimate products? Stylistic and compositional choices suggest that the journals of intellectual diarists became alibis in the literal sense of the word. The writer is “elsewhere”—a distant observer whose objective sensibility tends to bleed into neutrality, as if not involved. Though heterogeneous, these diarists took positions that exposed their political hybridity and connivance as, for example, when they attempted to artificially separate Italy from fascism and fascism from fascists. Similar incongruences also emerge from their reactions to the events of July, September, and October 1943. Like ordinary diarists, these practiced writers often sidelined fascism’s guilt, even if, differently from the former, they forcefully raised the issue of Italians’ responsibility in the regime.
Conclusions
Authors: Falasca-Zamponi Simonetta
Published: June 2023

The concluding chapter assesses the book’s evidence and arguments and weighs the question of the Italians’ failure to work through their fascist past. It reports on popular reactions to liberation and the war’s end while reiterating the importance of an analysis focused on people’s lived present. It also re-examines the constitutional ambivalence of the quotidian by linking Italians’ ideological instability to normal processes of daily experience and one’s historicity. And it addresses the normalization of fascism in contemporary Italy, thus posing the question: Should this re-emergence be considered an inevitable result of time passing or as rooted in misguided decisions made in the far past? Ultimately, taking into account the moral legacy of the Resistance and its recognition of Italy’s responsibility for generating the fascist phenomenon, the issue is: Did Italians realize fascism’s perniciousness? The answer to these queries has grave consequences for Italy’s democratic future.
The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission’s (ACCC) Digital Platforms Inquiry
Authors: Thomas Pradip Ninan
Published: June 2023

The Digital Platform Inquiry in Australia is an investigation into the behaviour of digital platforms in Australia. The 620-page report that was submitted to the Australian government in June 2019 includes 23 recommendations, the most radical being the attempt to force platforms to compensate content creators, in particular news media, both private and public media, for sharing third party content on their platforms. This chapter highlights some of the key recommendations highlighted in the report including the need for platform literacies in schools. The report also recommends the establishment of a Digital Platforms branch within the ACCC and supports ongoing investigations into the anti-competitive behaviours of Big Tech in Australia. The chapter also includes a section on privacy regulation in Australia and the difficulties in enforcing the Privacy Act.
Introduction
Authors: Budelmann Felix
Published: June 2023

The first part of the Introduction places the volume in its scholarly context within cognitive literary studies in general and cognitive approaches to Greek tragedy in particular, and maps the variety of approaches taken by the individual chapters. The second part tackles issues of methodology, not just for this volume but for cognitive literary studies in Classics more widely. Four questions are discussed: Do cognitively inflected studies of Greek tragedy, by drawing on research in the sciences, make claims to knowledge that differ from those in standard literary criticism? How can we best think about the interaction between universality and cultural (as well as individual) specificity in this type of work? Does cognitive criticism generate new readings? And can cognitive criticism give something back to cognitive science?
Middle Class Muslims in Mumbai
Authors: Patel-Banerjee Tanvi
Published: June 2023

Muslims in Mumbai are increasingly inhabiting the neoliberal workplaces and secularized higher educational spheres. They are fashioning a self that is in congruence with Islam, yet not dissonant with neoliberal realities. While their faith is put to the test of understanding and argument, there remains an overall commitment and allegiance to Islam. Cultivating and projecting a certain posture towards faith becomes a means of establishing class distinctions. It is in this context that this chapter theorizes three heuristic ideal types of engagement with faith in the lives of members of the new Muslim middle class in Mumbai. (1) The secularized-accommodative approach to faith imagines faith and religion not as a given, but as a terrain of possibilities, among which active choice and selection are conceivable. (2) Faith as scriptural-pietistic includes individuals for whom piety is a mode of self-improvement and a method of unravelling an ideal Islamic self, those who consciously avoid contexts and circumstances which are un-Islamic or in conflict with Islamic moral codes. (3) Those who practise an active-authenticated faith strive for an enlightened reading of Islamic texts made possible by their modern education which imparts the values of critical thought, verification, and analytical reasoning.
Strategic Roadside Shrines in High-Risk Zones
Authors: Laine Anna Charlotta
Published: June 2023

Roadside shrines are an ubiquitous feature of urban Indian streetscapes. Literature has focused on the contentious aspects of these shrines such as their illegal mushrooming on public land or their potentially instrumental role in a Hinduization process. The central objective of this chapter is to contribute towards a more nuanced discourse on roadside shrines. It does so by identifying various actions undertaken by shrine managers that are directed towards cohesion rather than conflict. As illustrative examples, the chapter presents three shrines dedicated to Sai Baba of Shirdi, located in areas of Mumbai where Muslim and Hindu communities live closely side by side. Through the study of these shrines, the chapter discusses three distinct ways in which Hindu roadside shrine managers exhibit religious sensitivity: discourse, discretion, and the organization of public events.
Movement and Place-Making
Authors: Robison Claire C.
Published: June 2023

Mumbai’s cosmopolitanism is reflected in the new forms of religious hybridity that flourish there, including those among conservative revivalist groups. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), as an organization based on Bengali Vaishnavism but developed in the US, straddles Mumbai’s complex identities. This chapter examines how ISKCON members blend local Hindu traditionalism with their transnational, multi-ethnic membership base to form a distinctively modern community. Drawing on Thomas Tweed, it situates the religious lives of ISKCON members as an ongoing exercise in crossing boundaries and dwelling in new spaces. ISKCON promotes a form of Hindu traditionalism linked to individual choice and strict orthopraxy, often grounded in a rejection of family and caste-based traditions in favour of a highly standardized Vaishnavism. While ISKCON’s Hindu and Jain members reframe their personal religious identities, they also seek to convince their families that this is a more authentic form of their collective religious heritage. Through ethnographic research among monastic and lay devotees, decisions about religious education, conversion, ritual practice, and family practices guide this study of how devotees are developing religious communities that both eschew secular city life and are grounded in the urban and transnational networks at the heart of urban modernity.
A Hole in the Wall
Authors: Elison William
Published: June 2023

This chapter discusses the work of Arun Kolatkar (1934–2004), a leading figure in the modernist group known loosely as the Bombay Poets. Born into a Brahmin family, Kolatkar wrote in both English and Marathi about both Mumbai and rural Maharashtra. His poetry moves beyond the conventional dichotomy of Mumbai as modern and the Maharashtrian deshi as traditional and sacred. Rather, this chapter argues, in seeking to penetrate façades—whether literal, as with walls of urban masonry, or figurative, as with the façade of piety assumed by temple priests—Kolatkar deploys insights about illusion and authenticity that seem irreverent but are ultimately rooted in Hindu thought. Revisiting the critiques that greeted the poet in his day of urban elitism and alienation, the argument moves on to engage current debate around Kolatkar’s complex positionality—at once bilingual, postcolonial, and spiritual.
Introduction
Authors: Sedgwick Sally
Published: June 2023

In the Introduction to this work, the author lays out its central theses and objectives. The main aim is to specify the extent to which we can accurately attribute to Hegel the view that human reason and the freedom it affords us are indebted for their nature to this temporal order of nature and history. The Introduction includes, in addition, brief summaries of the individual chapters.
History and Human Finitude
Authors: Sedgwick Sally
Published: June 2023

This chapter compares the Kantian and Hegelian approaches to world history in order to identify some distinctively non-Kantian features of Hegel’s conception of freedom and its laws. Kant insists upon the a priori status of his idea of the purposive development of world history; his idea, he tells us, is a product of pure reason. Kant’s philosophy of history is at the same time deeply attentive to the reality of human finitude, that is, to the limits that constrain us in our efforts to know and act. The author argues that Hegel’s appreciation of the extent of our finitude goes a step further, and that this can be explained with reference to the way in which he discovers finitude in human reason itself.
Thought’s Temporality
Authors: Sedgwick Sally
Published: June 2023

In this chapter, the author considers the centrality of temporality not just for Hegel’s philosophy of Spirit but for his overall system. The author argues that it is not just Spirit that for Hegel is indebted for its content to the temporally ordered comings and goings of this actual world; this is the case for all our thought as well. The central argument is that unless we grant the respect in which human thought is for Hegel temporally conditioned, we are at a loss to explain: (i) his view of freedom as anchored in nature but also transformative; (ii) his commitment to the assumption that we indeed can know the ways of fate or providence; and (iii) his insistence upon the “actuality” of what is “rational”.
Does the Badness of Disability Differ from that of Old Age?
Authors: Lippert-Rasmussen Kasper
Published: June 2023

This chapter compares age discrimination and disability discrimination. It asks whether, if we are inclined to accept the view that the disadvantages of disability are largely caused by an ableist social environment, we should also accept the view that the disadvantages of old age are largely caused by an ageist social environment. The chapter argues that the view that ageist social environments are primarily responsible for the disadvantages of old age should be rejected. Therefore, we should also reject the view that ableist social environments are primarily responsible for the disadvantages of disability. Yet, while insisting that our views on disability constrain those we adopt on age, the chapter also stresses that we should not overstate the importance of the distinction between medical and social causes of the disadvantages associated with disability. Rather, we should pay more attention to the specific ways old age and disability cause disadvantage instead of trying to defend broad generalizations about what family of causes predominates.
Age and the Social Value of Risk Reduction
Authors: Adler Matthew D.
Published: June 2023

This chapter compares three frameworks of policy analysis from the perspective of fatality risk reduction for different age groups. Do they imply that the value of risk reduction depends on age—and how do they relate age to other factors? The three frameworks are utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and cost–benefit analysis. The chapter finds that the utilitarian value of risk reduction decreases with age but increases with income. The prioritarian value decreases even more sharply with age, but prioritarianism can neutralize the effect of income. The cost-benefit value of risk reduction increases with income even more sharply than the utilitarian value, while it first increases and then decreases with increasing age. None of the frameworks, therefore, are neutral with respect to age.
Can Egalitarians Justify Spending More on the Elderly?
Authors: Bou-Habib Paul
Published: June 2023

Modern welfare states devote a disproportionate amount of their budget to the needs of the elderly. This raises a puzzle for egalitarians: people who reach old age are often, on the whole, more fortunate than those who don’t because they have enjoyed a longer life. In devoting disproportionate expenditure towards their needs, the welfare state thus appears to be privileging the needs of those who are more fortunate than others. This chapter examines the response to this puzzle provided by relational egalitarians who justify disproportionate expenditure on the elderly on the grounds that it is necessary to protect them against domination and marginalization, among other forms of mistreatment. But it argues that the relational egalitarian response does not solve the puzzle. The chapter proposes a different solution based on the claims that suffering is intrinsically bad and should be prevented and that disproportionate expenditure on the needs of the elderly is a form of insurance that all people would have purchased under fair circumstances.
Age Limits and the Significance of Entire Lives Egalitarianism
Authors: Gosseries Axel
Published: June 2023

This chapter examines the claim that principles of distributive justice should be applied to whole lives—that is, to determine what we owe to people as a matter of fair distribution, we need to consider how they fare during their entire lives. The chapter provides an overview of the entire-life view and explores its possible underlying intuitions. It separates a defensive version of the view (which argues that some age limits are not objectionable) from an affirmative one (which argues that some age limits are, in fact, desirable). It concludes that while age limits tend to provide one of the best illustrations of the practical relevance of the ‘entire-life’ debate, the latter does not necessarily offer us insights that are as significant as expected to defend age limits over their whole range.
‘Let Them Be Children?’
Authors: Gheaus Anca
Published: June 2023

This chapter explains alternative views about the nature and value of childhood, and how particular conceptions of childhood matter to children’s voting rights. It does not defend any particular view on this matter; rather, it explains how recent accounts of what is uniquely good or bad about being a child bear on arguments for and against enfranchising children. The chapter also explains why children who live in a society in which many adults fail to comply with their duties of intergenerational justice have a weightier interest in voting and, hence, why the case for children’s enfranchisement is stronger in such cases.
COVID-19, Age, and Rationing
Authors: Bognar Greg
Published: June 2023

During the COVID-19 pandemic, some hospitals found themselves short of ventilators, intensive care unit (ICU) beds, and qualified medical personnel to take care of patients. Physicians had to make difficult, life-and-death choices. They were aided by various guidelines and recommendations, issued by governments and medical associations. This chapter reviews some of these guidelines, looking in particular at the role of age and life expectancy as criteria for the rationing of healthcare resources. It defends the view that the ethical aim of triage should be to maximize benefits and concludes that while neither age nor life expectancy should be used to categorically exclude patients, both may have a role in triage by virtue of their connection to capacity to benefit.
An Age-Based Delayed Housing Wealth Tax
Authors: Halliday Daniel
Published: June 2023

Popular narratives around intergenerational inequality suggest that young people are subsidizing older people in spite of enjoying poorer economic prospects. One more specific concern is that older and younger birth cohorts are unequally situated with respect to the distribution of housing wealth as well as the distribution of the tax burden. This chapter develops and defends a proposal for a delayed housing wealth tax. Once homeowners reach a certain age, they are charged some portion of their home’s value, on an annual basis, which will eventually be paid to the tax office upon the death of the surviving spouse. The delayed housing wealth tax compares favourably with alternatives such as inheritance taxation.
Walter Lippmann
Authors: Edwards Mark Thomas
Published: June 2023

Walter Lippmann was the most recognized political journalist of the twentieth century. His “Today and Tomorrow” columns attracted a global readership of over ten million daily. Lippmann was the author of numerous best-selling books, and his Public Opinion (1922) remains a classic text within American political philosophy and media studies. Befriended by U.S. presidents and by America’s rivals around the world, Lippmann became one of democracy’s most faithful proponents and harshest critics. Yet few people have encountered the “real” Walter Lippmann. His extensive commentary on politics and foreign affairs was bounded by his sense that America had to adjust to the loss of a common faith and morality. Over the course of his life, Lippmann traded in his fame as a happy secularist for the stardom of a grumpy Western “post-Christian” intellectual. Yet he never committed himself to any religious system, especially his own Jewish heritage. This book is an examination of Lippmann’s eclectic spiritual development hiding in plain sight of his massive volume of writings and correspondence. It forefronts Lippmann’s paradoxical critique and embrace of Christian nationalism. It also yields fresh insights into the religious and philosophical origins of strong-state American liberalism, including liberalism’s shortcomings in the areas of sex, race, and class. For Lippmann, the good life in the good society was lived in irreconcilable tension: the struggle to be free from yet loyal to a way of life; to see the dangers but necessity of a civil religion; and to strive for a just and enduring world order that can never be.
The Theologian, 1913–1930
Authors: Edwards Mark Thomas
Published: June 2023

Chapter 2 examines the religions within Lippmann’s early writings, correspondence, and relationships between 1913 and 1930. It begins with an extended examination of Lippmann’s best seller, A Preface to Morals (1929). The chapter then tracks the long origin story of that foundational Lippmann text. It looks at the happy secularism of his first books, essays, and work at the New York World as well as his ambivalent secularism during the Scopes trial and Fundamentalist–Modernist controversies. Lippmann’s place within the shifting religious and moral landscapes of the late-1920s and early-1930s is considered in conclusion, including his connections to Protestantism and Catholicism.
The Priest, 1913–1930
Authors: Edwards Mark Thomas
Published: June 2023

The years 1913 to 1930 are reconsidered in Chapter 3, but with an eye to Lippmann’s military service and political thought. The chapter opens with a new reading of Lippmann’s Public Opinion (1922). The point is to recognize that Lippmann’s religious and philosophical outlook was interdependent with his political and diplomatic counsel. That mutuality was evident amidst his transition from socialism to liberalism in his first books and work for the New Republic. Lippmann’s career in military intelligence during World War I, including The Inquiry thinktank, is examined next. Lippmann seemed to sour on democracy during the 1920s, but he was more nuanced than that, as was seen in his relationship with John Dewey. The chapter closes with an extended look at Lippmann’s views on civil rights, women, immigration, and anti-Semitism.
The Evangelist, 1930–1939
Authors: Edwards Mark Thomas
Published: June 2023

Chapter 4 examines Lippmann’s response to the Great Depression and the New Deal. It looks at Lippmann’s agreements and differences with Franklin Roosevelt as well as his general endorsement and specific critiques of the New Deal reform program. Lippmann’s fervent embrace of Keynesian economics is highlighted. So is his marital affair, ending in divorce and remarriage, and his support for the Republican Party, both of which seemed to embolden him in fresh ways. The chapter concludes with a study of Lippmann’s misunderstood manifesto, The Good Society (1937), and the start of his “Catholic phase.” Lippmann never converted to Christianity, as was rumored during these years, but he did begin to traffic heavily in the natural law argumentation of many religious leaders.
Children and Gender
Authors: Giordano Simona
Published: June 2023

This book investigates the moral concerns raised by current clinical options available for transgender and gender diverse children and adolescents. From the time young children express gender incongruent preferences and attitudes, up to the time in which older adolescents might apply for medical or surgical treatment, moral questions are likely to be asked: should children be enabled to express themselves freely inside and outside the domestic environment? What are the implications of the choices that parents might make early on? How should clinicians respond to distress around sexual anatomy? Is it ethical to suspend pubertal development? What level of evidence should we seek for medications to be used in paediatric care? What are the risks and benefits of various forms of hormonal treatment? Is it ethical to defer surgical interventions till adulthood? The book provides a detailed ethical analysis of these and many other questions that are likely to arise at various stages of a person’s life and proposes a moral formula to answer these questions, as well as others, that are likely to arise in a fast-changing landscape. It combines a detailed ethical analysis with an accurate clinical description of gender development and available clinical pathways.
Gender Incongruence as a Condition Related to Sexual Health
Authors: Giordano Simona
Published: June 2023

The World Health Organisation has removed gender incongruence from the list of mental disorders, and included it in a new category named ‘Conditions Relating to Sexual Health’. This chapter discusses some of the ethical issues surrounding the nosology and nomenclature around gender incongruence. Whereas the shift away from mental disorders is to be welcomed, the term incongruence might cloud the complexities in sex and gender development. Moreover, the new classification may cause confusion in the legal understanding of gender identity as requiring a ‘congruent’ genital morphology. The new diagnostic manual should clinically set out that gender identity exists far beyond the sphere of sexual health and is not primarily a sexual health problem that can or should be fixed by altering the sexual organs. Medical treatment would be based upon experienced individual identity and need, rather than presumptive prognosis.
The Early Stages of Clinical Management
Authors: Giordano Simona
Published: June 2023

The first stage of clinical management of gender incongruence and dysphoria in childhood (prepubertal years) involves the decision about how to respond to a child’s gender expression. There are three main models of care: live in your skin, watch and wait, and affirmative approaches. Enabling a child to express their gender is sometimes referred to as ‘social transition’, which can be partial (at home) or full (outside home). One concern around social transition is that enabling a child to affirm their gender, particularly outside the home environment, might inhibit, rather than facilitate, a child’s gender identity development. Particularly in light of high desistance rates, it has been argued that parents should be careful in implementing drastic social measures, given that the psychosexual trajectory of young children can be flexible till puberty and sometimes after that. This chapter unpacks the various reasons why social transition in early childhood is controversial and proposes how desistance rates should inform decisions relating to social transition.
Is It Ethical to Use Puberty Blockers in the Treatment of Gender Dysphoria?
Authors: Giordano Simona
Published: June 2023

This chapter draws some normative conclusions from the analysis performed in the previous chapters. Although this chapter focuses specifically on puberty blockers, the arguments apply to other stages of medical treatment. This chapter suggests that we have moral reason to prefer preventing current harm than only potential future harm: the current is real, and the future is only speculative. This general moral ‘formula’ needs to take in consideration the magnitude and likelihood of harm. This chapter examines the possible complexities involved in evaluating benefits and risks, present and future, in the three dimensions that compose gender identity (intrapsychic, physical, and social). It also suggests that the idea that delaying treatment is a way of being cautious is misplaced, and is based on ‘omission bias’. Not only there is nothing inherently unethical with prescribing blockers: it may be unethical not to prescribe them.
Conclusion
Authors: Giordano Simona
Published: June 2023

This book has addressed the ethical concerns that surround various stages of clinical care; some arise with very young children, and some arise with older adolescents; some of these concerns are about how to respond to a child’s expression, and some are about what medical treatment can be ethically provided and when, and with what safeguarding mechanisms. This chapter considers new emerging trends, such as the increases in referral rates, the changes in sex-ratio, the increased prevalence of gender incongruence among neurodiverse children, the increasing demands of long-term puberty suppression by non-binary youth. It will explain what the ethical issues are, in regard to these emerging trends, and offer a way of thinking about how to address and resolve these.