The Stoic Idea of the City offers the first systematic analysis of the Stoic school, concentrating on Zeno's Republic . Renowned classical scholar Malcolm Schofield brings together scattered and underused textual evidence, examining the Stoic ideals that initiated the natural law tradition of Western political thought. A new foreword by Martha Nussbaum and a new epilogue written by the author further secure this text as the standard work on Presocratic Stoics. "The account emerges from a jigsaw-puzzle of items from a (...) wide range of authorities, painstakingly pieced together and then annotated in a series of appendixes, the whole executed with fine scholarship, clarity, and good humor."-- Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

That we owe duties to others is a commonplace, the subject of countless philosophical treatises and monographs. Morality is interpersonal and other-directed, many claim. But what of what we owe ourselves? In Duty to Self, Paul Schofield flips the paradigm of interpersonal morality by arguing that there are moral duties we owe ourselves, and that in light of this, philosophers need to significantly rethink many of their views about practical reason, moral psychology, politics, and moral emotions. -/- Among these views (...) is the idea that divisions within a person's life enable her to relate to herself second-personally--that is, as though she were relating to a distinct other person--in the way required by morality. Further, there exist political duties owed to the self, which the state may coerce persons to perform. This amounts to a novel argument for paternalistic law, which appeals to considerations of right, justice, and freedom in order to justify coercing a person for their own sake--a liberal justification for an idea typically thought to be deeply at odds with liberalism. -/- Schofield untangles how this view would impact various issues in applied ethics and political philosophy, for example, financial prudence and risk, the pursuit of the good life, and medical ethics. Duty to Self is essential for anyone working in moral and political philosophy or political theory. (shrink)

Plato is the best known and most widely studied of all the ancient Greek philosophers. Malcolm Schofield, a leading scholar of ancient philosophy, offers a lucid and accessible guide to Plato's political thought, enormously influential and much discussed in the modern world as well as the ancient. Schofield discusses Plato's ideas on education, democracy and its shortcomings, the role of knowledge in government, utopia and the idea of community, money and its grip on the psyche, and ideological uses of religion.

In this paper, I appeal to the notion of practical identity in order to defend the possibility of synchronic duties to the self—that is, self-directed duties focused on one's present self as opposed to one's future self. While many dismiss the idea of self-directed duties, I show that a person may be morally required to act in ways that advance her present interests and autonomy by virtue of her occupying multiple practical identities at a single moment.

BackgroundDespite its ubiquity in academic research, the phrase ‘ethical challenge(s)’ appears to lack an agreed definition. A lack of a definition risks introducing confusion or avoidable bias. Conceptual clarity is a key component of research, both theoretical and empirical. Using a rapid review methodology, we sought to review definitions of ‘ethical challenge(s)’ and closely related terms as used in current healthcare research literature.MethodsRapid review to identify peer-reviewed reports examining ‘ethical challenge(s)’ in any context, extracting data on definitions of ‘ethical challenge(s)’ (...) in use, and synonymous use of closely related terms in the general manuscript text. Data were analysed using content analysis. Four databases (MEDLINE, Philosopher’s Index, EMBASE, CINAHL) were searched from April 2016 to April 2021.Results393 records were screened, with 72 studies eligible and included: 53 empirical studies, 17 structured reviews and 2 review protocols. 12/72 (17%) contained an explicit definition of ‘ethical challenge(s), two of which were shared, resulting in 11 unique definitions. Within these 11 definitions, four approaches were identified: definition through concepts; reference to moral conflict, moral uncertainty or difficult choices; definition by participants; and challenges linked to emotional or moral distress. Each definition contained one or more of these approaches, but none contained all four. 68/72 (94%) included studies used terms closely related to synonymously refer to ‘ethical challenge(s)’ within their manuscript text, with 32 different terms identified and between one and eight different terms mentioned per study.ConclusionsOnly 12/72 studies contained an explicit definition of ‘ethical challenge(s)’, with significant variety in scope and complexity. This variation risks confusion and biasing data analysis and results, reducing confidence in research findings. Further work on establishing acceptable definitional content is needed to inform future bioethics research. (shrink)

This book traces the intellectual revolution initiated by Thales in the sixth century BC to its culmination in the metaphysics of Parmenides.

A full account of the philosophy of the Greek and Roman worlds from the last days of Aristotle until 100 BC. Hellenistic philosophy, for long relatively neglected and unappreciated, has over the last decade been the object of a considerable amount of scholarly attention. Now available in paperback, this 1999 volume is a general reference work which pulls the subject together and presents an overview. The History is organised by subject, rather than chronologically or by philosophical school, with sections on (...) logic, epistemology, physics and metaphysics, ethics and politics. It has been written by specialists but is intended to be a source of reference for any student of ancient philosophy, for students of classical antiquity and for students of the philosophy of later periods. Greek and Latin are used sparingly and always translated in the main text. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers generally ignore the topic of duties to the self. I contend that they are mistaken to do so. The question of whether there are such duties, I argue, is of genuine significance when constructing theories of practical reasoning and moral psychology. In this essay, I show that much of the potential importance of duties to the self stems from what has been called the “second-personal” character of moral duties—the fact that the performance of a duty is “owed to” (...) someone. But this is problematic, as there is reason to doubt whether a person can genuinely owe to herself the performance of an action. Responding to this worry, I show that temporal divisions within an agent's life enable her to relate to herself second-personally, in the way required by morality. The upshots, I argue, are that we need an intra-personal theory of justice that specifies the extent of a person's authority over herself, and that we need to rethink our theories of moral emotions in order to specify how an individual ought to respond to attacks on her interests and autonomy that she herself perpetrates. (shrink)

This book offers an innovative account of Cicero's treatment of key political ideas: liberty and equality, government, law, cosmopolitanism and imperialism, republican virtues, and ethical decision-making in politics. Cicero, a major figure in Roman politics, was the first to articulate a philosophical rationale for republicanism.

Plato is a philosophical writer of unusual and impressive versatility. His dialogues not only engage in argument but also abound in allegory, myth and paradox, with clearly characterised participants set against a particular historical context. This engrossing book shows how Plato's literary qualities are crucial to understanding his philosophy.

In this first full historical account of the political thought of Jeremy Bentham, Philip Schofield shows how Bentham's insights in the fields of logic and language led to the first defence of democracy from a utilitarian perspective, and to the creation of the philosophic radicals, dedicated to political, legal, ecclesiastical, and social reform.

THE PROTAGONISTS David Sedley The primary object of this historical introduction1 is to enable a reader encountering Hellenistic philosophy for the first ...

v. 1. Science.--v. 2. Ethics and politics.--v. 3. Metaphysics.--v. 4. Psychology & aesthetics.

Robert Schofield explores the rational elements of British experimental natural philosophy in the 18th century by tracing the influence of two opposing concepts of the nature of matter and its action—mechanism and materialism. Both concepts rested on the Newtonian interpretation of their proponents, although each developed more or less independently. By integrating the developments in all the areas of experimental natural philosophy, describing their connections and the influences of Continental science, natural theology, and to a lesser degree social and institutional (...) changes, the author demonstrates that mechanistic concepts dominated interpretations from about 1687 to 1740, when they were replaced by materialistic concepts. A revival of the mechanistic approach early in the next century made England a fertile field for ideas on the dynamic interaction of forces. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Saving the City provides a detailed analysis of the attempts of ancient writers and thinkers, from Homer to Cicero, to construct and recommend political ideals of statesmanship and ruling, of the political community and of how it should be founded in justice. Also, Malcolm Schofield debates to what extent the Greeks and Romans deal with the same issues as modern political thinkers.

Typically, we think of republicans and liberals as being suspicious of paternalistic law. But in this paper, I argue that enactment of paternalistic law is actually demanded by republican and liberal values, and that enacting certain paternalistic laws is one way that the republican or liberal state performs its core function. As I explain it, this core function is to create and to maintain conditions of right-conditions of freedom, non-domination, justice, etc.-among persons capable of making legitimate second-personal claims on one (...) another. I argue, though, that individual persons are capable of making legitimate second-personal claims on themselves, in precisely the way that calls for state intervention. In other words, I argue that paternalistic law is demanded by considerations of right. (shrink)

SUMMARYJeremy Bentham has two very strong commitments in his thought: one is to the principle of utility, or the greatest happiness principle, as the fundamental principle of morality; the other is to truth, as indicated, for instance, in his opposition to falsehood and fiction in the law. How, then, did Bentham view the relationship between utility and truth? Did he think that utility and truth simply coincided, and hence that falsehood necessarily led to a diminution in happiness, and conversely truth (...) led to an increase in happiness? This article addresses this issue through two bodies of material: the first consists of Bentham's writings on religion under the heading of ‘Juggernaut’ and dating from 1811 to 1821; the second consists of the writings on judicial evidence dating from 1803 to 1812 and which appeared in Rationale of Judicial Evidence. (shrink)

We read with interest the extended essay published from Riisfeldt and are encouraged by an empirical ethics article which attempts to ground theory and its claims in the real world. However, such attempts also have real-world consequences. We are concerned to read the paper’s conclusion that clinical evidence weakens the distinction between euthanasia and normal palliative care prescribing. This is important. Globally, the most significant barrier to adequate symptom control in people with life-limiting illness is poor access to opioid analgesia. (...) Opiophobia makes clinicians reluctant to prescribe and their patients reluctant to take opioids that might provide significant improvements in quality of life. We argue that the evidence base for the safety of opioid prescribing is broader than that presented, restricting the search to palliative care literature produces significant bias as safety experience and literature for opioids and sedatives exists in many fields. This is not acknowledged in the synthesis presented. By considering additional evidence, we reject the need for agnosticism and reaffirm that palliative opioid prescribing is safe. Second, palliative sedation in a clinical context is a poorly defined concept covering multiple interventions and treatment intentions. We detail these and show that continuous deep palliative sedation is a specific practice that remains controversial globally and is not considered routine practice. Rejecting agnosticism towards opioids and excluding CDPS from the definition of routine care allows the rejection of Riisfeldt’s headline conclusion. On these grounds, we reaffirm the important distinction between palliative care prescribing and euthanasia in practice. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It is often argued that, because she would always be in the position to waive it, a person cannot owe a duty to herself. In a recent AJP article, Janis David Schaab argues that a person can owe a duty to herself even if it can be waived, thus rendering unwarranted a scepticism about such duties, as well as efforts to show that they are unwaivable. Here I argue that, for all that Schaab says, waivability continues to threaten the (...) very possibility of duties to self. As such, scepticism about their existence remains justified, as do attempts to vindicate them by demonstrating that they cannot be waived. (shrink)

SCHOFIELD I, TOLSON D and FLEMING V. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 165–176 [Epub ahead of print]How nurses understand and care for older people with delirium in the acute hospital: a Critical Discourse AnalysisDelirium is a common presentation of deteriorating health in older people. It is potentially deleterious in terms of patient experience and clinical outcomes. Much of what is known about delirium is through positivist research, which forms the evidence base for disease‐based classification systems and clinical guidelines. There is little (...) systematic study of nurses’ day‐to‐day practice of nursing patients with delirium. The aim was to uncover the kinds of knowledge that informs nurses’ care and to explicate the basis of that knowledge. Critical Discourse Analysis is underpinned by the premise that powerful interests within society mediate how social practices are constructed. Links were made between the grammatical and lexical features of nurses’ language about care in interviews and naturalistic settings, and the healthcare context. Care focused on the continuous surveillance of patients with delirium by nurses themselves or vicariously through other patients, and containment. Nurses influenced by major discourses of risk reduction and safety, constructed patients with delirium as risk objects. The philosophy of person‐centred and dignified care advocated in nursing literature and government policy is an emerging discourse, though little evident in the data. The current dominant discourses on safety must give space to discourses of dignity and compassion. (shrink)

This book, first published in 2000, is a general and comprehensive treatment of the political thought of ancient Greece and Rome. It begins with Homer and ends in late antiquity with Christian and pagan reflections on divine and human order. In between come studies of Plato, Aristotle and a host of other major and minor thinkers - poets, historians, philosophers - whose individuality is brought out by extensive quotation. The international team of distinguished scholars assembled by the editors includes historians (...) of law, politics, culture and religion, and also philosophers. Some chapters focus mostly on the ancient context of the ideas they are examining, while others explore these ideas as systems of thought which resonate with modern or perennial concerns. This clearly written volume will long remain an accessible and authoritative guide to Greek and Roman thinking about government and community. (shrink)

Can moral philosophy alter our moral beliefs or our emotions? Does moral scepticism mean making up our own values, or does it leave us without moral commitments at all? Is it possible to find a basis for ethics in human nature? These are some of the main questions explored in this volume, which is devoted to the ethics of the Hellenistic schools of philosophy. Some of the leading scholars in the field have here taken a look at the bases of (...) the Stoics' and Epicureans' thinking about what the Greeks took to be the central questions of philosophy. Their essays, which originated in a conference held at Bad Homburg in 1983, the third in a series of conferences on Hellenistic philosophy, propose important interpretations of the texts, and pose some fascinating problems about the different roles of argument and reason in ancient and modern moral philosophy. This book will be of interest to moral philosophers and to scholars of Greek philosophy too. (shrink)

Gilbertson et al present a considered analysis of the abstract problem of ‘sedation’ at the end of life,1 and it is reassuring to see the separation of multiple practises that are often grouped under the heading terminal sedation. In their work, the authors attempt to introduce and justify a new practice in the care of those dying with significant suffering—expanded terminal sedation (ETS). This analysis will not, however, help our colleagues at the bedside. Here, we will focus on the flaws (...) which are most relevant to clinicians: jurisdiction, uncertainty and reversibility. The authors’ focus on a jurisdiction that does already allow medically assisted in dying confuses their analysis. For example, either an instance of their proposed ETS does amount to intentionally hastening death, in which case it should be treated as a means of euthanasia and practised only where that is permitted, subject to its limits and regulations; or it does not amount to intentionally hastening death, in which case there is no reason to specify such jurisdictions. To explain that the most controversial elements of terminal sedation have been tacitly ‘accepted’ by the society in question does not invalidate the concerns. It is beyond the scope of this response to explore these, but to us, …. (shrink)

The purpose of this work is to critically assess Errol E. Harris’s process philosophy in the face of contemporary research in the special sciences. Harris devoted his life to grappling with the big questions concerning the relationships between nature, mind, and knowledge. His 70-plus year career was distinguished, his texts on the history of philosophy, philosophy of science, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and consciousness were widely published, and yet his metaphysics has until now remained excluded from mainstream discussions. This (...) book’s contention is that Harris’s work reveals as yet unnoticed connections between theories in numerous scientific disciplines ranging from psychology to cosmology and that an examination of certain theories within these disciplines may serve to strengthen his original arguments. This work maintains that the resulting metaphysics frames a transdisciplinary paradigm shift and provides a viable solution to the hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)

The word euboulia, which means excellence in counsel or sound judgement, occurs in only three places in the authentic writings of Plato. The sophist Protagoras makes euboulia the focus of his whole enterprise : What I teach a person is good judgement about his own affairs — how best he may manage his own household; and about the affairs of the city — how he may be most able to handle the business of the city both in action and in (...) speech. Thrasymachus, too, thinks well of euboulia. Invited by Socrates to call injustice kakoetheia ’, i.e. as simple-mindedness), he declines the sophistry and says : ‘No, I call it good judgement’. But Plato finds little occasion to introduce the concept in developing his own ethical and political philosophy. The one place where he mentions euboulia is in his defence of the thesis that his ideal city possesses the four cardinal virtues. He begins with wisdom, and justifies the ascription of wisdom to the city on the ground that it has euboulia — which he goes on to identify with the knowledge required by the guardians: ‘with this a person does not deliberate on behalf of any of the elements in the city, but for the whole city itself — how it may best have dealings with itself and with the other cities’ . It is normally rather dangerous to draw an inference from the absence or rarity of a word to the absence or rarity of the idea expressed by the word. (shrink)

The Cambridge Histories of philosophy, extending from Thales to the seventeenth century, are not a formal series. Nevertheless, they have a distinctive character: authoritative accounts that combine general coverage of a period with the individual contributions of their authors and indicate scholarly controversies. This volume is a worthy continuation of the tradition.

Le débat sur la confrontation entre Socrate et Calliclès dans le Gorgias s’est principalement concentré sur ses deux premières étapes : l’exposé par Calliclès de ses thèses et leur tentative de réfutation par Socrate (481-500), ainsi que ses tentatives subséquentes de leur substituer sa propre conception de la vie bonne (501-509). On a accordé beaucoup moins d’attention à la dernière étape (509-522). C’est pourtant celle dans laquelle Platon met en scène la discussion la plus soutenue du dialogue entre les réponses (...) concurrentes (et leurs conséquences) à ce qu’on a montré être sa question centrale : le plus grand mal est-il de commettre l’injustice ou d’en être victime? Cet article examine en détail les étapes clefs de ce débat, auquel Calliclès est à nouveau invité à participer par Socrate, après qu’il a refusé de continuer à mi-chemin de la seconde phase du parcours dialectique. La thèse défendue est que le but de Platon dans cette dernière section est de montrer exactement pourquoi et comment Socrate peut entamer et poursuivre avec succès une confrontation intellectuelle avec un jeune politicien intelligent, désireux de réussir sa carrière dans la démocratie athénienne, tel qu’a été décrit Calliclès. Il échoue à le convaincre. Mais contrairement à ce qui est parfois supposé, cela n’a rien d’un échec en termes de communication intellectuelle ; la question est de savoir plutôt quels engagements fondamentaux différents Platon cherche à nous faire distinguer. (shrink)

The essays in this volume were written to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of G. E. L. Owen, who by his essays and seminars on ancient Greek philosophy has made a contribution to its study that is second to none.

In this paper I argue that the stretch of dialogue from 385 b 2–d 1 in the Cratylus does not belong where it is found in the MSS. , but fits rather between 387 c 5 and 387 c 6. I suggest further that at any rate my negative thesis receives some measure of support from the fragments of Proclus' commentary on the dialogue.

The current scandal surrounds the global breast implant scare of silicone implants made by France's Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) Company. An ensuing review recognized that efforts in investigating the distress caused to so many women were hampered by a lack of reliable and comprehensive information about all the adverse incidents relating to PIP breast implants, as well as uncertainty about comparative data on similar products. One of the recommendations following the review was the investigation of the potential for re-establishing a (...) breast implant registry, which could facilitate the availability of adverse incident reporting in cases such as these. The insistence of compulsory inclusion in such registries would override the debate on informed consent in epidemiological studies and public health. The ethics of clinical research with its focus on individual consent is difficult to reconcile with the ethical requirements of research at a population level as in the case of registries. (shrink)

Traditionally clinicians have determined their patients' resuscitation status without consultation. This has been condemned as morally indefensible in cases where not for resuscitation (NFR) orders are based on quality of life considerations and when the patient's true wishes are not known. Such instances would encompass most resuscitation decisions in elderly patients. Having previously involved patients in CPR decision-making, we chose formally to explore the reasons behind the choices made. Although the patients were not upset, and readily decided at the time (...) of initial consultation, on later analysing the decision-making we found poor understanding of the procedure, poor recall of information given and in some cases evidence of harm. This may be attributed to impaired decision-making capacity of elderly hospitalised patients as previously shown, or to the discomfort precipitated by having to contemplate the apparent immediacy of cardiac arrest by these patients. We propose that subscribing to autonomy as a general principle needs to be balanced against particular cases where distress may be caused by, or result in, diminished competence and limited autonomy. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the stretch of dialogue from 385 b 2–d 1 in the Cratylus does not belong where it is found in the MSS., but fits rather between 387 c 5 and 387 c 6. I suggest further that at any rate my negative thesis receives some measure of support from the fragments of Proclus' commentary on the dialogue.

The relation between the opening section of Plato’s Laws and Xenophon’s Constitution of the Lacedaemonians usually goes unnoticed. This paper draws attention to its importance for understanding Plato’s project in the dialogue. It has three sections. In the first, it will be shown that the view proposed by Plato’s Athenian visitor that Lycurgus made virtue in its entirety the goal of his statecraft was anticipated in Xenophon’s treatise. It has to be treated as an interpretation of the Spartan politeia, alternative (...) to that advanced by Cleinias and Megillus, and accepted by Aristotle, which Plato could expect or at any rate hope to be taken seriously as such. In the second, the argument will focus on the contents of the legislative programme the Athenian says he had hoped to hear Cleinias ascribe to the Cretan and Spartan lawgivers. The case will be made that Plato can expect recognition by the reader that the programme is properly Spartan and Cretan by virtue of its echoes of the programme attributed to Lycurgus by Xenophon. Finally, the third section will argue that in making law primarily concerned with fostering the proper development, conduct, and treatment of human beings at every stage of the life cycle, above all by provision for sound customary practices and the like, Plato adopts the approach to law making taken by Xenophon’s Lycurgus. (shrink)