Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

This article unravels the careful encodings contained in the final sentence, the sphragis, of Longus’ novel Daphnis and Chloe. Building on previous studies on the ending, I delve more deeply into each of the key terms included in the final sentence and argue for the presence of New Comedy as the key complement to Bucolic in the novel’s generic hybridity. I focus on Chloe’s role as focalizer of the final sentence, and through key intratextual and intertextual resonances of the sphragis (...) argue that the novel’s generic games are bound up above all in her experience and educational development. (shrink)

An influential position in the scholarship on Longus is that the narrator of Daphnis and Chloe is dissociated from, and ironized by, the author. Two articles by John Morgan, in particular, have propounded this interpretation. Morgan argues that Longus’ narrator relates the story with simplicity and naivety, and in ignorance of the more complex subtleties to which only Longus and the more discerning reader have access: ‘Daphnis and Chloe is told by its narrator as if it were a simpler and (...) more conventional story than it really is, and invites its reader to read it in the same way. One way to describe this textual duplicity is to think in terms of a surface “narrator's text” and a deeper “author's text”. We can conceive the narrator, as established by the prologue, as a distorting and simplifying lens between the story and us. As readers we effectively have the choice of accepting what we see through the lens or of correcting it and reading around the narrator.’ This type of separation of author and narrator is identifiable in Petronius’ Satyrica, in which the first-person narrator Encolpius who tells his story in hindsight is ridiculed and his narration destabilized by the hidden author who ‘is also listening, along with the reader, to Encolpius’ narrative—and along with the reader is smiling at it’. (shrink)

Scholarship on Quintus Smyrnaeus has long moved past the point where he is considered nothing more than an ‘artificial imitator of a bygone age’. Rather, scholars generally recognize the dynamism of Quintus’ relation to Homer, as can be seen in the subtitles of two volumes on Quintus published in the past few years:Engaging Homer in Late AntiquityandTransforming Homer in Second Sophistic Epic. Even in passages that are clearly modelled on passages in Homer, Quintus is no longer seen as slavishly imitating (...) but as creatively rereading and re-imagining his works. Calum Maciver, perhaps Quintus’ most vocal champion, sums this approach up nicely, arguing that ‘Quintus imitates, manipulates, comments on, differs from, in sum reads, Homer’, and describing the epic as ‘a demanding text with intricate possibilities for interpretation’. And Maciver is hardly alone in this; various studies in recent years have shown that Quintus’ use of Homer reflects his own values and preoccupations, and those of his society. (shrink)

This discussion begins from the dilemma, posed in some earlier writing by Alasdair MacIntyre, that education is essential but also, in current economic and cultural conditions, impossible. The potential for resolving this dilemma through appeal to ‘practice’, ‘narrative unity’, and ‘tradition’(three core concepts in After Virtue and later writings) is then examined. The discussion also explores the relationship of education to the modern state and the power of a liberal education to create an ‘educated public’ very different in character (...) from the electorates of contemporary democratic regimes. It concludes with some remarks on the role of education in combating prejudice against certain kinds of human difference. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s seminal book After Virtue was central in the rehabilitation of the Aristotelian approach to ethics. His work in moral and political philosophy is among the most important of his generation, and is influenced by Marx, Aquinas, Aristotle, and conversion to Roman Catholicism. He is a permanent senior research fellow at the University of Notre Dame.

In a recent article, I argued that all humans are morally equal, and that this generates an argument against abortion. Here, I defend my argument against two objections from Räsänen: that it is possible to ground equal human value in the ability to flourish in a particular kind of way, and that being human is not, in fact, a binary property in the way needed for the argument to work. I show that this proposed criterion for grounding human value falls (...) prey to my original argument, and that Räsänen’s attempt to conceive of subhuman entities fails. (shrink)

While the traditional Christian teaching opposing abortion has been relatively unanimous until the twentieth century, it has been claimed in more recent decades that certain Biblical passages support the view that the fetus, or unborn child, has a lesser moral status than a born child, in a way that might support the permissibility of abortion. In this paper, I address the foremost three texts used to argue this point: Genesis 2:7; Exodus 21:22–25; and Numbers 5:11–31. I argue that interpreting the (...) former in the literal way necessary to support abortion leads to untenable moral and exegetical conclusions, indeed straightforwardly contradicting other Biblical texts. I then demonstrate that the most plausible readings of the other passages—on textual and contextual grounds—do not support a lesser moral status, one of the passages plausibly even supporting full moral status, for the unborn child. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore one of the most important but least discussed components of an evidentialist case for or against theism: its intrinsic plausibility and simplicity as a theory aside from the evidence. This is a crucial consideration in any inductive framework, whether Inference to the Best Explanation, probabilism, or another. In the context of Bayesian reasoning, this corresponds to an assessment of theism's intrinsic probability. I offer a survey of how philosophers of science have attempted to evaluate the (...) intrinsic plausibility and simplicity of scientific theories more generally, before applying these considerations to the question of God's existence. (shrink)

The classic formulation of causal decision theory (CDT) appeals to counterfactuals. It says that you should aim to choose an option that would have a good outcome, were you to choose it. However, this version of CDT faces trouble if the laws of nature are deterministic. After all, the standard theory of counterfactuals says that, if the laws are deterministic, then if anything—including the choice you make—were different in the present, either the laws would be violated or the distant past (...) would be changed. And as several authors have shown, it's easy to transform this upshot of the standard theory of counterfactuals into full-blown counterexamples to CDT. In response to these counterexamples, I argue here that the problem lies, not so much with CDT's guiding idea—that it's the expected causal consequences of your actions that matter for rational decision-making—but with the fact that the classic formulation of CDT doesn't pay sufficient attention to the context-sensitivity of counterfactuals. I develop a contextualist version of CDT which better accounts for this context-sensitivity. And I show that my theory avoids the problems faced by the classic formulation of CDT in determinstic worlds. (shrink)

Several recent papers have suggested that the pro-life view entails a radical, implausible thesis: that miscarriage is the biggest public health crisis in the history of our species and requires radical diversion of funds to combat. In this paper, I clarify the extent of the problem, showing that the number of miscarriages about which we can do anything morally significant is plausibly much lower than previously thought, then describing some of the work already being done on this topic. I then (...) briefly survey a range of reasons why abortion might be thought more serious and more worthy of prevention than miscarriage. Finally, I lay out my central argument: that reflection on the wrongness of killing reveals that the norms for ending life and failing to save life are different, in such a way that could justify the prioritization of anti-abortion advocacy over anti-miscarriage efforts. Such an account can also respond to similar problems posed to the pro-lifer, such as the question of whom to save in a “burning lab” type scenario. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that a commitment to a very modest form of egalitarianism—equality between non-disabled human adults—implies fetal personhood. Since the most plausible bases for human value are in being human, or in a gradated property, and since the latter of which implies an inequality between non-disabled adult humans, I conclude that the most plausible basis for human equality is in being human—an attribute which fetuses have.

Eugene Mills has recently argued that human organisms cannot begin to exist at fertilization because the evidence suggests that egg cells persist through fertilization and simply turn into zygotes. He offers two main arguments for this conclusion: that ‘fertilized egg’ commits no conceptual fallacy, and that on the face of it, it looks as though egg cells survive fertilization when the process is watched through a microscope. We refute these arguments and offer several reasons of our own to think that (...) egg cells do not survive fertilization, appealing to various forms of essentialism regarding persons, fission cases, and a detailed discussion of the biological facts relevant to fertilization and genetics. We conclude that it is plausible, therefore, that human organisms begin to exist at fertilization – or, at the very least, that there are grounds for thinking that they existed as zygotes which do not apply to the prior egg cells. While this does not entail that human persons begin to exist at this point, it nevertheless has considerable significance for this latter question. (shrink)

According to the author of "After Virtue, " to flourish, humans need to develop virtues of independent thought and acknowledged social dependence. This book presents the moral philosopher's comparison of humans to other animals and his exploration of the impact of these virtues.

It has been suggested that human organs should be bought and sold on a regulated market as any other material property belonging to an individual. This would have the advantage of both addressing the grave shortage of organs available for transplantation and respecting the freedom of individuals to choose to do whatever they want with their body parts. The old arguments against such a market in human organs are, therefore, being brought back into question.The article examines the different arguments both (...) in favour and against the sale of human organs. It concludes that the body and any of its elements is a full expression of the whole person. As such, they cannot have a price if the individual is to retain his or her full inherent dignity and if society is to retain and protect this very important concept. (shrink)

I have recently offered a defence of human equality, and consequently an argument against abortion. This has been objected to by Bozzo, on the grounds that my account of human equality is unclear and could be grounded in utilitarian or Kantian ethics, that my account struggles to ground the permissibility of therapeutic abortions, and that my proposed foundation for human equality itself is parasitic on a scalar property which generates the same difficulties I am attempting to solve. I provide an (...) account of human equality which cannot easily be grounded in utilitarianism or Kantianism, offer a variety of defences of therapeutic abortion consistent with treating the mother and child equally, and show that even if the value of humanness is ultimately grounded in a scalar quality, my argument succeeds. (shrink)

This book is crucial reading for anyone interested in the politics of abortion in the United States of America and around the world. This is perhaps ironic since, as Laura Hussey demonstrates...

In the discussions leading up to the enactment of the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Regulations 2015, it was repeatedly emphasised, by many commentators, that maternal spindle transfer and pronuclear transfer did not give rise to children who could be considered as having three or more parents. This was because it was argued that only the genetic material found in the chromosomes should be considered as the determining factor for the formation of parent–child relationships and the resulting kinship identities. In (...) this present study, however, this assertion will be questioned in the light of different kinds and different understandings of kinship identities. It will also be suggested that any person who is partly responsible for the very existence of a child, through any means, may qualify as a causal parent — a parent whom the resulting child may want to identify. As a result, a positive response should be given to a request from a person born from MST and PNT concerning identifying information for all the individuals responsible for bringing him or her into existence. In the light of this, the article will conclude that it is regrettable that the UK government enacted binding legislation making sure that children, born through MST and PNT, will never be able to contact the egg donors and, in the case of PNT, the sperm donors. This reflects a very limited understanding of who parents really are and may give rise to serious long-term psychological distress in the prospective children. (shrink)

A fascinating study of the modern state as a collection of associations and a tool that has to be given power by the people but musty follow checks and balances put in place. A relevant text when written and still relevant in this day.

This highly original book_ _explores the idea and potential of psychology in the context of ethical theory, and the idea of ethics in the context of psychology. In so doing, it not only interrogates how we come to understand ethics and notions of right behaviour, but also questions the discipline of psychology and how it functions in the 21 st century. Neill turns psychology inside out, controversially suggesting that psychology no longer exists as we know it. He proposes a rebirth (...) of psychology based on an intricate and detailed examination of _who_ we really are, and how we come to structure this idea of ourselves. Taking the idea of ethics seriously, Neill allows us to see psychology in a totally new light, addressing key points, such as: The inadequacy of psychology to address the question of ethics throughout history. Why thinking through the question of ethics necessarily brings us into confrontation with a question of psychology. What we actually do when we do psychology and how, via a serious consideration of ethics we might do this differently and better. Ethics and Psychology presents readers with a new and potentially productive understanding of both ethics and psychology and will appeal to anyone active within and critically engaged with the field. (shrink)

Jacques Lacan: The Basics provides a clear and succinct introduction to the work of Jacques Lacan, one of the key thinkers of the twentieth century. Lacan's ideas are applied in the study of the humanities, politics, and psychology as well as contemporary media and the arts, but their complexity makes them impenetrable to many. This book is unique in explaining the key concepts and context, from Lacan's understanding of psychoanalysis to drive and desire, in an accessible way without diluting them (...) beyond meaning. Examples from popular culture are used throughout to emphasise the ideas being discussed and a full glossary and list of resources for further reading encourages additional exploration. This engaging and accessible text is essential reading for all those interested in Lacan and his work, as well as students of psychology, psychoanalysis, literature, politics, cultural studies, film studies, and more. (shrink)

Lacan's return to Descartes -- The graph of desire -- Objet petit a and fantasy -- Guilt -- The law -- Judgement -- Misrecognising the other -- Loving thy neighbour -- Beyond difference -- Ethics and the other -- The impossibility of ethical examples -- Eating the book.