Rosalind Hursthouse took her undergraduate degree in New Zealand and her B. Phil. and D. Phil. at Oxford. She taught in Oxford for six years before joining the Open University in 1975. As part of her work for the O.U. she has published Beginning Lives (Blackwell, 1987) on the morality of abortion; this generated Virtue theory and abortion, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1991) which has already been reprinted five times. She has published numerous other articles on virtue ethics, the (...) most recent of which is virtue ethics and the emotions, in: Virtue Ethics, A Critical Reader, Daniel Statman (ed.) Edinburgh University Press, 1997. (shrink)

In this unconventional article, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg conduct a three-way ‘conversation’ in which they all take turns outlining how they understand the relationship among postfeminism, popular feminism and neoliberal feminism. It begins with a short introduction, and then Ros, Sarah and Catherine each define the term they have become associated with. This is followed by another round in which they discuss the overlaps, similarities and disjunctures among the terms, and the article ends with how each (...) one understands the current mediated feminist landscape. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is perhaps the most important development within late twentieth-century moral philosophy. Rosalind Hursthouse, who has made notable contributions to this development, here presents a full exposition and defense of her neo-Aristotelian version of virtue ethics. She shows how virtue ethics can provide guidance for action, illuminate moral dilemmas, and bring out the moral significance of the emotions.

This article argues that traditional, regulative principles of research ethics offer insufficient guidance for research in the narrative study of lives. These principles presuppose an implicit epistemology that conceives of research participants as data sources, a conception that is argued not tenable for narrative research. The case is made by drawing on recent discussions of research ethics in the qualitative and narrative research literature. This article shows that narrative ethics is inextricably entwined with epistemological issues--namely, issues of narrative ownership and (...) the multiplicity of narrative meaning. Finally, practical recommendations are made for the ethical treatment of research participants in narrative research. The article concludes by situating our approach with respect to the broad range of contemporary perspectives on research ethics. (shrink)

This volume contains comprehensive and scholarly editions of three Anglo-Saxon saints' lives: Birinus of Dorchester-on-Thames, Kenelm of Winchcombe, and Rumwold of Buckingham. Rosalind Love provides the Latin texts, based on all known manuscript versions, with a facing-page English translation, together with full annotation and a historical introduction which sets these works in the context of the development of hagiographical literature. Dr Love traces the growth and changes in hagiographical writing, one of the most important genres of medieval literature and (...) essential to the understanding of the religious mentality of the Middle Ages, and shows how the eleventh century saw significant new directions emerge in the cult of the saints and the writing of saints' lives. (shrink)

This article introduces a special section concerned with precariousness and cultural work. Its aim is to bring into dialogue three bodies of ideas — the work of the autonomous Marxist `Italian laboratory'; activist writings about precariousness and precarity; and the emerging empirical scholarship concerned with the distinctive features of cultural work, at a moment when artists, designers and (new) media workers have taken centre stage as a supposed `creative class' of model entrepreneurs. The article is divided into three sections. It (...) starts by introducing the ideas of the autonomous Marxist tradition, highlighting arguments about the autonomy of labour, informational capitalism and the `factory without walls', as well as key concepts such as multitude and immaterial labour. The impact of these ideas and of Operaismo politics more generally on the precarity movement is then considered in the second section, discussing some of the issues that have animated debate both within and outside this movement, which has often treated cultural workers as exemplifying the experiences of a new `precariat'. In the third and final section we turn to the empirical literature about cultural work, pointing to its main features before bringing it into debate with the ideas already discussed. Several points of overlap and critique are elaborated — focusing in particular on issues of affect, temporality, subjectivity and solidarity. (shrink)

Constitutions serve to legitimate the exercise of public power. Yet their scope is often subject to reasonable disagreement among citizens in a democracy. As Frank Michelman notes, this points to an understanding of democratic constitutions as a framework for contestation, rather than entrenched set of binding legal constraints. This understanding, however, arguably overlooks the difference between ordinary constitutional norms and those that protect the ‘democratic minimum core’. For the latter, there is far less scope for reasonable disagreement, and greater prudential (...) importance to conceptualizing constitutions as entrenched norms authorized strong-form judicial review. The essay thus explores the idea of a ‘tiered’ approach to constitutional design, which combines elements of strong and weak constitutional entrenchment, and judicial review. In doing so, it further considers the role that transnational norms or practices could play in helping delineate these different constitutional tiers. (shrink)

Rosalind Hursthouse; IV*—A False Doctrine of the Mean, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 81, Issue 1, 1 June 1981, Pages 57–72, https://doi.org/10.

Pragmatic Genealogy involves constructing fictional, quasi-historical models in order to discover what might explain and justify our concepts, ideas or practices. It arguably originated with Hume, but its most prominent practitioners are Edward Craig, Bernard Williams and Mathieu Queloz. Its defenders allege that the method allows us to understand “what the concept does for us, what its role in our life might be” (Craig, 1990), and that this in turn can ground practical reasons to preserve or further a conceptual practice. (...) In this paper, I argue that none of this is true, and that only a turn to the actual recent history of such practices can reveal those sorts of practical reasons. (shrink)

Background: In Ontario, Canada, patients who lack decision-making capacity and have no family or friends to act as substitute decision-makers currently rely on the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee to consent to long-term care (nursing home) placement, but they have no legal representative for other placement decisions. Objectives: We highlight the current gap in legislation for difficult transition cases involving unrepresented patients and provide a novel framework for who ought to assist with making these decisions and how these (...) decisions ought to be made. Research design: This paper considers models advanced by Volpe and Steinman with regard to who ought to make placement decisions for unrepresented patients, as well as current ethical models for analyzing how these decisions should be made. Participants and research context: We describe an anonymized healthcare transition case to illustrate the fact that there is no legally recognized decision-maker for placement destinations other than long-term care facilities and to show how this impacts all stakeholders. Ethical considerations: The case provided is an anonymized vignette representing a typical transition case involving an unrepresented patient. Findings: As a result of a gap in provincial legislation, healthcare providers usually determine the appropriate placement destination without a clear framework to guide the process and this can cause significant moral distress. Discussion: We argue for a team decision-making approach in the short term, and a legislative change in the long-term, to respect the patient voice, evaluate benefit and risk, enhance collaboration between healthcare providers and patients, and promote social justice. We believe that our approach, which draws upon the strengths of interprofessional teams, will be of interest to all who are concerned with the welfare and ethical treatment of the patients for whom they care. Conclusions: One of the main strengths of our recommendation is that it provides all members of the healthcare team (including nurses, social workers, therapists, and others) an increased opportunity to advocate on behalf of unrepresented patients. (shrink)

In On Virtue Ethics I offered a criterion for a character trait's being a virtue according to which a virtuous character trait must conduce to, or at least not be inimical to, four ends, one of which is the continuance of the human species. I argue here that this does not commit me to homosexuality's being a vice, since homosexuality is not a character trait and hence not up for assessment as a virtue or a vice. Vegetarianism is not up (...) for such assessment either, for the same reason, but, as a practice, may well be required by the virtue of compassion, and sacrificing one's life for an animal or alien may be required by courage. The clause about the continuance of the human species in my criterion does not specify a foundational value, because, following McDowell, I reject foundationalism. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach that emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism). Suppose it is obvious that someone in need should be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so will maximize well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, in doing (...) so the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping the person would be charitable or benevolent. (shrink)

The philosophical literature on shame treats shame as essentially a self-concerning emotion. According to this view, when we experience shame, it is always the self that is subject to negative assessment, and shame concerning others traces back to some form of self-concern. Against this, I argue for an expanded conception of shame. On the view I advance, shame always manifests investment and partiality regarding its target, but investment and partiality need not trace back to self-concern, and shame does not essentially (...) require an appraisal of the self at all. I also argue that this can help us improve our understanding of partial concern for persons more broadly. While we often think of partial concern for a person’s well-being as the paradigmatic form of partial concern, partial concern for a person’s character (broadly construed) plays an equally important role in our moral-emotional lives, and especially in our close relationships. (shrink)

Classical archaeology in the service of the state and national identity is not a new concept, although it is one that is seen less, or at least less blatantly, in modern Europe. This particular use of the classical past is still very much in use in the region of Macedonia, both the Greek province and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Nationalism uses archaeology and the imagery of the ancient world to claim legitimacy in the modern world. By claiming the (...) ancient past and projecting it into the present, nations can create a strong national identity. By tying the present day inhabitants of an area to a strong cultural past, the nation itself becomes more legitimate. Problems arise when two nations seek to claim the same past as in the case in the Greek province of Macedonia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. This competition and issues surrounding the claim of ownership of a particular national past can be seen through the examples of the tumulus at Vergina and the differing traditions of the symposion in Macedonia and Athens. The projection of the past into the present can be seen in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia flag, in three pamphlets on the “Macedonian Question” from Greece, and in the recent rebuilding of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’s capital, Skopje. (shrink)

Discussion of the human soul has bulked large in the literature of philosophy and religion. I defend the possibility of disembodied Cartesian minds by examining the criticisms of three philosophers who argue that there are serious difficulties about any attempt to account for the identity of such Cartesian minds through time. I argue that their criticisms of the possibility of disembodied minds are damaging but not fatal. I hold that the central issue behind their criticisms of Cartesian minds is whether (...) any nonphysical mental criterion can be formulated for the identity of such entities. Even though no such criterion can be given, disembodied minds that persist through time remain logical possibilities. (shrink)

Although many writers and scholars struggle to cross the threshold between literary expressive culture and activism, poet Rita Wong has fostered and bridged both collaborative artistic and direct-action social justice work. Wong’s collaborations with Dorothy Christian, Larissa Lai, Cindy Mochizuki, and Fred Wah illuminate the promise of creative practice in confronting racial capitalism and climate destruction. This essay draws from the social movement theory of prefigurative politics, routed through abolition feminism and Indigenous place-based epistemology, to account for ethical consistencies between (...) Wong’s poetics, collaborative artistic practice, and direct-action interventions. Prefigurative politics conveys “the embodiment, within the ongoing political practice of a movement, of those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the ultimate goal” (Boggs, 1977, p. 100). Wong’s work focuses on “Reckoning” at the pivot point of climate destruction: she writes, “our common survival depends on our collective ability to address the environmental devastation that has accelerated in this century, a devastation that will not end unless we learn to live by values that manifest and respect Indigenous relationships to the land and waters” (Wong, 2012, p. 535). Her scholarship and collaborative poetic engagements have attended to “Repairing” with words, performance, bodily engagement, and crafting a paradigm shift in alliance with human and nonhuman others, thinking with and through water. And Wong “Reworlds” through experimental and imaginative building of new relations, telling new stories. In keeping with prefigurative social movement practice, she and her collaborators act as if that new world has already arrived. (shrink)

Using “big data” from sensors worn continuously outside the lab, researchers have observed patterns of objective physiology that challenge some of the long-standing theoretical concepts of emotion and its measurement. One challenge is that emotional arousal, when measured as sympathetic nervous system activation through electrodermal activity, can sometimes differ significantly across the two halves of the upper body. We show that traditional measures on only one side may lead to misjudgment of arousal. This article presents daily life and controlled study (...) data, as well as existing evidence from neuroscience, supporting the influence of multiple emotional substrates in the brain causing innervation on different sides of the body. We describe how a theory of multiple arousals explains the asymmetric EDA findings. (shrink)

This paper reviews the ethical literature on conflicts between health professionals and parents about medical decision-making for children. We present the results of a systematic review which addressed the question ‘when health professionals and parents disagree about the appropriate course of medical treatment for a child, under what circumstances is the health professional ethically justified in overriding the parents’ wishes?’ We identified nine different ethical frameworks that were put forward by their authors as applicable across various ages and clinical scenarios. (...) Each of these frameworks centred on a different key moral concept including harm, constrained parental autonomy, best interests, medically reasonable alternatives, responsible thinking and rationality. (shrink)

Despite the much-discussed court cases in the 1970s that permitted some sibling-to-sibling kidney donations from minors,1 principles that can guide parental, medical, or judicial decisionmaking are neither clearly articulated nor uncontroversial.

Umbilical cord blood has become the focus of intense efforts to collect, screen and bank haematopoietic stem cells in hundreds of repositories around the world. UCB banking has developed through a broad spectrum of overlapping banking practices, sectors and institutional forms. Superficially at least, these sectors have been widely distinguished in bioethical and policy literature between notions of the ‘public’ and the ‘private’, the commons and the market respectively. Our purpose in this paper is to reflect more critically on these (...) distinctions and to articulate the complex practical and hybrid nature of cord blood as a ‘bio-object’ that straddles binary conceptions of the blood economies. The paper draws upon Roberto Esposito’s reflections on biopolitics and his attempt to transcend the dualistic polarisations of immunity and community, or the private and the public. We suggest that his thoughts on immunitary hospitality resonate with many of the actual features and realpolitik of a necessarily internationalised and globally distributed UCB ‘immunitary regime’. (shrink)

Analytic moral philosophers have generally failed to engage in any substantial way with the cultural history of morality. This is a shame, because a genealogy of morals can help us accomplish two important tasks. First, a genealogy can form the basis of an epistemological project, one that seeks to establish the epistemic status of our beliefs or values. Second, a genealogy can provide us with functional understanding, since a history of our beliefs, values or institutions can reveal some inherent dynamic (...) or pattern which may be problematically obscured from our view. In this paper, I try to make good on these claims by offering a sketchy genealogy of emancipatory values, or values which call for the liberation of persons from systems of dominance and oppression. The real history of these values, I argue, is both epistemologically vindicatory and functionally enlightening. (shrink)

This introductory textbook is ideally suited to newcomers to philosophy and ethical problems. Rosalind Hursthouse carefully introduces the three standard approaches in current ethical theory: utilitarianism, rights, and virtue ethics. She links each chapter to readings from key exponents such as Peter Singer and Mary Midgley and asks students to think critically about these readings for themselves. Key features include clear activities and activities, chapter summaries and guides to further reading.

From a clinical ethics perspective, I explore several traditional arguments that deem deception as morally unacceptable. For example, it is often argued that deception robs people of their autonomy. Deception also unfairly manipulates others and is a breach of important trust-relations. In these kinds of cases, I argue that the same reasons commonly used against deception can provide strong reasons why deception can be extremely beneficial for patients who lack mental capacity. For example, deception can enhance, rather than impair, autonomy (...) in certain cases. I argue that deception ought to only be used after considering several key morally relevant factors and provide a practical and morally justifiable framework for exploring these issues. (shrink)

In contrast to Di Nucci’s characterisation, my argument is not a technoapocalyptic one. The view I put forward is that systems like IBM’s Watson for Oncology create both risks and opportunities from the perspective of shared decision-making. In this response, I address the issues that Di Nucci raises and highlight the importance of bioethicists engaging critically with these developing technologies.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being developed for use in medicine, including for diagnosis and in treatment decision making. The use of AI in medical treatment raises many ethical issues that are yet to be explored in depth by bioethicists. In this paper, I focus specifically on the relationship between the ethical ideal of shared decision making and AI systems that generate treatment recommendations, using the example of IBM’s Watson for Oncology. I argue that use of this type of system (...) creates both important risks and significant opportunities for promoting shared decision making. If value judgements are fixed and covert in AI systems, then we risk a shift back to more paternalistic medical care. However, if designed and used in an ethically informed way, AI could offer a potentially powerful way of supporting shared decision making. It could be used to incorporate explicit value reflection, promoting patient autonomy. In the context of medical treatment, we need value-flexible AI that can both respond to the values and treatment goals of individual patients and support clinicians to engage in shared decision making. (shrink)

Recent work on Kant’s conception of space has largely put to rest the view that Kant is hostile to actual infinity. Far from limiting our cognition to quantities that are finite or merely potentially infinite, Kant characterizes the ground of all spatial representation as an actually infinite magnitude. I advance this reevaluation a step further by arguing that Kant judges some actual infinities to be greater than others: he claims, for instance, that an infinity of miles is strictly smaller than (...) an infinity of earth-diameters. This inequality follows from Kant’s mereological conception of magnitudes (quanta): the part is (analytically) less than the whole, and an infinity of miles is equal to only a part of an infinity of earth-diameters. This inequality does not, however, imply that Kant’s infinities have transfinite and unequal sizes (quantitates). Because Kant’s conception of size (quantitas) is based on the Eudoxian theory of proportions, infinite magnitudes (quanta) cannot be assigned exact sizes. Infinite magnitudes are immeasurable, but some are greater than others. (shrink)

This paper argues for a new understanding of Strawson’s distinction between personal, impersonal, and self-reactive attitudes. Many Strawsonians take these basic reactive attitude types to be distinguished by two factors. Is it the self or another who is treated with good- or ill-will? And is it the self or another who displays good- or ill-will? On this picture, when someone else wrongs me, my reactive attitude is personal; when someone else wrongs someone else, my reactive attitude is impersonal; and when (...) I wrong someone else, my attitude is self-reactive. Against this account, I argue that the basic reactive attitude types are better distinguished according to whether they express partial or impartial concern. This fits Strawson’s discussion in “Freedom and Resentment”, and it allows us to see an important point that the alternative approach obscures. Namely, while attitudes like resentment, gratitude, shame, and pride can arise as responses to our own treatment and behavior, they can also arise as third-party responses to the treatment and behavior of our family members, romantic partners, and close friends. Similarly, attitudes like moral indignation and disapprobation also have a wider scope than is often acknowledged; they can arise as responses to others’ treatment, but they can also arise as responses to our own treatment when we react impartially to circumstances involving ourselves. (shrink)

The sort of ethical theory derived from Aristotle, variously described as virtue ethics, virtue-based ethics, or neo-Aristotelianism, is becoming better known, and is now quite widely recognized as at least a possible rival to deontological and utilitarian theories. With recognition has come criticism, of varying quality. In this article I shall discuss nine separate criticisms that I have frequently encountered, most of which seem to me to betray an inadequate grasp either of the structure of virtue theory or of what (...) would be involved in thinking about a real moral issue in its terms. In the first half I aim particularly to secure an understanding that will reveal that many of these criticisms are simply misplaced, and to articulate what I take to be the major criticism of virtue theory. I reject this criticism, but do not claim that it is necessarily misplaced. In the second half I aim to deepen that understanding and highlight the issues raised by the criticisms by illustrating what the theory looks like when it is applied to a particular issue, in this case, abortion. (shrink)

According to the standard account of actions and their explanations, intentional actions are actions done because the agent has a certain desire/belief pair that explains the action by rationalizing it. Any explanation of intentional action in terms of an appetite or occurrent emotion is hence assumed to be elliptical, implicitly appealing to some appropriate belief. In this paper, I challenge this assumption with respect to the " arational " actions of my title---a significant subset of the set of intentional actions (...) explained by occurrent emotion. These actions threaten the standard account, not only by forming a recalcitrant set of counterexamples to it, but also, as we shall see, by undercutting the false semantic theory that holds that account in place. (shrink)

By giving legislatures broad power to override constitutional rights provisions, recent Commonwealth rights charters are said to create a new ‘weaker’ model of constitutional rights protection than the traditional US model of strong-form judicial review. The article, however, argues that to date such powers have rarely if ever been used by Commonwealth legislatures, and thus have had little direct effect on the strength of judicial review in Commonwealth countries. At most, such powers may have had some indirect effect on the (...) strength of review in the Commonwealth, compared to the United States, by encouraging greater deference by courts such as the Supreme Court of Canada to attempts by parliament to engage in ‘dialogue’ via ordinary legislative means. This more limited—and contingent—view of Commonwealth–US constitutional difference also has clear practical implications, the article suggests, for ongoing attempts to ‘borrow’ or adopt the new Commonwealth constitutional model elsewhere. (shrink)

This volume brings together twenty original essays on the changes and continuities in gender relations and intersecting politics of sexuality, race, class and location. The book is located in debates about contemporary culture at a moment of rapid technological change, global interconnectedness and the growing cultural dominance of neoliberalism and postfeminism. The collection traverses disciplines, spaces and approaches. It is marked by an extraordinarily wide focus, ranging from analyses of celebrity magazines and makeover shows to examinations of the experiences of (...) young female migrants, 'mail order brides' and young women who repudiate feminism. The contributions are united by their attempts to think through the ways in which experiences and representations of femininity are changing in the twenty-first century. Are we seeing new femininities? Are neoliberalism and postfeminism constructing new identities and subjectivities? What kinds of analytic tools and cultural politics are needed to critically engage with the current moment? This book will be of interest to everyone studying gender, media or cultural studies. (shrink)

Emotion research will leap forward when its focus changes from comparing averaged statistics of self-report data across people experiencing emotion in laboratories to characterizing patterns of data from individuals and clusters of similar individuals experiencing emotion in real life. Such an advance will come about through engineers and psychologists collaborating to create new ways for people to measure, share, analyze, and learn from objective emotional responses in situations that truly matter to people. This approach has the power to greatly advance (...) the science of emotion while also providing personalized help to participants in the research. (shrink)

The existence of deep and persistent moral disagreement poses a problem for a defender of moral knowledge. It seems particularly clear that a philosopher who thinks that we know a great many moral truths should explain how human populations have failed to converge on those truths. In this paper, I do two things. First, I show that the problem is more difficult than it is often taken to be, and second, I criticize a popular response, which involves claiming that many (...) false moral beliefs are the product of nonmoral ignorance. (shrink)