I investigate the social history of Egypt under British imperial occupation through the lens of morality in order to understand the contestation of cultural change and authority under empire. Points of cultural cleavage between European and local inhabitants in British-occupied Cairo included two customs, gambling and the consumption of intoxicants, which elicited sustained and dynamic reactions from observers of Egyptian society on the local and international level. I show that the presence of alcohol and gambling in public spaces in Cairo contributed directly to the politicization and selective criminalization of public morality. However, the meanings attributed to social practices relating to leisure were continually under negotiation and challenge as state authorities, British liberals, Egyptian reformers and religious leaders, foreign missionaries, and representatives of international temperance movements vied to impose their visions of morality upon Egyptian society.

School is one of the first social environment witch helps to know better personality. Teachers, working in nowadays school, should help pupils to know better them selves, to get communicative skills, to enrich their creativity to accept and consolidate themselves as unique and original personalities. Educational process is teacher’s and learners’ interrelation that is the main condition of realization of the educational aims and goals. The aims of the study were, to clarify how teenagers’ and teachers’ communication influences the moral approaches of teenagers, to clear up the evaluation of teenagers moral communication according to teachers’ and teenagers’ attitude, also to analyse the matter of teachers’ and interrelations and conflict situations. The target group included 256 adolescent and 56 schoolteachers from village primary school, town’s secondary school and cities secondary school. Members of the target group were from Linkmenys, Utena and Vilnius. The method used in the research was interview and questionnaire. The data obtained were processed according to the Programme SPSS PC 10.1. In conclusion it can be said that relations between teachers and learners in secondary schools are influenced not only by personal qualities and character features, but also the situation that is there and emotional state. Moral relations between teachers and learners are grounded with the respect of senior, zeal for knowledge education of discipline, fairness and advertency in... [to full text]

This thesis examines Kantian conceptions of freedom. Beginning with Kant himself, I show how Kant’s response to Hume concerning the rational justification of causal judgements results in his claim that the sensible world is governed a priori by causal principles. Kant’s moral philosophy, however, requires a robust conception of freedom for moral agency to be possible. These two features leave Kant in an apparent contradiction, for it is unclear how we, as members of the physical, causal world, can be truly free if all events are governed by causal laws. I show that Kant’s solution to this contradiction lies in an important aspect of his transcendental idealism: the noumenal/phenomenal distinction. I argue, further, that his solution is problematic due to the fundamentally unknowable quality of the noumenal realm, wherein freedom is located. John McDowell’s Mind and World is introduced as an alternative to the extreme Kantian dualism between noumena and phenomena, while remaining within a broadly Kantian framework. Like Kant, McDowell locates our freedom in our ability to operate through reason, though unlike his predecessor, he situates “the space of reasons” within nature. This becomes possible by extending our conception of nature to include a “second nature”, thus making our initiation into the space of reasons—into the realm of freedom—a natural process. Remaining Kantian in spirit, however, McDowell’s account inherits a problematic Kantian feature. He maintains the distinction between two modes of intelligibility—between naturalistic and rational modes of explanation—thus leaving room for a hard-nosed naturalist to question the autonomy of the latter. I argue that Peter Strawson’s proposal in “Freedom and Resentment” is able to assuage this worry in McDowell’s otherwise plausible model. In it, Strawson provides an account of why the autonomy of rational explanations can never be undermined by purely naturalistic explanations, even in the face of a theoretical conviction in determinism. Strawson argues that our “personal reactive attitudes” (like gratitude and resentment)—attitudes that express our commitment to a moral life and are representative of our functioning within the space of reasons—could never be undermined by the truth of determinism, and this reveals the extent to which our conception of ourselves as rational agents is immune from assault by the determinist. The result is a compelling form of compatibilism that persuasively retains the space of reasons without appeal to Kantian noumenalism. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2007-09-14 14:36:23.511

Syftet med studien var att studera om attraktiviteten hos en person kan påverka graden av hur moraliskt förkastlig en handling som utförs av personen bedöms vara och huruvida det föreligger någon könsskillnad. Med ett experiment undersöktes 151 studenter på ett medelstort universitet i södra Sverige. Deltagarna tilldelades ett fiktivt moraliskt scenario med ett bifogat foto av antingen en oattraktiv eller en attraktiv person. En kontrollgrupp blev tilldelade samma scenario men utan något foto. Därefter fick deltagarna svara på hur moraliskt förkastlig de upplevde handlingen som beskrevs i scenariot och hur attraktiv de upplevde personen på fotot vara. Ingen signifikant skillnad i moralisk förkastlighet framkom mellan attraktiv och oattraktivt foto, ej heller någon könsskillnad. Resultatet influerades sannolikt av ”criminal face effect”, den av Dumas & Testé (2012) beskrivna effekt. Om en moraliskt tvivelaktig handling utförs och gärningsmannen uppfyller en stereotyp bild hos en eventuell bedömare av hur någon som utför den handlingen ser ut kommer gärningsmannen att dömas hårdare än om stereotypen inte uppfylls. / The aim of the study was to determine whether the attractiveness of a person can influence the degree of how morally reprehensible an act performed by the person assessed and whether there is any gender difference. In an experiment, 151 students at a medium-sized university in southern Sweden participated. The participants were assigned a fictitious moral scenario with an attached photo of either an unattractive or attractive person. A control group were assigned the same scenario but with no photo. Subsequently, participants were asked how morally reprehensible they experienced the act described in the scenario and how attractive they thought the person on the photo to be. No significant difference in moral reprehensibility emerged between attractive and unattractive photo nor a gender difference. The result is likely influenced by the "criminal face effect," the effect described by Dumas & Teste (2012). If a morally dubious act is performed and the offender meets a stereotypical image of a possible estimator of how someone performs the action looks offender will be sentenced more severely than if the stereotype is not met.

This thesis investigates the bamboo aesthetic in Chinese literature and its relations to the self-fashioning of moral high ground, with particular focus on literary works produced by Song literati. The study deconstructs the bamboo aesthetic into two parts, the literary bamboo and the literati self, and explores the internal dynamic relations between them.

This thesis investigates the bamboo aesthetic in Chinese literature and its relations to the self-fashioning of moral high ground, with particular focus on literary works produced by Song literati. The study deconstructs the bamboo aesthetic into two parts, the literary bamboo and the literati self, and explores the internal dynamic relations between them.

During the height of the English Renaissance, the revenge tragedies The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet were introduced to the English literary canon. In this essay, I will focus on the similarities that the protagonists, Hamlet and Hieronimo, share as prototypical avengers. Although Hamlet’s contribution to the genre should not be discredited, I will argue that the similar characterisation of Hieronimo in The Spanish Tragedy, portrays the same depth and entitlement to the acclaim as a prototypical avenger as Hamlet. Even though their portrayal may differ in tone, their shared commonality attributes equal complexity to both characters. I will compare and analyse the two plays in order to demonstrate that both characters should be considered prototypical avengers. The essay concludes that a reluctance to revenge and a tendency to contemplate the morality of the action is prominently shared by both prototypical avengers. Although critics generally infer Hieronimo is a less complex character in comparison with Hamlet, this essay will show how both avengers deserve equal credit. This essay illustrates this statement by juxtaposing their equal need to find justification before taking revenge, use of suicide to emphasise their moral dilemma, and comment on the tragic consequences of revenge.

All theories attempting to explain the rise of fundamentalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries agree that fundamentalism is a problematic and threatening response to a problematic and threatening modernity. This contention can be supported, inasmuch as fundamentalists do indeed seem very much at home in a technological world. However, how much can be extrapolated from this familiarity is highly debatable. To this end, it is vital for any discussion of fundamentalism to first attempt to achieve a clear-eyed view of the modern world. Such a view, at least that which is achievable, seems to suggest that the modern world is not, in fact, one of heretofore unimaginable horror. The recently uncovered scale of the genocide committed on the native peoples of the Caribbean and both hemispheres of the New World between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example, demonstrates that genocide is not, in any sense, a product of modern ways of thought or even the industrialization of slaughter. Likewise, most of the examples used to prove the contention of a uniquely traumatic modernity, for example, the rise of racism or the Holocaust, are, when considered closely, far less novel and idiosyncratically modern than often considered. Such a re-evaluation inevitably raises questions about culture, tradition, relativity, universalism, and not least morality, particularly the question of what morality is, where it comes from, and what if any role, does religion play in the formation of morals and ethics. This inevitably feeds back into the question of fundamentalism, most notably in the question of whether the fallen, sinful world against which fundamentalists so often proclaim themselves to be rebelling, is in fact, the world in which we live, or a Manichean world of their own imagining, invented to justify their rebellion.

At the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, French artist, Sophie Calle presented for public consumption a starkly simple yet elegant work entitled Pas Pu Saisir La Mort. The work was not only a comprehensive investigation of the Biennale theme for that year of capturing a fleeting moment in life but was also an ethically challenging and confrontational piece. Calle chose to display a video loop from the final moments of her mother Monique Sindler's life. As the title in a childlike manner informs the viewer, the subject of the work is Calle's inability to physically comprehend this moment. She, to add in the poignantly missing referent to the English translation of the title, “couldn't capture death”. Calle prompts the audience not only to watch but to actively look for the universally ungraspable moment of Monique's passing. Pas Pu Saisir La Mort is unique piece which both characterises Calle's work while also marking a departure from her normal style of working. It raises challenging issues of the ethical responsibilities of the contemporary art Biennale and of a more moral nature for the audience by placing them in the intimate role of voyeur. At the centre of aesthetic theory and within contemporary art writing the idea of a connection to universal concepts or notions of an underlying humanity within art is referenced, debated and negated. I believe in Pas Pu Saisir La Mort Calle engages with this discussion through foregrounding the idea of the contemporary sublime and re-evaluates art's connection to modernist universals as illuminated though the recent work of Thierry De Duve in particular his concept of 'nous voici' or work with speaks to the 'we' of humanity.

The ethics of economic sanctions is an issue that has been curiously neglected by philosophers and political theorists. Only a handful of philosophical journal articles and book chapters have ever been published on the subject; yet economic sanctions, as I will show, are significantly morally problematic and their use stands in need of moral justification. The aim of this thesis then is to consider how economic sanctions might be morally justified. Of the few writers who have considered this issue, the majority point to the analogies between economic sanctions and war and use the just war principles (just cause, proportionality etc.) as a framework within which to assess their moral permissibility. I argue that this is a mistake. The just war principles are derived from a set of complex and detailed arguments all planted firmly within the context of war. These arguments contain premises that, whilst they may hold true in the case of war, do not always hold true in the case of economic sanctions. Nevertheless, the rich just war tradition does offer a valuable starting point for theorising about economic sanctions and in the thesis I consider how the wider just war tradition might be brought to bear on the case of economic sanctions, beginning, not with the just war principles, but with the underlying arguments for those principles. In particular, I consider whether economic sanctions can be justified on the grounds that they are a form of self- or other-defence, that they are the ‘lesser evil’ and that they are a form of punishment. I argue that certain types of economic sanctions can be justified on the grounds that they are a form of self- or other- defence and that, in extreme circumstances, certain types of economic sanctions can be justified as the ‘lesser evil’. However, I argue that economic sanctions cannot be justified on the grounds of punishment. I also develop a ‘clean hands’ argument for economic sanctions that is unavailable to the just war theorist; I argue that where the goods and services to be supplied would contribute to human rights violations or other wrongful acts, there is a duty to impose economic sanctions to avoid complicity in this wrongdoing.