Relativity plays an important role in the skeptical outlooks of the Pyrrhonian skeptic Sextus Empiricus and of his predecessor Aenesidemus. But in the evidence concerning the earliest phase of Pyrrhonism, that of Pyrrho himself and his disciple Timon, there is no explicit mention of relativity. Nevertheless, there is good reason to suppose that it played an important role in their thinking. This is suggested both by the remarks at the opening of Diogenes Laertius’ life of Pyrrho, and by the summary by the Peripatetic Aristocles of an account by Timon of the early Pyrrhonist outlook. There is much about both these texts that is in dispute: whether they express a metaphysical view or epistemological reservations, whether the view applies only to questions of value or is global in character, and, on the Aristocles passage, how much of it represents Pyrrho’s ideas and how much just Timon’s. But on any plausible reading of these passages, there is a clearly implied emphasis on the variable ways in which things strike us, and this suggests a fundamental interest in relativity, even if it never surfaces explicitly.

There is no advantage in any lawyer rigidly following just one of the four ideals of ethical lawyering all the time. But it seems likely that, just as individuals have preferred comfortable psychological types, ethically aware lawyers will tend to identify more often than not with one ethical type that expresses their values for lawyering and shapes their practice. All lawyers and law students are likely to benefit from identifying their own values and reflecting on the ethical behaviour that they might derive from those values. In each of the previous chapters we have examined how the different approaches would apply to certain specific situations and contexts that commonly arise in legal practice. In this chapter we examine more closely the significance of personal values-awareness for lawyers’ ethics and provide a tool for self- assessing one’s ethical type/preference.

In this introductory chapter we provide an overview of the whole book and discuss the wider context of legal practice and lawyers’ ethics. We then explore insights from general morality as an underlying framework for the four approaches to lawyers’ ethics discussed in Chapter 2. This framework compensates, to some extent, for the lack of an explicit statement of values in our current rules of professional conduct. We then consider the ethical decision-making process, including the skills we need to put our ethics into action. In each chapter, we make extensive use of case studies to illustrate our points and to provide an opportunity for students (and other readers) to develop their own values-based judgements and apply the law of lawyering in respect of the topics covered.

The epilogue reflects on the reception of the ancient tradition explored in this book, but also reflects more widely on the values of genealogical and comparative approaches to intellectual history. It ends with a brief reflection on the relevance of this book’s argument for today.

The international environmental law regime relating to the protection of stratospheric ozone is widely considered to be one of the most successful international law regimes to date. This regime has been highly effective in regard to phasing out ozone-depleting substances, thereby protecting stratospheric ozone, and ensuring that we remain within the planetary boundary for stratospheric ozone depletion. Nevertheless, its implementation has given rise to several concerns, including the creation of new, unregulated problems. The chapter explores some of these concerns and argues that they potentially arise as a result of the human-centred and utilitarian values that underlie the ozone regime; and the chapter begins to explore how these underlying values might evolve to ensure the ongoing effectiveness of the ozone regime, while also contributing to efforts to equitably protect all earth system components.

This chapter introduces the planetary boundaries framework and explains the explicit and implicit role of value judgements within it. It explains the key scientific concepts at work in the planetary boundaries framework, and discusses their relationship to the goal of ensuring a ‘safe operating space’ for humanity. It then considers how the planetary boundaries framework has been advanced by its proponents as a way to achieve justice within the constraints of the Earth system, and more recently the idea that planetary boundaries can be guide humanity’s future on Earth. It considers the influence of the planetary boundaries framework on new ideas of economics and international law. Then, the chapter shows how uses of planetary boundaries to define a perimeter within which justice or fairness is sought encounter difficulties that require further ethical examination. It then presents an explanation of the approach to ethics taken by interdisciplinary, international scholars that contributed to this edited collection.

This chapter offers a phenomenological analysis of the intentionality of desires. It argues that desires are complex intentional states that entail both axiological and conative characters in relations of founding. By explicating the intentionality of desires, the chapter demonstrates that desires are similar to emotions as well as volitions but also differ crucially from both. Whereas emotion can lack conative components, desires always posit some goals or other, and strive for their posited goals. Unlike full-fledged volitions, however, desires entail deeply affective axiological components. The first section of the chapter provides the basic conceptual tools that are needed for a phenomenological analyses of the intentionality of desires. The second section distinguishes intentional desires from pre-intentional drives, affections, and feelings. It thereby clarifies the type of object-directedness that is characteristic of desire. The third section then explicates the axiological and conative constituents of desires in the interest of distinguishing desires from both emotions and volitions. The final section throws light on the temporality of desires. It argues that the intentionality of desires provides them with a specific “temporal shape” and makes them future-orientated. At the same time, this gives them a strong interest in realities and prospects of realization.

This chapter analyses the Marxian problem of transforming values into prices of production in light of Sraffa’s price system. It begins by introducing an ‘ideal’ price system where workers receive the entire net product. This system, based on ‘values’ or embodied labor, is contrasted with the ‘prices-of-production system’ where profits are distributed in proportion to total capital. The chapter then delves into the differences between these systems, highlighting Marx’s three propositions about the relationship between the rate of surplus value and the rate of profit.

It examines the special case of Sraffa’s Standard system where income distribution is independent of the price system and explores the concept of a linear operator that transforms values into prices. The chapter also discusses Marx’s simplification of uniform ‘organic composition of capital,’ where values and prices coincide. Finally, it demonstrates that the rate of surplus value is inherent in the prices-of-production system when expressed in terms of the per-capita net product.

The first chapter provides an orientation in the lives of disabled people in Kinshasa through a consideration of how the interlocutors were identified and identified themselves as disabled, as handicapé – a relatively narrowly defined and recently agreed-upon category of persons. People sometimes overtly pursued this identity for the occasional advantages it could provide, but recognition as an handicapé, and enforcing associated privileges, is far from straightforward. Rather than a depoliticised knowable fact of the body, making handicapé into a recognised identity continues to be politically contested and destabilised, among others through internal rivalries among disabled people and between their organisations. The chapter thus considers the role of a wide variety of disabled peoples’ organisations, and especially the bureaucracy represented by their membership cards, as means of establishing disability status. ‘Real’ membership and leadership was ultimately uncertain and based on constant mutual evaluation. Keeping uncertainties alive allows for an expression of values on the distribution of resources, while creating a productive uncertainty around the question of membership itself.

The Conclusion urges us to consider practices that lead to becoming ‘valuable people’ as something that goes beyond overcoming stigma to changing the evaluations that define what is good. It brings the discussions about values together with a final example of how my interlocutors pursued valued inclusion, by embracing a biomedical model of personhood where people are judged on their minds rather than on their bodies. This draws attention to the wider relevance of questions of entitlement, distribution, and values: wherever my interlocutors went, discussions of values followed.

This chapter reconceptualises environmental competence as a dynamic capability rooted in an interconnected blend of knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, understanding and desire. Drawing on foundational models, it examines the structural components of pro-environmental behaviour and links these to empirical studies emphasising the foundations of ecological action. Building on this, the chapter introduces dynamic frameworks – particularly the sustainability competency models developed by Wiek, Withycombe and Redman and extended by Redman and Wiek – which emphasise collaborative, anticipatory, normative and strategic dimensions of sustainability planning. Through reflective tasks and case-based learning, readers are encouraged to recognise and cultivate transformative competencies, such as intercultural mediation and intra-personal awareness, essential for navigating global environmental challenges. The chapter also highlights concepts like Kickwa alli kawsay and Japanese kizuna as culturally embedded pathways towards sustainable living, reinforcing the argument that environmental competence must be pluralistic, inclusive and action-oriented. Ultimately, the text advocates for a holistic shift from static notions of competence to adaptive, integrative models that empower individuals and communities to enact meaningful change within diverse societal contexts.

There are two readings of how Sellars analyzed ought-statements: a first-order expressivist reading and a metalinguistic reading. In this chapter, I argue that unpublished draft material related to the creation of a key text in Sellars’s practical philosophy, the last chapter of Science and Metaphysics, shows that Sellars at least seriously considered adopting a metalinguistic analysis of “ought.” I also explore the relation between these exegetical questions and the broader problems raised by Sellars’s thought. Which reading of Sellars on “ought” we adopt can affect our outlook on the place of norms in Sellars’s scientific naturalism. I argue that a metalinguistic reading of “ought” permits the view that norms can become perfectly implicit at Sellars’s ideal end of inquiry.

Chapter 2 reviews John Merryman’s ‘two ways of thinking’ about cultural property, rooted in an eighteenth-century dispute about the respective merits of particularism and cosmopolitanism, which continues to the present. A new section has been added on material looted from Benin.