Efforts to develop “empathic AI” often assume a universal definition for empathy – a singular, objective understanding of “human” experiences. This framing treats achieving empathic AI as an optimization challenge, where researchers should find the “correct” way to align AI with human empathy. In this chapter, we challenge this assumption by emphasizing the empathy’s multifaceted nature and examining how variation across its forms and the social groups we are embedded within complicates efforts to design a universally applicable empathic AI. We argue that codifying empathy into artificial systems is difficult, given that empathy is an inherently context-dependent phenomenon. Drawing on recent evidence of cultural biases in large language models, we highlight broader ethical, epistemic, and potentially existential concerns in designing machines that “understand” or “feel” others. We conclude by advocating for a more contextualized and culture-aware approach to empathic AI, moving beyond the reductionist notion of “humans” as a monolith.

If artificial agents can behave empathically, could this contribute to the development of more ethical AI systems? This question becomes especially important and timely with the speed of development and increasing use-cases in AI, has been raising concerns about their ethical use. In this chapter, I tried to give a nuanced exploration of different components of computational empathy, and the opportunities and challenges they present on different stages of the moral decision-making process. Rather than offering a simple “yes” or “no” answer, it suggests that the integration of empathy into AI systems depends on which components are employed and when. The chapter reviews existing research on empathy’s connection to moral and ethical behavior in humans, followed by a critical examination of how these insights could be applied to artificial agents.

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.

In Behemoth, Hobbes says "that what one calls vice, another calls virtue, as their present affections lead them" and that "[t]he virtue of a subject is comprehended wholly in obedience to the laws of the commonwealth." This claim is debunking – nothing more to virtue than obedience to law – and commendatory – understanding that’s one duty is to obey the law is the mark of virtue. Any tension can be resolved by supposing that while virtue does not exist outside of civil society, once civil society is established, virtue becomes possible though the ability of subjects to conform their actions to their sovereign’s law. Yet Hobbes also says that the "Science" of the laws of nature is the "true and onely Moral Philosophy", and thus also the "science of Vertue and Vice," that the laws of nature oblige in the state of nature (in conscience), and suggests in various ways both that it is possible (though dangerous) to be a virtuous or "Just man" in the state of nature and that such men may have an important role to play in establishing civil society. This chapter explores the puzzles raised by Hobbes’s discussion in Leviathan of virtue and duty to obey the law.

This chapter argues that rejecting belief in free will – far from being nihilistic or socially corrosive – can be morally transformative and psychologically liberating. While many fear that disbelief in free will would undermine personal responsibility, justice, and meaning, the author argues for a position he calls optimistic skepticism, which combines free will skepticism with a hopeful vision of human flourishing. This chapter outlines the case for skepticism about the kind of free will needed for basic desert moral responsibility – the idea that individuals fundamentally deserve blame or praise for their actions. Drawing on philosophy, psychology, and empirical evidence, the chapter critiques both libertarian and compatibilist accounts of free will and defends a position known as hard incompatibilism, which holds that we lack the control in action required for basic desert. The chapter also introduces the moral and practical implications of this view, arguing that abandoning the belief in free will enables more humane approaches to criminal justice, social inequality, and interpersonal relationships.

This chapter addresses the common concern that free will skepticism undermines morality. The author argues that this fear is misplaced. While skepticism about free will and basic desert moral responsibility challenges some traditional moral practices – particularly backward-looking blame – it does not eliminate the meaningfulness of moral judgments or ethical life. The chapter explains how axiological judgments of good and bad, deontic “ought” judgments, and respect for persons can all be preserved within a framework that denies basic desert. Drawing on contemporary moral philosophy, the chapter defends the idea that moral life is still possible – and even enriched – when we shift away from blame and toward virtue. The second half of the chapter turns from deontic ethics to virtue ethics, especially Aristotelian and Buddhist traditions, arguing that the central question of morality is not “What ought I do?” but “What kind of person should I be?” From this standpoint, free will skepticism supports the cultivation of virtues like compassion, humility, and loving-kindness, which do not rely on desert-based assumptions. Rather than weakening our moral lives, the author contends, free will skepticism provides a more compassionate, realistic, and psychologically attuned ethical framework – one that better promotes human flourishing and moral development.

Martin Amis’s prose style has been profoundly influential, and so has the consistency with which he foregrounded questions of style in his fiction and non-fiction. This chapter discusses what Amis meant when he spoke about style. It also discusses what it might be possible to say about style as such and argues that we can only really argue about a given style. It goes on to anatomise Martin Amis’s prose style using the tools of close reading, quoting from his novels Money and Time’s Arrow as well as his memoir Experience and his short story ‘The Coincidence of the Arts’. It discusses Amis’s style as a hybrid of postmodern and liberal-humanist insights into the nature of the world; as essentially urban; as positing style as a dandified response to British post-imperial decline; and, finally, as intrinsically comic.

This chapter is couched in my family narrative of economic development and personal travel during a global economic recession. I use this backdrop to frame – and make accessible – theoretical discussions of cultural psychology (the idea that individuals and cultures make each other up) and value pluralism (the idea that there can be different but equal sets of co-existing values, beliefs, and ways of life). I apply the idea of pluralism to diverse economic systems, tracing foundational orientations and debates around capitalism and socialism, animated by observations of the lived realities in the global economic systems I have travelled to.

Drawing together the previous chapters’ discussions of feminine respectability, the Conclusion focuses on the tensions young women experience as they attempt to reconcile personal ambition with societal expectations and as they navigate quotidian life in the city alongside the longer-term objectives of ending their single status. The Conclusion reiterates the book’s two arguments, articulating how feminine youthhood is a period shaped by contingencies, which not only render young women vulnerable but also encourage them to contribute to the uncertainties that shape urban life in contemporary Nigeria. While the previous chapters have discussed how dissimulation, illusion, and concealment shape young women’s lives, and the ambiguous attitudes young women have towards these forms of uncertainty, the Conclusion questions when the fake is categorically immoral. Doing so, young women are inserted into a broader discussion of the means of sustaining, as well as the perceived threats to, social reproduction in urban Nigeria.

This chapter presses the case against the “independence” thesis by pointing out that for Kant there are only two forms of practical reason, merely empirical practical reason governed by the goal of prudence in the pursuit of happiness, and pure practical reason, which leads to morality. Since Kant is explicit that the goal of just government is not the happiness of its subjects, it cannot be founded in prudence and empirical practical reason. It can only be grounded on pure practical reason, the goal of which is the equal, maximal freedom of all, in the guise of humanity as the end in itself. The second half of the chapter continues the argument of Chapter 4: the moral demand on political leadership makes sense only if the goals of government are themselves determined by morality, that is, by pure practical reason.

In the 1784 essay “Idea for a Universal History,” Kant famously states that the great problem for human beings to solve is that of a just civil condition. This is difficult to achieve because humans are like timber that can be made to grow straight with appropriate coercion, while their would-be masters are made of the same crooked timber but have no one to coerce them into growing straight. The solution is that masters, that is, political rulers, need correct concepts and much experience but above all good will – that is, they must be motivated by their respect by the moral law, not by their own fear of coercion. Thus while “correct concepts,” that is, just laws, are necessary conditions for just government, only the morality of persons in positions of power can provide sufficient conditions for such government.

Chapter 2 focuses on offensive language, positioned at the midpoint in the spectrum discussed in the first chapter. We situate offence and the acts of causing and taking offence in the theory of (im)politeness. The chapter reviews the development of (im)politeness theory through three waves and situates the current book within this theoretical progression. In this chapter, building on the previous literature, we also propose a model of offence which distinguishes between legal and moral (interactional) transgressions. To discuss the legal side, we focus on UK law, examining the challenges surrounding the concept of grossly offensive through a discussion of several high-profile cases. We also focus on moral-order transgressions which occur when interactional norms are breached. The chapter also argues that taking offence, whether face-to-face or online, could be a strategic social action used to, among other things, assert boundaries or influence social norms. As we argue, online offence may function as a tool for collective action, for raising awareness and for promoting social change.