Mutilation, along with all forms of maltreatment of the dead, was widely condemned by Greek authors of the Classical period. In a culture where the obligation to bury and respect the dead was seen as one of the strongest moral compulsions universal to all men, mistreating the dead was considered to be the most outrageous and unholy of actions, more suitable, as Herodotus states, for barbarians than for Greeks, ‘and even in them we find it loathsome’. The importance of the (...) theme of mutilating the dead in theIliad, where one can find numerous and surprisingly detailed descriptions of warriors maltreating the corpses of their enemies, is therefore puzzling, to say the least. (shrink)

M. Finley in a well-known and influential article, established the theory that the bridegroom offered gifts to the bride's father, which had their recompense in a counter-gift or dowry to the groom and the bride; these gifts must be equal in value.

Abstract:Alasdair Maclntyre (1984) asserts that the ethical systems of the Enlightenment (formalism and utilitarianism) have failed to provide a meaningful definition of “good.” Lacking such a definition, business managers have no internal standards by which they can morally evaluate their roles or acts. Maclntyre goes on to claim that managers have substituted external measures of “winning” or “effectiveness” for any internal concept of good. He supports a return to the Aristotelian notion of virtue or “excellence.” Such a system of virtue (...) ethics depends on an interrelationship of the community, one’s roles in that community, and the virtues one needs to perform that role well. This article develops Maclntyre’s concept of virtue ethics and shows how this paradigm fits well with existing theories about organizational behavior. (shrink)

There has been a long tradition of interpreting Plato as a rational egoist. Over the past few decades, however, some scholars have challenged this reading. While Rational Egoism appeals to many ordinary folk, in sophisticated philosophical circles it has fallen out of favor as a general and complete account of the nature of reasons for action. I argue that while the theory of practical rationality that is often equated with rational egoism—a view that I call ‘Simple-Minded Rational Egoism'—is neither plausible (...) nor endorsed by Plato in his Republic, there is a more complex version of Rational Egoism to which Plato is indeed committed. Moreover, such a conception of practical rationality is not vulnerable to the standard set of objections that contemporary philosophers have made against Rational Egoism. (shrink)

The starting-point of this paper is one of the most disastrous pieces of advocacy in modern legal history. In October 1960, Penguin Books were prosecuted under Section 2 of the 1959 Obscene Publications Act for publishing an unexpurgated edition ofLady Chatterley's Lover.On the first day of the trial, Mr. Mervyn Griffith-Jones, Senior Treasury Counsel, did his best to wreck his case on the strength of one remark. He had previously tried to show that he was himself a man of the (...) world: ‘Let me emphasize this on behalf of the prosecution: do not approach this matter in any priggish, high-minded, super-correct, mid-Victorian manner’. He now proceeded to work this out in practice: ‘Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters—because girls can read as well as boys—reading this book? Is it a book that you would have lying around in your own house? Is it even a book that you would wish your wife or your servants to read?’. (shrink)