What kind(s) of thinking and doing should inform how teachers might lead (working) lives that are “ethical,” and how should this translate to preservice teacher education? Two broad schools of thought are identified: teaching as an inherently “‘moral” endeavor, driven by “values” and requiring an educational approach to teacher formation; and teaching as a “profession” requiring formation following models of executive education found in other vocations, particularly medicine. After reviewing these two perspectives, consideration is given to programs that might best address these aims, assuming this is needed beyond learning on the job. The chapter concludes by identifying promising practices, established and emerging practices, across both moral and professional understandings, arguing that in each case these need to be adapted and developed to meet the needs of teachers more equally across a diverse range of cultural contexts.

The introduction asks the question of why social scientists should study virtues empirically. It offers five reasons: (1) humans are moral animals, (2) moral behavior can be understood as an expression of acquired traits, (3) it is psychologically realistic to think that ordinary humans can acquire and express virtue traits, (4) moral education is valuable, and (5) virtues are often taken to be essential to a good life. The Introduction then addresses three challenges that virtue scientists must face: (1) the absence of empirically oriented virtue theory, (2) the overreliance of simple survey design in psychology, and (3) virtue skeptics. The Introduction concludes with an outline of the chapters of the book and how these chapters comprise the sections of the book.

This chapter explores the lessons that can be drawn from the ways in which bioethical governance operated during the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines the way in which our thinking is framed as this may substantially determine the policy choices that we make, it explores the contemporary context of public reasoning, and finally it examines the governance of ethical concerns. It proposes that there must be openness and transparency about the ethical issues and approaches that are being applied. It recognises that people do not necessarily need to agree with government decisions, but they do need to accept that they are reasonable and responsible. These principles can be brought together by using the techniques of deliberative democracy to review the ethical frameworks that have been developed during the pandemic for revision as necessary. Lessons can be drawn to help people prepare better for the governance of bioethical deliberations in future emergencies.

I go to the swimming pool and everybody’s body is on show, including my own. I don’t have rippling pecs, and I am in my 60s, an age when you think I wouldn’t care about my body anymore, but I do. Another swimmer, in her 30s, is just getting out of the water. She is ‘a big girl’, and gets looks, of the wrong kind, even though I have watched her plough the lanes and work hard, keeping enough stamina back to sprint her final lap. If I am self-conscious of my body, how self-conscious is she? Every look is a dagger to her self-esteem. I try to put myself in her place, chanting to myself, ‘Don’t put me down, don’t put me down.’ People who say, ‘You’ve got yourself to blame’ have got it wrong. Even though the evidence is that body stigma only contributes to obesity, people stigmatize large body size – especially in the Global North among poorer people, females, and Black and Indigenous peoples. I discuss how obesity stigma comes from the type of moralizing thought that is embedded in present-day Western societies. I go on to consider how obesity stigma is used to develop and maintain social hierarchies in times of food-plenty.

The moral foundations of crisis response seem simple: responders save lives, reduce human suffering, and pursue a lofty societal goal. Yet, crises often produce morally complicated situations as well. Crisis organizations have adopted norms, which help responders to work in complex moral contexts, but these norms cause moral distress when responders do not fully agree with them. Responders can choose to deviate from the norms and follow their inner moral convictions instead. This will not remove the moral complexities of their work though. Rather, it means that crisis professionals have to resolve moral dilemmas on their own and bear the full weight of moral responsibility. The moral dilemma for responders concerns this tension between following organizational norms and their own convictions. In response, crisis organizations could pursue an ethical culture by promoting organizational deliberation on moral questions in crisis operations. Creating an ethical culture allows for an open, flexible attitude by enabling active dialogue and collective reflection on moral dilemmas in crises. It facilitates a confrontation with the inevitable moral discomforts of crisis response.

Throughout this guide, you will find that, in addition to their ideological or theoretical foundations, most of the considerations, discussions and decisions you participate in through the editing process are necessarily framed within a moral or ethical lens. Here, I differentiate between the terms:

• moral – personal/individual conceptions of right and wrong, and how we should live – and

• ethical – upholding standards for right and wrong/good and bad in a particular setting.

Computational work on morality has emerged from two major sources – empirical moral science and philosophical ethics.Moral science has revealed a diversity of moral phenomena: moral behavior (including moral decision making), moral judgments, moral emotions, moral sanctions, moral communication.Philosophical ethics has long focused on moral decision making, and this is where most of the computational work has emerged. Much of it uses rule-based systems rooted in formal logic but is complemented by connectionist, case-based, and other approaches, and more recently by reinforcement learning models.Computational work on moral judgments is sparser, in part because moral judgments build on numerous complex mental capacities, such as causal and counterfactual reasoning and theory of mind. Nonetheless, some models of blame judgments have emerged that draw on information processing approaches from empirical moral science. Even less work has tackled moral emotions, sanctions, and communication – phenomena that present vast challenges and opportunities for future work.

Chapter 7 addresses the following question: How can reflexivity be promoted in the collective context of investor-state dispute settlement, so as to help bridge individually held views by arbitrators that often come into competition or conflict with one another? The response that this chapter offers is that collective reflexivity can be promoted by acknowledging the presence of moral responsibility in arbitrators and by arbitrators committing to five distinct judicial virtues, namely: faith, humility, acquiescence, integrity, and candour. Judicial virtues are habits and mental dispositions, not an equation for the courtroom. They are thus meant as a framework offering guidelines and a roadmap to develop better deliberative practices. The chapter analyses the content of each virtue and assesses observable behaviour in investor-state dispute settlement under each of them.

This discussion of “Johnson and the essay” analyzes Johnson’s relationship with the essay – both his own idea of the essay and as compared with others’ practice in the form. After showing that the spirit of the essay is pervasive within Johnson’s writings and not confined to his major periodicals, the argument focuses on the special case of the periodical essay and draws attention to the moral and philosophical pertinence of The Rambler (Johnson’s “pure wine”), taking examples from his serious and comic modes. The account concludes by examining the experience of Johnson’s singular style and the fit between individual essays and the shape and meaning of the succession of papers overall. If Johnson’s essays do not resemble those of Michel de Montaigne in temper or structure, they are, in the case of The Rambler, a single-handed intellectual project of a similar order and a comparable endeavor in the art of self-founding.

The short story as a way into discussions of plot. The event-plot short story. Synchronised (reader and character) moments of discovery as a key pleasure in fiction. Poetic justice. The relationship of the character to the theme. The Chekhovian / slice-of-life / anti-plot short story. Plot is sidelined as a prime focus in favour of narratives reflective of human experience. Plot and time: plot is only available in retrospect and the location of the reader in – and in relationship to – the narrative defines the meaning of the story. Telling it slant: the usefulness of an indirect route to meaning.

‘Plot may depend not so much on a sequence of events unfolding chronologically as on what the protagonists and the reader know about the events and when they know it.’

Chapter 7 addresses the manner in which the International Court of Justice interprets and applies compensation as a remedy of international law. The definition, function and categories of compensation are issues that this chapter addresses, along with its relationship to other remedies of international law, in particular to restitution in kind. Further, the requests that states submit before the Court demonstrate that two main types of requests regarding compensation are usually included in pleadings: requests for determined compensation and requests for undetermined compensation. The mechanisms used by the Court to address compensation for material and/or moral damages and for damages caused directly to states and/or damages caused to individuals are relevant for clarifying this remedy of international law. Through cases such as the Corfu Channel Case, the Diallo Case and the Chorzow Factory Case, the Court has shaped the manner in which compensation is assessed for disputes relating to damages caused to the environment or to addressing moral damages caused to individuals through equitable considerations.

If hegemony was indeed the overriding mode of power shaping macro-political structure for the Classic Maya, we need to know more about its working principles. A political landscape that was essentially heterarchical but pervaded by great asymmetries in power is by no means unusual in world terms. Indeed, if we maintain our focus on political relations over those of political forms, we can identify a variety of historically known societies that were organised and functioned in very similar ways.

Chapter 9 begins Part IV of the book, which analyses violence as a problem of impurity. This chapter focuses on what the grammar of impurity enabled biblical writers to say about the affront of violence. It draws on the ritual insights of Catherine Bell (via William Gilders), the metaphor theory insights of Joseph Lam, and the cognitive research of Thomas Kazen and Richard Beck. Psalm 106 describes the impure consequences of ‘mixing’ with the nations that Israel failed to expel from the land. Practices like child sacrifice polluted the land and people, and led to exile. Bloodshed, in this poetic retelling, disintegrated the sacred order that bound together Yhwh, the people, and the land. Isaiah 1 insists that entrance into Yhwh’s presence demanded social as well as ritual purity, and even suggests social means of ‘purifying’ from bloodshed. Lamentations 4 attributes exile to the bloodshed in the ‘midst’ of Jerusalem, and describes the people as those defiled among the nations. For Ezekiel, bloodshed was an affront to Yhwh’s name and sanctity in the land. Finally, according to Numbers 35, blood from homicides polluted the land. As such, it was a threat to the ongoing presence of Yhwh in the land.

Chapter 10 reflects on four related conceptions of bloodshed’s defilement. It focuses on the question of what the language of impurity and defilement enabled biblical writers to say about the problem of violence. First, the persistence of uncleanness thus enables biblical writers to speak about the residual effects of bloodshed (and idolatry) that punishment alone could not resolve. Second, the severity of violence refers to ways biblical writers index the ‘high stakes’ of bloodshed with reference to Yhwh’s presence in the camp and the location of bloodshed in Jerusalem. Moreover, it marked the outer boundaries of what was considered acceptable in Israel. Third, the disgust of violence designates the moral revulsion that bloodshed elicits, or at least should elicit. Finally, the purification of violence reflects ways that biblical writers constructed new meanings from the trauma of violence or national disaster by envisioning divine cleansing of the people and land in preparation for the preservation or return of Yhwh’s presence.