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All Outputs (24)

How to Be a ‘Good’ Collector: Some Ethical Reflections on the Private Collecting of Cultural Heritage (2024)
Journal Article
Scarre, G. (2024). How to Be a ‘Good’ Collector: Some Ethical Reflections on the Private Collecting of Cultural Heritage. International Journal of Cultural Property, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0940739124000079

This paper discusses some of the major ethical issues that arise in connection with the widespread holding of cultural heritage by private collectors. If, as many people believe, and UNESCO has affirmed, cultural heritage is, in some morally signific... Read More about How to Be a ‘Good’ Collector: Some Ethical Reflections on the Private Collecting of Cultural Heritage.

Alkaline hydrolysis and respect for the dead: an ethical critique (2024)
Journal Article
Scarre, G. (2024). Alkaline hydrolysis and respect for the dead: an ethical critique. Mortality, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2024.2338284

Alkaline hydrolysis is an increasingly popular method of disposing of human corpses, which involves dissolving them into a solution of 95% water and 5% alkali, producing some bone residue and a liquid waste that can be flushed into the sewer system o... Read More about Alkaline hydrolysis and respect for the dead: an ethical critique.

The ‘constitutive thought’ of regret (2017)
Journal Article
Scarre, G. (2017). The ‘constitutive thought’ of regret. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 25(5), 569-585. https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2017.1381402

In this paper I defend and develop Bernard Williams’ claim that the ‘constitutive thought’ of regret is ‘something like “how much better if it had been otherwise”’. An introductory section on cognitivist theories of emotion is followed by a detailed... Read More about The ‘constitutive thought’ of regret.

‘The compages, the bonds and rivets of the race’: W. E. Gladstone on the keeping of books (2017)
Journal Article
Scarre, G. (2017). ‘The compages, the bonds and rivets of the race’: W. E. Gladstone on the keeping of books. Library and Information History, 33(3), 182-194. https://doi.org/10.1080/17583489.2017.1334860

For the great Victorian Liberal statesman and Prime Minister W. E. Gladstone, books were the ‘voices of the dead’ and ‘a main instrument of communication with the vast human procession of the other world’. Gladstone's 1890 article ‘On Books and the H... Read More about ‘The compages, the bonds and rivets of the race’: W. E. Gladstone on the keeping of books.

Fallible infallibility? Gladstone's anti-Vatican pamphlets in the light of Mill's On Liberty (2016)
Journal Article
Scarre, G. (2016). Fallible infallibility? Gladstone's anti-Vatican pamphlets in the light of Mill's On Liberty. Victorian Literature and Culture, 44(02), 223-237. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1060150315000595

When W. E. Gladstone published in November 1874 his spirited pamphlet The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Political Expostulation, he seems to have taken many people by surprise. In its issue of the 21st of that month, Punch p... Read More about Fallible infallibility? Gladstone's anti-Vatican pamphlets in the light of Mill's On Liberty.

Lest we forget: how and why we should remember the Great War (2014)
Journal Article
Scarre, G. (2014). Lest we forget: how and why we should remember the Great War. Ethical Perspectives, 21(3), 321-344. https://doi.org/10.2143/ep.21.3.3044848

Because commemorations of historic events say as much about the present as the past, it is important to think carefully about how and why we should remember the Great War in the centenary year of its outbreak. Commemoration must not be allowed to deg... Read More about Lest we forget: how and why we should remember the Great War.

Privacy and the Dead (2013)
Journal Article
Scarre, G. (2013). Privacy and the Dead. Philosophy in the Contemporary World, 19(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.5840/pcw201219112

The privacy of the dead might be thought to be violated by, for instance, the disinterment for research purposes of human physical remains or the posthumous revelation of embarrassing facts about people's private lives. But are there any moral rights... Read More about Privacy and the Dead.

Can there be a good death? (2012)
Journal Article
Scarre, G. (2012). Can there be a good death?. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 18(5), 1082-1086. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2753.2012.01922.x

While some deaths are worse than others, there is no such thing as a ‘good death’ since the plausible desiderata of a ‘good death’ form an inconsistent set. Because death is of the greatest existential consequence to us, a ‘good’ death must be a self... Read More about Can there be a good death?.

Political reconciliation, forgiveness and grace (2011)
Journal Article
Scarre, G. (2011). Political reconciliation, forgiveness and grace. Studies in Christian Ethics, 24(2), 171-182. https://doi.org/10.1177/0953946810397442

This essay argues that the overuse of the idiom of forgiveness has distorted our understanding of the nature and requirements of political reconciliation, and proposes its supplementation by a notion of grace. This is a mode of response to wrongs tha... Read More about Political reconciliation, forgiveness and grace.

Archaeology and respect for the dead (2003)
Journal Article
Scarre, G. (2003). Archaeology and respect for the dead. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 20(3), 237-249. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.0264-3758.2003.00250.x

Contemporary archaeologists commonly acknowledge moral responsibilities to the descendants of the subjects whose remains they disturb. There has been comparatively little reflection within the professional community on whether they have duties to the... Read More about Archaeology and respect for the dead.