All Outputs (54)

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. (online). 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.

Historical, Political, and Public Responses to Death, Loss, Memory, and Mourning in the Long Nineteenth Century, 1780-1914. (2024)
Book
Davies, D., McCullough, M., Sandy, M., Scarre, G., & Whitefield, R. (Eds.). Historical, Political, and Public Responses to Death, Loss, Memory, and Mourning in the Long Nineteenth Century, 1780-1914. Routledge

Intellectual and 'Disciplinary' Responses to Death, Loss, Memory, and Mourning in the Long Nineteenth Century, 1780-1914. (2024)
Book
Whitefield, R., & Scarre, G. (Eds.). Intellectual and 'Disciplinary' Responses to Death, Loss, Memory, and Mourning in the Long Nineteenth Century, 1780-1914. Routledge

Judging the Past: Ethics, History and Memory (2023)
Book
Scarre, G. (2023). Judging the Past: Ethics, History and Memory. (1). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34511-1

This book presents an extended argument for the thesis that people of the present day are not debarred in principle from passing moral judgement on people who lived in former days, notwithstanding the inevitable differences in social and cultural cir... Read More about Judging the Past: Ethics, History and Memory.

Forgiveness and Ageing (2022)
Book Chapter
Scarre, G. (2022). Forgiveness and Ageing. In C. Wareham (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Ethics of Ageing (146-160). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108861168.012

Ought ageing people sometimes to be prepared to forgive old offences that it would not have been (so) appropriate for them to have forgiven at an earlier date? The question is tackled in the framework of a narrative conception of human life that focu... Read More about Forgiveness and Ageing.

Who Is Entitled to Forgive? A Study of ‘Third-Party’ and ‘Proxy’ Forgiveness (2022)
Book Chapter
Scarre, G. (2022). Who Is Entitled to Forgive? A Study of ‘Third-Party’ and ‘Proxy’ Forgiveness. In P. Satne, & K. M. Scheiter (Eds.), Conflict and Resolution: The Ethics of Forgiveness, Revenge, and Punishment (207-222). (1). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77807-1_11

Is it ever admissible for a ‘third party’ to grant forgiveness to an offender for an injury committed against another person? A distinction should be drawn between cases in which someone offers her own forgiveness to an offender for an injury inflict... Read More about Who Is Entitled to Forgive? A Study of ‘Third-Party’ and ‘Proxy’ Forgiveness.

Killing swiftly: The effects of COVID-19 on the experience of the elderly (2022)
Book Chapter
Scarre, G. (2022). Killing swiftly: The effects of COVID-19 on the experience of the elderly. In I. Gammel, & J. Wang (Eds.), Creative Resilience and COVID-19 (61-69). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003213536-8

This essay discusses the increase in the sense of vulnerability that many older people felt with the onset of COVID-19, which reverses the sense of security in old age which has been developing over recent decades. Pascal Bruckner’s book A Brief Eter... Read More about Killing swiftly: The effects of COVID-19 on the experience of the elderly.

Do We Have Moral Duties to Past People? (2021)
Book Chapter
Scarre, G. (2021). Do We Have Moral Duties to Past People?. In S. M. Gardiner (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Intergenerational Ethics. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190881931.013.34

This chapter aims, first, to investigate the metaphysical difficulties concerning the status of the dead and the basis of the obligations that the living owe to them and, second, to determine in more detail what rights the dead may have and what obli... Read More about Do We Have Moral Duties to Past People?.

Das Nichtvergebbare Vergeben? Moralische Verantwortung und Ideologisch Motiviertes Unrechtshandeln (2020)
Book Chapter
Scarre, G. (2020). Das Nichtvergebbare Vergeben? Moralische Verantwortung und Ideologisch Motiviertes Unrechtshandeln. In W. Bialas, & L. Fritz (Eds.), Nationalsozialistische Ideologie und Ethic: Dokumentation Einer Debatte (351-366). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Utilitarianism and Evil (2018)
Book Chapter
Scarre, G. (2018). Utilitarianism and Evil. In D. Hedley, C. Meister, & C. Taliaferro (Eds.), The history of evil in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries : 1700-1900 CE (118-135). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351138406-9

“Utilitarianism” is the name of a family of ethical theories that take as the yardstick of moral appraisal the propensity of acts to increase or decrease human well-being (or, more generally, the well-being of all sentient creatures). Emerging to pro... Read More about Utilitarianism and Evil.

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.

The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Aging. (2016)
Book
Scarre, G. (2016). The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Aging. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39356-2

This comprehensive handbook presents the major philosophical perspectives on the nature, prospects, problems and social context of age and aging in an era of dramatically increasing life-expectancy. Drawing on the latest research in gerontology, medi... Read More about The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Aging..

The aging of people and of things. (2016)
Book Chapter
Scarre, G. (2016). The aging of people and of things. In G. Scarre (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Aging (87-100). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39356-2_6

This chapter explores some of the similarities and differences between the ageing of people and of other things, in particular the artefacts that we create to serve our ends. When we describe people as ‘ageing’, we usually mean that they have arrived... Read More about The aging of people and of things..

Is it possible to be better off dead? (2016)
Book Chapter
Scarre, G. (2017). Is it possible to be better off dead?. In J. K. Davis (Ed.), Ethics at the end of life (11-28). Routledge

Although the coherence of supposing that a person could ever be better off dead has sometimes been questioned on metaphysical grounds, I argue in favour of the common intuition that in some circumstances death could be better for a person than contin... Read More about Is it possible to be better off dead?.

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.

Forgiveness and Identification (2016)
Journal Article
Scarre, G. (2016). Forgiveness and Identification. Philosophia, 44(4), 1021-1028. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9688-9

Philosophical discussion of forgiveness has mainly focused on cases in which victims and offenders are known to each other. But it commonly happens that a victim brings an offender under a definite description (e.g. ‘the boy who kicked his football t... Read More about Forgiveness and Identification.

On taking back forgiveness (2015)
Journal Article
Scarre, G. (2016). On taking back forgiveness. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 19(4), 931-944. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-015-9651-z

I argue that the effectiveness of forgiveness in the healing of relationships is dependent on both the givers and recipients of forgiveness understanding that once it has been granted, forgiveness is not normally able to be retracted. When we forgive... Read More about On taking back forgiveness.

Virtuous condonation (2014)
Journal Article
Scarre, G. (2014). Virtuous condonation. Philosophical Papers, 43(4), 405-428. https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2014.976442

Moral philosophers have mostly condemned the condonation of a bad act as being close to complicity in wrongdoing or, at best, as indicative of a lax moral conscience. I argue, in contrast, that condoning a wrongful act is sometimes not only permissib... Read More about Virtuous condonation.