Antigone is the only character in Sophocles who explicitly purports to value philia above hatred. She does so in the course of a short dialogue, central to the play, which turns on the nature of philia and enmity.

Some neo-Aristotelians see a strong link between virtues and eudaimonia or flourishing, but others do not. After acknowledging this difference, the chapter explores some of the possible implications of this link. The view explored in this chapter is that virtues contribute to success in goal and good pursuit, which, in turn, contributes to a flourishing life. The neo-Aristotelian view examined holds that there are things that are good for humans qua humans (e.g., close personal relationships, group belonging). Success in pursuing these goods is hypothesized to be correlated with eudaimonia. It explores several challenges in studying eudaimonia, but concludes that eudaimonia research should continue and be updated as conceptualization and measurement improves. The chapter concludes with a discussion of three well-documented human goods (close personal relationships, group belonging, and meaning) and their hypothesized relationships with specific virtues (e.g., loyalty, forgiveness, honesty).

In Chapter 2, Chen takes his readers to the roots of Chinese face and politeness: the social structure of hierarchy and the social value of harmony. Both features are traced to Confucianism, a codification of a society in which every member knows the rung they are at on the ladder of the social hierarchy and is expected to behave accordingly. To keep such a society stable, the notion of harmony is championed by Chinese philosophers, most notably Confucius. To promote harmony, Chen demonstrates, Confucius prescribes an elaborate system of behavioral rules for people of all walks of life. The monarch and the ruling class should be benevolent, subordinates loyal; parents should be caring; children filial; husbands should be responsible, wife faithful. Finally, every member of the society should strive for ren, which includes all that is good, and treat others with deference and respect. Lastly, Chen argues that the notions of hierarchy and harmony have been remarkably stable across the ages and appear to be present in contemporary Chinese-speaking societies outside mainland China: Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The essay explores how loyalty to Spain evolved from the beginning of the Spanish monarchical crisis until the end of the independence wars in Spanish America by looking at dynamics in two inter-related scales: the trans-regional and Atlantic. It analyzes royalism in connection to legal and military processes and shows how royalism both shaped and was shaped by changes during the revolutionary era.

Extant literature on Chinese elite politics tend to argue that Chinese officials work under a political system very different from a western-Weberian bureaucracy. Factional patron-client relationship is considered a dominant factor affecting political appointment of high-level officials. However, prior findings have been mainly based on governors of provincial or prefectural jurisdictions or central committee members. State Council ministers and vice-ministers are largely missing in the previous analysis. Our research examines State Council ministers and vice-ministers under the administration of President Xi Jinping. This high-level bureaucrat group arguably is most comparable to the political appointees in Weberian bureaucracies. We systematically analyze their types of patronage along the policy-politics divide and loyalty basis. We also bring in the dimension of expertise to further identify the extent of professionalization of Chinese ministers. We find a variety of patronage existing among Chinese ministers. Political loyalty is only one kind of the patronage affecting personnel configurations of the State Council.

The focus on cosmopolitan humanitarianism obscures the totality of morality in international politics, leaving the empirical study of morality in IR with two central blindspots. First, it focuses on moral conscience – our desire to do good for others – to the neglect of moral condemnation, our response to the perceived unethical behavior of others, not only against third parties but also against ourselves. In both everyday life and IR, the response is generally to morally condemn, and often to punish and retaliate. Second, the IR ethics and morality literature have not come to terms with moral principles that operate at the group level, binding groups together. When “our” group is engaged in conflict with another, we owe the group our loyalty and defer to group authorities out of moral obligation. These “binding foundations” are particularly important for IR since foreign affairs are a matter of intergroup interaction. Together this means that groups, bound by moral commitment, do not compete with others in an amoral sphere in which ethics stops at the water’s edge. Once we cast our moral net more widely, we realize that morality is everywhere, more striking in the breach than the observance.

Chapter 4 consists of an introduction to the discourses and ideologies of patronage and benefaction and to the ways in which they are appropriated throughout the Apocalypse. Across ancient Mediterranean societies, one of the primary functions of the king consisted of distributing benefits to subjects, material and otherwise, in order to establish loyalty amongst subjects as well as power that accrued therefrom, a pattern which is best understood within broader systems of patronage and benefaction. A survey of the general contours of personal, imperial, and divine patronage and benefaction reveal how some of the most basic discursive strategies, attending socio-cultural-economic realities, and underlying ethical frameworks not only appear in Revelation but constitute the primary means of depicting the relationship between God, Lamb, and the followers thereof. In sum, Revelation depicts the Lamb as a royal benefactor who dispenses divine benefits on behalf of God.

Chapter 4 consists of an introduction to the discourses and ideologies of patronage and benefaction and to the ways in which they are appropriated throughout the Apocalypse. Across ancient Mediterranean societies, one of the primary functions of the king consisted of distributing benefits to subjects, material and otherwise, in order to establish loyalty amongst subjects as well as power that accrued therefrom, a pattern which is best understood within broader systems of patronage and benefaction. A survey of the general contours of personal, imperial, and divine patronage and benefaction reveal how some of the most basic discursive strategies, attending socio-cultural-economic realities, and underlying ethical frameworks not only appear in Revelation but constitute the primary means of depicting the relationship between God, Lamb, and the followers thereof. In sum, Revelation depicts the Lamb as a royal benefactor who dispenses divine benefits on behalf of God.

There are often claims that competition law does not or should not apply to entities that operate on a not-for-profit basis. Operating on a not-for-profit is not however accepted as a reason to exclude an entities activities from the scope of competition law. Competition law is applied to non-profit providers and this essay identifies a number of ways in which not-for-profit status can influence the way the law is applied. It then considers whether, particularly when not-for-profit entities are competing with for-profit entities, whether and why modifications in the application of the law are justified.

This chapter discusses ways in which the Arthurian legend was transformed between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries by French and English romance writers, focusing on the introduction of new characters, changes to the roles of traditionally central characters, and conflicting loyalties and values. Arthur is often displaced from the central role in the plot and can seem passive and ineffective. Gawain is the Top Knight in the English tradition, but Lancelot (a French addition) becomes increasingly important, not least because of his long affair with the queen, which is a contributing factor to the final collapse of Camelot. Family matters increasingly lead to conflicts of loyalties: Morgan le Fay is hostile to her brother, Arthur, and his Orkney nephews grow in number, some loyal but some treacherous. Mordred is not only Arthur’s nephew but sometimes also his son by incest, destined to kill his father. The Grail quest features first Perceval and then Galahad (Lancelot’s illegitimate son); its spiritual values challenge the ethos of secular chivalry and ennobling love. Does this quest bring glory to Arthur’s Round Table, or is it a critique of a fatally flawed society? Important variations in medieval approaches to the legend appear through this period.

The Conclusion starts by pointing to the surprising extent to which the Wehrmacht chaplains have faded into oblivion. It summarizes some of the findings from the project of bringing the chaplains into focus. Throughout the Nazi years, chaplains proved to be reliable partners. They assembled a record of loyalty to the Nazi German state and its military before the war, and in the six years of conflict, they did not deviate from that pattern. The reason was less ideological fervor than institutional self-interest. The interests of the churches and the chaplains dovetailed with those of the Nazi leadership, at least until the last year of the war. It closes by drawing connections with chaplains in other contexts, where they also function as part of systems, with conflicting demands. Yet hope can be held out for the possibility of solidarity between people.

This chapter summarises the core ideas in Neema Parvini’s book Shakespeare’s Moral Compass (2018). It draws on the work of Jonathan Haidt and the idea that humans are ‘pre-wired’ to have certain moral tastes which conform to six foundations: care / harm, fairness / cheating, loyalty / betrayal, authority / subversion, sanctity / degradation, liberty / oppression. It argues that Shakespeare had an intuitive and dynamic understanding of these moral foundations as manifested in his plays. His ethics are always situated and experiential and seldom doctrinaire. Nonetheless, there are definite moral instructions that come through strongly and distinctly in the works that still have much to teach us in the 2020s and beyond.

We owe our first duty to the law and to the stability of society and our second to the courts. Only then can we consider our clients and others. But some lawyers put their clients first (out of concern for their fees), and the rule of law suffers. Key issues include hiding documents, defending apparently ‘guilty’ people and evading tax. Lawyers can ignore their own character development and try to draw distinctions between active and passivedeceit, especially in relation to taxation. We analyse several unethical scenarios, for example, lawyers who encourage some clients to evade tax by characterising it as avoidance and ‘arguably legal’. General morality – that is, consequentialism, Kantian ethics, virtue ethics and Confucian teaching – and the three sets of conduct rules that apply in the PRC, Hong Kong SAR and Taiwan, suggest that good tax lawyers’ efforts to assist their clients to pay less tax within the law will be evident from the transparency of their advice and their accountability in their keeping of proper records. These virtues operate in the context of a wider loyalty to clients: to keep them out of the hands of state authorities investigating taxation infringements.

Legal ethics challenges us to do the right thing when no one is looking. Beware the lawyer who tells you that something is ‘arguably legal’. Clinical legal education in your law school helps with the answer, because it places you in contact with real clients and teaches how to be a moral lawyer. But do we choose the right thing according to law only, or law and something else? Here, we use a detailed table to examine how Chinese relational ethics are strengthened by comparisons with Western duty-based and virtue ethics frameworks, in contexts including: understanding duty versus (v) knowing your values; education through law or through character development?; asking what should I do v who should I be, v to whom do I owe respect and obedience?; action v character v harmony; rightness v excellence v social cohesion; absolute duties v judgment in choosing virtues v the Confucian balance between all; general principles v particular circumstances v loyalty in pursuit of harmony; reason v emotion v respect in relationships; rule logic v caring perspectives v appropriate role relationships; and the contrasts between universal values, cultural relativity and the political community.

As described in previous chapters, the touchstone of lawyers’ professional obligations to their clients are confidentiality and care. These duties can be understood as key elements in a relationship of trust and loyalty between client and lawyer. This chapter is chiefly concerned with this relationship of loyalty, and how it can be strained by, or overlooked because of, conflicting or competing interests and duties. The final part of this chapter traces how the different conceptions of the lawyer’s role might produce diverse legal principles, such as whether loyalty is or is not imposed beyond the end of legal relationship. As a matter of professional ethics, there are differing views about whether to allow certain conflicts to arise and be managed by the lawyer or law firm, and whether such management of conflicts should be done with or without client consent.

“Loyalty and Suspicion: The Making of the Civil Service after Independence” compares how colonial classifications of identity according to loyalty and suspicion were used by bureaucracies in the new states to define the administrators themselves and to shape the making of the civil services. Purification committees to vet former civil servants of Mandate Palestine, campaigns that designated certain types of corruption as disloyalty, and the explosive fight over representation by ratio in Cyprus were all carried out along the graded axis of suspicion. The chapter follows how political affiliation, mobility, and identity shaped perceptions of loyalty and belonging to the civil service that, in turn, dramatically delineated the boundaries of citizenship through mundane and routine practices of appointment and selection in the transition from colonial rule to independence.