This book grew out of a conference, hosted by Bob Brecher, Michael Neu, and colleagues in CAPPE, the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics, at the University of Brighton in March/April 2015. The conference was organized by the ‘Understanding Conflict’ research cluster. I am enormously grateful to colleagues in Brighton for the work that they do in these areas, for inviting...

When he considered the world as it stood in 1918, after the Great War, Yeats saw a condition of ‘mere anarchy’. At the centre of a world in which ‘things fall apart’, his sense was that the world was9781786601032:chpt_fig_001...

In between the two terms that I have introduced in my opening introductory comments—complicity and responsibility—we can usefully insert a third: compliance. The question with which to open the exploration of our issue is: when does an act of compliance with something ostensibly neutral or even good make me...

Shakespeare was much concerned with bonds, both social and financial. In his plays, the bond related to issues of justice and of proper and responsible judgement. When Cordelia is placed in an impossible position at the opening of King Lear, she adverts to her familial bond. The opening scene is one where her dowry is to be revealed, and she has two suitors in marriage waiting in the wings:...

Human skin operates as a kind of boundary, demarcating the limits of our interiority while also permitting our aesthetic and experiential engagement with the materials of the world. As such, it is central to our identity. We can play with that identity—put skin into a game, as it were—by disguise or...

In some regimes, complicity is unavoidable, especially if one intends to survive for any length of time. The regimes in which this is most obvious are those that are governed by totalitarian means or under a mode of extreme authoritarianism. The same, of course, can be said for institutions: authoritarian governance...

Iclosed my last chapter with a brief reflection on the new walls and borders that are being erected across the geo-political world.. Although I focused attention on the fact that walls are being erected to prevent the arrival of refugees into various European countries, I could also have mentioned several other recent...

The series is published in partnership with the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE), University of Brighton.