Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value

05/06/2026

Publication Alert! Lesley Jamieson's recent article, "Why Fun Aunties Matter: A Modest Account" has been published open access in the Journal of Applied Philosophy.

Abstract: In this article, I offer a child-centred account of the value of company-keeping relationships between children and adults. These are relationships enjoyed by a child and an adult who is neither a mere acquaintance nor integrally involved in that child's care or upbringing. The adult party might, for example, be a visiting grandparent, a neighbour the child likes to help with gardening, or a ‘fun auntie’ who occasionally babysits. After defining company-keeping relationships, I argue that their child-centred value varies significantly across contexts depending on how the adult party relates to the child and on the needs of the particular child. In some contexts, they promote the child's capacity for independent agency and mitigate undue shame. When these goods arise, it is not despite but because of the fact that the adult party is an outsider to routine family life and is not responsible for the child's ‘training’. I then investigate whether such relationships should be protected or promoted to respect children's rights of association. While I conclude that most company-keeping relationships are excluded from these rights, I defend the more modest view that a child can be morally wronged by a parent who severs or prevents them from forming company-keeping relationships.

In this article, I offer a child-centred account of the value of company-keeping relationships between children and adults. These are relationships enjoyed by a child and an adult who is neither a me...

04/06/2026

Publication Alert! Kamila Pacovská's article, "Humility, Ambition, and Social Status", has just been published in Philosophia as part of a collection on the philosophy of social comparison.

Abstract: In an influential account of humility, Robert C. Roberts defines humility as low concern for one’s social status as opposed to pride and its various forms. But how is the status in question to be understood? Is the paradigmatic case of an unhumble person someone who craves to win the most prestigious philosophy chair in the world? In this contribution, I will show that the unhumble caring for social status can have an internalised form which is much more difficult to identify since it manifests as a desire to be excellent or superior not in the eyes of others but in one’s own eyes, as is the case with self-satisfaction or smugness. In order to clarify this, I contrast this invidious unhumble case with an innocuous ambition, say, to be an excellent philosopher. I will consider and reject two candidates for marking the invidious case: first, the competitive emotions of envy and jealousy experienced by its subject; and second, the competitive or comparative way in which her superior status is constructed. I conclude that in order to explain the difference, it is necessary to look deeper into the person’s moral psychology, namely, into her sense of her own worth. I claim that what marks the invidious case of the excellent philosopher is a certain misconception of her sense of her worth: she not only cares too much for the social status her excellence gives her, but she also derives her own worth from it. An unhumble person thus mistakes her (internalised) social worth for her worth as a person.

In an influential account of humility, Robert C. Roberts defines humility as low concern for one’s social status as opposed to pride and its various forms. But how is the status in question to be understood? Is the paradigmatic case of an unhumble person someone who craves to win the most prestigi...

03/06/2026

👏Congratulations to Doc. Mgr. Ondřej Beran, Ph.D for his recent appointment as a professor in philosophy!

👏Univerzita Pardubice rozšířila řady profesorů. Prezident republiky jmenoval profesorem v oboru filozofie doc. Mgr. Ondřeje Berana, Ph.D., který působí na Fakulta filozofická Univerzity Pardubice.

Prof. Ondřej Beran se dlouhodobě věnuje etice, politické filozofii, filozofii jazyka a dílu Ludwiga Wittgensteina. Na Univerzitě Pardubice působí od roku 2017 jako výzkumník Centra pro etiku jako studium lidské hodnoty. Je garantem doktorského studia filozofie a navazujícího magisterského studijního programu Etika a politická filozofie.

„Velmi si vážím toho, že se Filozofie zařadila mezi stěžejní vědní obory realizované na Univerzitě Pardubice. Studium hodnot člověka pomáhá porozumět současným společenským otázkám, orientovat se v nich a řešit je na rovině individuální i celospolečenské. Výzkum profesora Berana je respektovaný v širokém mezinárodním akademickém prostředí. Panu profesorovi srdečně gratuluji a přeji mu mnoho dalších úspěchů,“ uvedl rektor Univerzity Pardubice prof. Libor Čapek.

Více tady: https://www.upce.cz/univerzita-pardubice-ma-noveho-profesora-na-fakulte-filozoficke

Foto: Ministerstvo školství, mládeže a tělovýchovy

26/05/2026

Yesterday, two of our MA students, Richard Ubasinachi Ezeala and Artashes Boyajian, successfully completed their state exams and thesis defenses! Richard's thesis is entitled, "Assessing Moral Responsibility in the Presence of Luck: A Case for Constitutive Moral Luck" (supervised by Lesley Jamieson); Artashes's thesis is "On the Issue of Cultural Integration of Immigrants" (supervised by Václav Sklenář).

Congratulations, we wish both of our students all the best in their future endeavours!

19/05/2026

Last weekend, an engaged community of inquiry from across Europe met at our University for the Self(less)-Care Conference. Thanks to Jorge Arjona and Laura Candiotto for organising it and the "Loving is Caring" Team for their support!
To learn more about this Research Team: https://ff.upce.cz/en/ff/the-scientific-team-of-laura-candiotto

13/05/2026

Reminder: this conference (Self(less) Care: Ancient and Contemporary Care Ethics from a Labour Perspective) will be taking place on Friday and Saturday (May 15-16).

12/05/2026

Publication Alert! John Lippitt's article, "Social Comparison and the Vices of Pride: A Kierkegaardian Perspective", has just been published in Philosophia (open access).

Abstract: This article connects Kierkegaard’s warnings about social comparison to “vices of pride” such as self-righteousness, domination, presumption, vanity and hyper-autonomy. In Sect. 1, I stress the ways these vices use social comparison and show their connections with self-importance. In Sect. 2, I investigate Kierkegaard’s prima facie startling claim that “pride is cowardliness”, showing why it is more plausible than might initially appear. “Pride is cowardliness” insofar as the vices of pride involve failing to face up to, or pursue, the truth. They distort the truth, serve as obstacles to truth-seeking, and hamper our capacity for knowledge and understanding. In Sect. 3, I show that if we suppose that on some level we know this, then the failure to face up to what on some level we know is itself a form of cowardliness. The vices of pride are amongst the ways through which we self-deceptively hide from ourselves (albeit incompletely) what we are doing. But if some forms of social comparison encourage us to be cowardly and dishonest with ourselves, thus hampering our capacity for knowledge and understanding, then it becomes important to ask: which, and how? In Sect. 4, I explore the prospects for two Kierkegaard-inspired answers: when the motivation for social comparison is “shrewdness’”, and when we use “the crowd” or “the public” as problematic reference networks. In Sect. 5, I briefly explore the implications for classic and contemporary social comparison theory, demonstrating some epistemic vice-risks it commonly overlooks.

This article connects Kierkegaard’s warnings about social comparison to “vices of pride” such as self-righteousness, domination, presumption, vanity and hyper-autonomy. In Sect. 1, I stress the ways these vices use social comparison and show their connections with self-importance. In Sect. 2, ...

04/05/2026

In less than 2 weeks (May 15-16), the Centre will be hosting a 2-day international conference entitled "Self(less)-Care: Ancient and Contemporary Care Ethics from a Labor Perspective"! Everyone is welcome to attend--contact the organizers for more info about how to join from online.
The programme can be found here: https://centreforethics.upce.cz/en/programme-selfless-care-ancient-and-contemporary-care-ethics-labour-perspective

04/05/2026

Publication Alert! Ryan Manhire's co-authored article (with Salla Aldrin Salskov), "‘Mr. Preacherman, Should We Love Thy Neighbour?’: On Moral Understanding and Moral Change in Deep Moral Disagreements" has just been published in Philosophical Investigations.

Abstract: This article examines what it means to respond, or fail to respond, to the individual realities of others in cases of deep moral disagreement concerning trans-exclusionary sentiments. Building on a limitation we identify in Daniele Moyal-Sharrock and Constantine Sandis' account of ‘bedrock gender’, we consider two readings of Kendrick Lamar's song ‘Auntie Diaries’ as an artistic intervention in contemporary debates on language, race, and trans politics: a rule-based self-censorship reading and a moral-understanding reading. We argue that while a rule-based self-censorship approach may preserve trans-exclusionary sentiments, a shift in moral understanding reflects a change in one's relation to others in which such sentiments lose their hold. Connecting Lamar's rhetorical question, ‘Mr. Preacherman, should we love thy neighbour?’, to Wittgenstein-inspired discussions of the parable of the Good Samaritan, we also emphasise the role of unmediated responses to injustice in moral understanding, in contrast to the limits of logic-driven moral imperatives.

This article examines what it means to respond, or fail to respond, to the individual realities of others in cases of deep moral disagreement concerning trans-exclusionary sentiments. Building on a l...

30/04/2026