The normal operation of healthcare systems necessitates a variety of pro-social behaviours. There is usually a chronic shortage of organs to transplant, blood from donors of specific types, and other biological material donations that make a huge difference in people's lives, such as breast milk donations, which are critical for feeding premature children. This chronic shortage is distinguished by the fact that demand is consistently far greater than supply. Hence a question this chapter will try to address is how can we incentivise desirable pro-social behaviours? How do individuals react to health inequality? How should social decision-making be reconsidered when we consider the fact that individuals face cognitive biases? Social preferences include certain types of pro-social behaviours such as altruism and reciprocity, as well as a genuine preferences against inequity. The chapter discusses explanations for social preference behaviours and the motivation and incentives of pro-social behaviours and the role of altruism in health. Finally, we examine inequality aversion, namely how sensitive people are to inequality.

This chapter reconstructs Heidegger’s 1955–56 interpretation of the principle of reason as a principle that resonates or sounds variously in the history of philosophy. The principle is first fully formulated by Leibniz as the principle of sufficient reason, which states that there is no true fact or proposition without sufficient reason for it being so and not otherwise. Heidegger takes Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason to be a historically specific version of the principle of reason, which is a fundamental ontological principle holding that nothing is without a reason or ground, and so that being is ground/reason. Heidegger hears this association between being and ground resonating in the ancient Greek concept of logos, which is taken up but distorted by the Romans in the concept of ratio. From there, the ontological principle develops into the principle articulated by Leibniz and comes to express the distinctive commitments of modern philosophy and technology. While Heidegger’s historical story is not entirely plausible and contains significant omissions, attempting to reconstruct it reveals why this purported history of the principle of reason is relevant to Heidegger’s broader ontological project.

Chapter Five charts human dignity in its second constitutive stage, characterized by the rise of international human rights law. Its first expressions in the 1920s (which echoed developments in connection with slave trade and slavery in the nineteenth century) and later in 1944 (with the Philadelphia Declaration), must be considered in the light of the decisive adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, in 1948, and the adoption of the Convention against Genocide later that year. But it is difficult to consider these entry points, however important, as sufficient for the consolidation of human dignity in the form of human ‘rights’. In earnest, the consolidation process was not completed until the adoption of the two human rights Covenants in 1966, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

In the concluding Chapter Seven, the study brings together the analysis conducted in previous chapters in order to extract their combined meaning. This book shows that the concept of human dignity made its first appearance in legal history in a religious form and was later transformed into a secularized concept, as a reaction to and limit upon the classical conception of sovereign dignity, enshrined in State sovereignty. This origin is at the root of and is still manifested in the various legal formulations of human dignity in different areas of law. To explain human dignity, to seek its religious roots, to see its evolution and its many legal manifestations, ultimately demonstrates that international law was historically shaped, despite the multi-cultural context in which it unfolded, by a secularization process akin to that of many domestic legal systems. Chapter Seven adopts this macro view and discusses the secularization argument in the light of the transformative function of human dignity in international law.

Discusses why we make comparisons, the difference between close and complex comparisons, the role of the principle of equal treatment, in European Law and in the Equality Act 2010.

Empty phrases and the need for having definite criteria to generate a rule of decision. Unhelpfulness of the word abuse. Arbitrariness created by elevating unnecessary abstractions to the status of fundamental principles.

Generalized continua represent a class of models whose potential applicability seems to have been underestimated. The mathematical structure of these models is discussed and the reasons why it has been underestimated are made clear. Their importance in the theory of metamaterials is highlighted and their potential impact on future technological applications is carefully argued. It is shown how the original ideas of Lagrange and Piola can be developed by using the modern tools of differential geometry, as formulated by Ricci and Levi-Civita. It has to be concluded that variational principles are the most powerful tool also in the mathematical modeling of metamaterials.

The fifth chapter lays out Arendt’s critical dismantling of classical political philosophy. Socrates understood the dialogical and aporetic nature of essential thought, she argued, and Socratic thought is compatible with the openness and endlessness of political persuasion.By contrast, Plato aimed to replace political persuasion with government by philosopher-kings, whose knowledge entitled them to rule over citizens, as the expertise of master craftsmen entitled them to give orders to subordinates.But this aim led Plato both to misunderstand the realities of political life and to misconceive the nature of political theory.Aristotle also derived some of his basic terms from the sphere of production, Arendt argued, so that his metaphysical concepts led him to conceive the political philosopher on the model of a craftsman, the polis on the model of a product, and political action on the model of making. The chapter then traces Arendt’s genealogies of the concepts of freedom, authority, law, and principle in classical philosophy. This account of classical political theory leads to the question of the next chapter: How did Arendt rethink the basic realities of politics?