Given the connection between the media and democracy, the question of media quality is important. A recurring theme is the distinction between positive and negative aspects of media quality: what is required and what is prohibited. The legal route to media quality is considered and accepted as necessary, but not sufficient. It needs to be supplemented by the ethical route, understood as a competence to deploy ethical consideration in professional practice. The idea of ethical standards being provided by a code of practice is considered, and the (British) Press Complaints Commission's Code is examined as an example. The conclusion is that codes have their limitations but overall the ethical route is indispensable, although in need of further exploration.
In this volume leading international environmental philosophers further the debate about the value of nature, the concept of the environment, and the metaphysical, ethical, social and international implications of these concepts. Philosophers have to some extent neglected the study of nature and the natural environment, and this collection not only provides a long-overdue contribution to that study, but also points to inadequacies of much contemporary ethical and political theory. For environmentalists who are not philosophers, it will stimulate reflection on their own concepts and principles.
The distinction between chaos and order has been central to western philosophy, both in metaphysics and politics. At the beginning, it was intrinsic to presocratic natural philosophy, and shortly after that to the cosmology and social philosophy of Plato. Even in the pre-presocratic period there were important intimations of it. Thus Hesiod tells us that ‘first of all did Chaos come into being’ (Theogony, line 116, in Kirk et al., 1983, p. 35)—although exactly what is meant by ‘chaos’ in this context is not clear. (It could be some sort of undifferentiated, primordial mass, or just the separation (the gap) between earth and sky (Kirk et al., 1983, pp. 38–41). Nor does Hesiod concern himself with what Chaos came from (Barnes, 1987, p. 57).) The myth of origin in the Theogony, though, can be seen in contrast to the underlying theme of Works and Days, namely, Zeus's eternal rule over the world in accordance with Justice or Order (Kirk et al., 1983, pp. 34, 72). This point will become centrally important in what follows.
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