University of Chichester

This chapter shows Murdoch’s exploration simultaneously widening to encompass the overwhelming sense of guilt experienced in connection to the Holocaust and narrowing to concentration on the lack of remorse evinced by Heidegger. Her three last texts are imbued with the continuing after-shock of the Holocaust, the central dilemma of Holocaust studies, and her struggle with the conundrum which Heidegger’s life and philosophy presents. Murdoch’s post-Holocaust narratives are mapped onto tertiary Holocaust literature; her fiction offers an enscripted form of remorse which passes on the memory of the Holocaust. Reading her oeuvre with the concerns thus focalised by her late work and reflections from Levinas’s ethics and Ricoeur’s narrative theory makes it retrospectively apparent that the Holocaust is a constant ethical presence in her writing and the source of her generalised remorse about the human potential for evil. A fatal form of corporate remorse is mythically enacted in The Message to the Planet by Marcus Vallar who dies of identification with the six million. Yet, paradoxically, he also conjures the figure of Heidegger. In Jackson’s Dilemma Murdoch’s preoccupation with Heidegger is overt: this novel forms a counterpoint to her monograph on his work. Murdoch, among many intellectuals, struggles with the disjunction between Heidegger’s philosophy and his political engagement. Remorse emerges as the key concept in her encounter with him.

This chapter outlines the growth of Murdoch’s standing in twenty-first-century critical acclaim and analyses her unique philosophical and literary contribution to contemporary thought, including her influence on the ‘ethical turn’ in literature and her interaction with her readers, before identifying the centrality of remorse in her work. Murdoch’s fiction abounds in images of remorse, augmenting the literary tradition she inherits by adding fresh imaginative material to the theme of remorse which runs through Shakespeare, Eliot, Dostoevsky, James, and Conrad. After tracing the development of remorse studies and identifying the leading theorists working in this area (Christopher Cordner, Murray Cox, Raimond Gaita, Michael Proeve, Mark Stern, Alan Thomas, and Steven Tudor), the vocabulary and concepts involved in this theoretical discourse are clarified, differentiating remorse from regret, guilt, and shame and distinguishing chronic remorse from lucid remorse. A dialogue between Murdoch’s thought and Simone Weil’s work on affliction is begun. It is argued that in Murdoch’s view remorse is a non-substitutable index of moral sensibility because, at its lucid best, remorse produces that attention to the reality of the other which Murdoch defines as love. Finally, the parameters of this study of remorse in Murdoch’s philosophy and fiction are set out.

This chapter engages with Murdoch’s contribution to the ‘turn to theology’ as her thinking on remorse participates in her neo-theology. Her perception that belief systems cannot be left out of an understanding of human nature and the apophatic nature of her theological perspective draw her closer to Derrida than the antagonism she expresses towards him in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals would suggest. Remorse proves a focal point of interaction for Murdoch’s critique of Christian doctrine and practice because the demand remorse creates for some means of forgiveness and salvation highlights the difficulty of conceptualising repentance (metanoia) and redemption after loss of belief in the grand narrative of Christianity. The concept of unselfing forms a secular equivalent to metanoia which Murdoch defines as deep change. Her Ur-text on chronic remorse, A Word Child, in which Weil’s insight into complicity with affliction is highlighted, explores the interrelationship between remorse and repentance and seeks secular forms of salvation and grace. In The Book and the Brotherhood Murdoch sets remorse in tension with the Christian doctrines of faith and salvation. Both novels indicate that, despite her antagonism to the metaphysics of Christianity, Murdoch’s neo-theological narratives acknowledge the role of religion in healing remorse through her ironic admixture of Christian and post-Christian spaces and rituals.

Murdoch’s peculiar insistence on remorse towards the end of her life suggests that it holds particular philosophical and personal significance for her. The question thus presents itself of what Murdoch was so emphatically saying to her readers before she died by putting remorse under the microscope of fiction. Remorse is given universal application in Jackson’s Dilemma as Murdoch historically surveys remorse-stricken people and suggests that acquaintance with remorse is a pre-requisite for great art. As an artist Murdoch too knows all about remorse. A pertinent factor, therefore, is critical assimilation of fresh knowledge about Murdoch’s life which both informs and troubles new readings of her work. The raw remorse of Murdoch’s personal life is metamorphosed by her art into the universally experienced quintessence of remorse. Her fiction exploits her first-hand experience of remorse to arouse the emotional impact of it in her readers; she then requires them to think about the place of remorse in the moral scheme. Readers find their own experience of remorse mirrored in her novels, in which she not only identifies the moral nature of remorse but also offers practical devices for recovering from its ill effects. This dynamic interaction between the novels and readers’ lives is Murdoch’s distinctive literary-moral achievement.

This chapter focuses on Murdoch’s Ur-text on lucid remorse, The Good Apprentice, which displays Weil’s analysis of the tendency for the afflicted to be shunned by the unafflicted, and on her penultimate novel, The Green Knight. These novels engage with insights from the theoretical discourses of trauma theory and ‘primal wounding’, used as hermeneutical tools for interpreting Murdoch’s texts on remorse. Trauma theory illuminates Murdoch’s mythic dramatisation of Edward Baltram’s ordeal by remorse in The Good Apprentice, and the theory of the ‘primal wound’ potentially caused by adoption relates to Murdoch’s investigation into the roots of Lucas Graffe’s lack of remorse in The Green Knight. Conversely, close readings of Murdoch’s texts illustrate her innovative and anticipatory contribution to the genre of trauma fiction. Remorse and trauma both demand an approach unrestricted by theory. This proviso corresponds to Murdoch’s ubiquitous stress on the individual, the particular, the detail, of all persons and situations. Her fiction reveals remorse as being in itself a form of trauma. Furthermore, trauma theory resonates with the ethically orientated reader-response Murdoch’s texts desire and proves instrumental in refining critical understanding of Murdoch’s search for the nucleus of the ethical paramountcy she accords to remorse.

This chapter contemplates remorse in the context of transcendence and mysticism which form the background to Murdoch’s philosophy and art. The position of remorse as an ethical index in Murdoch’s thought is demonstrated by the way her work sets anonymous saints and heroes against Luciferian figures such as Heidegger. She names dissidents in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals and such people flit anonymously through her novels, but the culminating point is reached in The One Alone. Murdoch’s creation of a nameless prisoner in this radio play both pays homage to these unknown people and puts their virtue and courage under the searchlight of remorse. This text adds a final dimension to Murdoch’s philosophical, spiritual, and psychological repertoire on remorse, as remorse is here linked with her ethical and neo-theological conviction that goodness excludes the concept of purpose. The message Murdoch offers through her fiction, that remorse is an ethical matter manifesting that attention to the reality of the other which is one face of love, is given its fullest extension when this play renders remorse an even more problematical concept by juxtaposing it against the highest spiritual achievement of being good for its own sake. In The One Alone Murdoch’s lifelong contemplation on the ethical and spiritual significance of remorse reaches an ineffable mystical depth.

This chapter demonstrates Murdoch’s relevance to philosophical debate on the moral basis and ethical significance of remorse. The foundations of both her philosophy and remorse theory are a conception of absolute Good and Evil and a conviction of the centrality of ethics. This is the context in which remorse is delineated as a moral matter. Murdoch’s exploration of negative and positive responses to remorse is rooted in a Socratic concern with the fate of evildoers. Her philosophy establishes that remorse functions in dynamic relation with determinism and freedom because it is predicated upon responsibility and is integral to identity; her fiction enacts her insight into the destructive effect of succumbing to what is identified as temporal determinism. By linking morality with causality Murdoch makes a distinctive contribution to remorse theory. She discloses connections between remorse and the philosophical problem of time; she demonstrates time as the medium of causality, and causality as the medium of remorse. Readings focused on the need to deal with the past, dramatised in The Nice and the Good, and on the apparently excessive use of the term remorse in her late metafictional novel The Philosopher’s Pupil manifest her presentation of the moral essence of remorse in two contrasting styles.

This study compared the influence of match status (drawing, losing, or winning) and possession status (in-possession, out-of-possession, or ball-out-of-play) on the physical and technical characteristics of U14 and U16 elite youth female soccer match-play. Data were collected from 189 female academy players during 45 competitive matches, resulting in 387 match observations. Linear mixed models estimated relative; total distance, high-speed running (≥3.00 m·s −1), very high-speed running (≥4.83 m·s −1), and sprinting (≥5.76 m·s −1) distance according to match status and possession status, and 21 technical variables according to match status. Differences in physical and technical characteristics were observed between and within age-groups, dependent upon match status and possession status. Regardless of match status, both age-groups covered greater distances when the ball was in-play compared to ball-out-of-play (107-130 vs 58-68 m·min −1). U16s covered greater distances when out-of-possession than in-possession, regardless of match status. Whilst U14s covered greater distances out-of-possession when drawing or losing only. Differences in physical and technical characteristics when drawing, losing, or winning, suggest a change in playing style according to match status, likely in an attempt to influence or maintain the score-line. These findings have practical implications for coaching, talent identification and development practices within youth female soccer.

This article is not a research paper in the conventional sense. Instead, it is a reflexive account of the building of a relationship which would not have happened without the existence of digital technologies and might not have happened but for the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was through reading a digitised resource (an online PhD thesis) in the first UK ‘lockdown’ that Bob, now a semi-retired academic in the field of adult and organisational learning, began to reappraise his upbringing in a children’s home in Scotland. Meanwhile, it was in getting to know Bob (through emails and Zoom meetings) and by accessing Bob’s retrospectively digitised case record that Viv, the author of the PhD thesis and now a semi-retired social work academic, was stimulated to revisit her early research from a fresh perspective. We argue that our real-life example, serendipitous and unique as it undoubtedly is, demonstrates the democratising potential of the digital transformation that is currently being played out in child and family social work. Furthermore, it seems likely that digital technologies will continue to bring new and unexpected opportunities for forming such relationships in the future.

Introduction High-speed boat operators constitute a population at risk of work-related injuries and disabilities. This review aimed to summarize the available knowledge on workplace-related injuries and chronic musculoskeletal pain among high-speed boat operators. Materials and Methods In this systematic review, we searched Medline, Embase, Scopus, and the Cochrane Library Database for studies, published from 1980 to 2022, on occupational health and hazards onboard high-speed boats. Studies and reports were eligible for inclusion if they evaluated, compared, used, or described harms associated with impact exposure onboard high-speed boats. Studies focusing on recreational injuries and operators of non-planing boats were excluded. The primary outcome of interest was the incidence of acute injuries. The secondary outcome measures comprised the presence of chronic musculoskeletal disorders, pain medication use, and days off work. Results Of the 163 search results, 5 (2 prospective longitudinal and 3 cross-sectional cohort studies) were included in this systematic review. A total of 804 cases with 3,312 injuries sustained during 3,467 person-years onboard high-speed boats were included in the synthesis of the results. The pooled incidence rate was 1.0 per person-year. The most common injuries were related to the lower back (26%), followed by neck (16%) and head (12%) injuries. The pooled prevalence of chronic pain was 74% (95% CI: 73–75%) and 60% (95% CI: 59–62%) of the cohort consumed analgesics. Conclusions Despite very limited data, this review found evidence that high-speed boat operators have a higher rate of injuries and a higher prevalence of chronic pain than other naval service operators and the general workforce. Given the low certainty of these findings, further prospective research is required to verify the injury incidence and chronic pain prevalence among high-speed boat operators.

Two experiments aimed to determine whether working memory capacity (WMC) and high‐order executive functions predict drown detection performance and maintenance under heightened task demands. Experiment 1 ( n = 111) found a positive correlation between enhanced performance scores and higher WMC, while executive function showed no comparable association. Experiment 2 ( n = 28) individuals with elevated WMC demonstrated an ability to detect a greater number of drowning events over an extended period overall, relative to their lower scoring counterparts. However, this heightened capacity did not necessarily prevent the presence of vigilance decrement, but enabled lifeguards to perform more effectively under conditions of increased bather numbers. Our findings highlight that lifeguards have a measurable underlying process that may systematically discriminate lifeguards of varying degrees of experience and detection performance. This offers a new avenue for future lifeguarding research.

1. Adder (Vipera berus) populations are experiencing declines in many countries, including the UK. Perceptions of adders and other venomous snakes are generally negative, making conservation of these species a challenge, and persecution remains within the top five perceived causes for adder declines in the UK. Improved understanding and attitudes are needed to support current conservation efforts. However, ensuring these positive attitudes continue into the future relies on addressing children’s loss of connection to nature, and intervention at this early attitude-formation stage can be crucial for traditionally ‘unpopular’ species, such as snakes. 2. An adder-focussed public-engagement project, Adders are Amazing!, was carried out in Pembrokeshire, UK, in 2018-19 to improve understanding and attitudes towards adders using a blended science-creative arts approach. The project included half-day primary school-based workshops to inform 111 pupils aged 8 to 11 about adder ecology, alongside creative art experiences. Questionnaires were used to measure the children’s attitudes towards adders and their nature connectedness both before and after the workshops and these were compared with equivalent questionnaires carried out at a control school (57 pupils) where no workshops were conducted. 3. The project demonstrated that engagement that blends both art and science can significantly change attitudes towards adders without any direct contact with the animals themselves; specifically, participants’ scores for ‘Wonder’, ‘Learning Interest’ and ‘Conservation Concern’ increased. The workshops also significantly increased measures of the children’s general connectedness to nature (specifically, ‘Enjoyment of Nature’ and ‘Responsibility for Nature’). 4. We recommend conservation bodies focus on, and not shy away from, so-called ‘unpopular’ species, to promote understanding and acceptance of these species and support their conservation. Blended arts-science initiatives, which can be easily adapted to suit a wide range of species and the artistic practices of local communities, are an effective way to achieve this.

This article documents a creative and participatory research project with social workers that took place online during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Thirty-three social workers contributed images and captions to one or more of the four project themes: (i) Belonging and Connection; (ii) Health and Wellbeing; (iii) Home and Away and (iv) Loss and Change. The website became a digital archive of the contributions and a physical exhibition also took place to provide further opportunities for reflection. Contributions together demonstrate shifting subjectivities and everyday practices of social work professionals during this time: there were new possibilities for leisure, exercise, creativity and self-care, held alongside challenging experiences of isolation, increased regulatory practices and premature loss. As such, this article is revealing of the human stories of everyday life in the pandemic, documenting changing social worker practices of work, home and belonging.

Electronic sport has seen substantial growth in market value and popularity in the last 10 years. With this growth has come the pursuit of elite esports performance, especially from a psychological perspective. This study aimed to investigate potential variations in self-regulation levels among athletes of different levels (national vs. student), compare the self-regulation profiles of CS:GO players in the current study to an international sample of e’athletes and to assess the predictive capacity of self-regulation on performance outcomes. A total of 53 esports athletes (student competitors, n = 27 and national-level CS:GO competitors, n = 26), participated in an experiment exploring self-regulation, DRES, and action performance. Furthermore, analysis comparing our collective findings against a larger global sample of e’athletes ( n = 993) was conducted. Results demonstrated that CS:GO players who displayed higher levels of self-regulation tended to perceive stressful situations as challenges, consequently showcasing superior accuracy and time trial performance. In contrast, individuals with lower self-regulation tended to perceive such situations as threats, which correlated with less favorable performance outcomes. On a broader scale, the study observed that CS:GO competitors generally exhibited lower levels of self-regulation when compared to the larger global sample. Furthermore, self-regulation was identified as a mediating variable in the relationship between stress appraisal and performance, suggesting that improved self-regulation skills can lead to enhanced accuracy and quicker time trial performance. This may imply that competitors with greater self-regulatory abilities perceive themselves as having more personal resources, enabling them to effectively assess challenging situations and employ problem-focused coping strategies. Overall, this research underscores the significance of self-regulation in optimizing esports performance, while providing valuable insights for player development, action performance, and overall outcomes in the field.