First, individual rights cannot be sacrificed for the sake of the general good, and second, the principles of justice that specify these rights cannot be premised on any particular vision of the good life. What...

[T]he state should not impose a preferred way of life, but should leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others.

Other animals can make sounds, and sounds can indicate pleasure and pain. But language, a distinctly human capacity, isn´t just for registering pleasure and pain. It´s about declaring what is just and what is unjust,...

A philosophy untouched by the shadows on the wall can only yield a sterile utopia.

If the spirit of their intercourse were still the same after their coming together as it had been when they were living apart,’ Aristotle writes, their association can’t really be considered a polis, or political...

philosophy teaches us and unsettles us by confronting us with what we already know; there’s an irony: the difficulty consisted in this course is that it teaches what you already know; it works by taking...