Good heavens! Unless you both had an explicit understanding that neither would attend an adult party, it is hard to see this as a violation, and even if one did have such an agreement it is hard to see how such a "violation" warrants calling someone a whore and threaten to cut off all sexual intimacy! I am sure this matter is more a topic for a marriage therapist than a professional philosopher, but I shall hesitantly suggest three things: it might be good to shift the questioning from matters of guilt / innocence / confession... to asking what is the most loving thing to do right now....both for your husband and for you. He seems to be treating the event on a par with sustained adultery or, short of adultry, a case of grave, personal betrayal and deception. But rather than getting focussed on whether the event was innocent (from his point of view, for it does sound innocent from your point of view), maybe the focus can be on what would the most loving thing be to do now. Second, the charge of being...

Perhaps the problem lies in our current use of the term 'empathy' --which suggests not just understanding for caring. On that definition, I am not empathetic with you if I understand your suffering but I care nothing for your recovery or health. But if by 'empathy' and 'sympathy' too we just mean 'feeling with' then a sado-masochist might be said to be very empathetic and sympathetic over his victims. On a related matter, there is some current debate over the ethical status of understanding. If we say we understand why a sadistic crime was committed, have we in some way granted that the crime "made sense" or was in some way excusable under the circumstances? I believe Martha Nuusbaum has addressed this concern recently. One way this might connect with your original question is that we might ask ourselves whether the sadistic criminal really understands (understands fully) what he is doing? Yes, he (or she) must understand that pain is being inflicted, but can the criminal still do the act if he or...

Great question! It does seem that there are cases when family or romantic relations would provide a very good reason for a person not to engage in heroic self-sacrifice. Imagine a peson is deciding between professions: a crime fighter who would be in a unit where there is a 30% morality rate over a full career or a physician. Imagine both tasks would involve saving the same number of lives, but being a physician has a very low probability of injury or even threats and so would require less bravery. If you were in that position of deciding what to do and your partner / family urged you to be a physician, I think you might have a family duty to take the less brave choice. There is actually a Biblical edict in Deuteronomy, I think, that notes that when a soldier marries, he is relieved of military duties for one or two years. That would be a case in which family / perhaps romantic love (?) might trump one's obligation to be brave in battle. Perhaps, though, the hero who saves the stranger is also...

A foundatoinal question or a question that gets to the very basis of ethics itself! "Ethics" today includes matters of virtue and vice as well as the morality of action. In much of the history of ideas and culture as well as today, it is widely held that what counts as moral or immoral or as a virtue or vice is NOT a matter of an individual's decision so that I, for example, could re-label my massive, self-centered egotism as "humility" or I could define my stealing your money so that I can buy luxory gifts for my slaves as "charity." In a sense, being part of a community or (to get even broader in scope) being a mature human being involves taking seriously what it is to act responsibly and respectfully concerning oneself and others. And this seems to be a matter that cannot be done only in terms of how individuals define for him or herself what is good or bad. Still, there is a tradition in ethics going back at least to Kant which stresses the importance of each individual coming to understand...

Great question(s)! In reply, I suggest backing up a little. You describe your position as hypocritical and ask whether it might be excusable. If smoking is directly on a par (no better or worse) with your examples of abusing coffee and not exercising (or not doing so sufficiently), then I suppose there is an inconsistency that may be worrisome. The same point can be made about allowing alcohol legal use but banning cannabis. IF the two substances are equally dangerous (or good?), then why prohibit the one and allow the other? But there may be some differences in the cases you raise. "Contact smoke" can be a problem, but if so it seems very different from what might be called "Contact coffee fix" or "Contact lacklustre efforts to exercise." Also, smoking seems to direcly impair vital life functions / organs, whereas we seem to be less in danger of life-threatening harm with a "coffee fix" and only periodical exercising. So, I suggest that perhaps there is a principled way of distinguishing these...

It sounds as though you really touched a raw nerve given your professor's (or "teacher's") reaction! It might not be a great idea to write your first paper for him or her defending Rand, but, on the other hand, if your professor is truly philosophical in the best sense (open to counter-arguments) maybe that is a challenge you should consider!!!! In fact, it might even be a great learning experience for both you and the professor to not let the issue be settled by his or her pronouncement. On Rand and Philosophy: Rand was certainly an intelligent writer who engages important philosophical ideas and she was an effective novelist. Last spring I actually did a tutorial / independent study with a student on Rand's work; I believe both the student and I found the project rewarding. In the general sense of the word "philosophy" and "philosopher" I see no reason not to use both with respect to objectivism and of her, but this is not at all widely recognized in the profession. I could be wrong about this...

Good question! There may be several alternatives to consider. First, there may be objective normative truths (e.g. to torture the innocent is unjust) even if we are unable to arrive at what Russell would clasify as a "rational argument" on behalf of such truths. Secondly, we may have knowledge of normative truths on the basis of something other than what Russell would call "rational argument." There is a revival of late of intuitionism, which claims that we can intuit basic values. Some in the natural law camp (John Finnis) have proposed that some objective norms are self-evident (and thus can be known per se nota). A third point to consider is that even if you reject intuition or insight, there are all sorts of considerations that can come into play when considering the identity of basic goods. One can reflect on the implications of accepting such basic goods by investigating actual cases as well as hypothetical cases involving what philosophers call thought experiments. So, in a debate over...

Good question! There is actually quite a bit of controversy over Heidegger's position, and some decent books address this. See, for example: http://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Atheism-Refusal-Theological-Voice/dp/0268030588 In Being and Time, it seems as though the existence or non-existence of God is not relevant to the way Heidegger conceives of his project, though there is a fascinating remark about divine being and primordial temporality in a footnote. I don't pretend to be able to unpack that for you, however! His later work, some of which has only recently been published in English translation contains far more of an engagement with God than many scholars anticipated. If Heidegger did, in the end, accept some concept of God, it is doubtful that this would be along classical theistic lines, but perhaps more in line with the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich's notion of God as the ground of being. While Tillich remained a self-identified Christian, he seemed more enthralled with what might...

I think this is a fine question or questions. Consider first the issue of whether what you are calling taste can be subject to proof or at least rational dispute. It may be that what you mean by "taste" simply means a desire or aversion to (for example) limes or apples, something which lacks standards to settle (assuming neither is a poison, etc). But if "taste" includes any kind of desire (the desire for justice versus the desire for mercy and so on), then many philosophers would claim (on all sorts of grounds) that we can rationally debate such matters. You might check out the work of John Rawls on one promising model of how one might adjudicate competing tastes. On the second issue about when a taste or desire is one's own.... Perhaps the answer lies in terms of volunatary choice or consent or identification with the tastes or desires that you have. Consider the following possibility: each of us develops different tastes or desires, whether these are through nature or nurture, design or...

Thank you for this inquiry! Some philosphers have been quite frank about the ways in which their philosophy can rupture their contentment or be a source of anxiety and some philosophers have even explicitly used their anxiety as a source for philosophical work (e.g. Kierkegaard in his book The Concept of Anxiety, sometimes translated as The Concept of Dread, 1844). On a different front, David Hume famously observed how he had to seek relief from some of his skeptical worries by playing games (backgammon) in social settings. I think you are right to observe that anxiety can indeed run amok; it can either immobilize one or have one running in opposite directions (one hour accepting one theory, then embracing an alternative, then...). Some philosophers (including Linda Zagzebski and Keith Lehrer) have recently contended that a key virtue in philosophy (and perhaps in thinking, in general) is self-trust. Without trusting our own faculties and judgments (cognitive powers), we are lost. Maybe in...