Is freedom really so desirable? Is it not better to be captive but cared for, than "free" to die of famine, disease or conflict? This example is physical, but mental captivity (e.g., constraining our thoughts to what we believe) can be more comforting than opening our minds to thoughts we might find uncomfortable or incomprehensible. Freedom, particularly in the Western World, is often held up as an ideal for which to strive. Is it really as good as it is made out to be?

"Is freedom always better than a lack of freedom?" Well, doesn’t the answer to this question depend on what sort of freedom is at stake and what one might receive in compensation for losing that particular sort of freedom? No human being is free to do anything she might happen to want to do, nor should we be moved to tears by this fact. I am not free to fly like a bird, nor to travel to the Sun. In the US, I am not free to kill openly whomever I want and stay out of jail. Yet even in jail, I retain certain freedoms: to pace my cell, to think about my mother, to count to a million, to rearrange my clothing in my drawers as many times as I like, to talk or not to talk to my cell-mate. Of course, we never hold up a person in jail as a paradigm of freedom, but this is not because we believe that a person in jail has no freedoms, but because we believe that he lacks important freedoms that the rest of us on the outside thankfully possess. So what makes a particular freedom an important freedom?...

Within my grade at school, certain people seek out (I'm not sure if they do it consciously or unconsciously) the negative aspects of other people in the grade, without seeing any of their good qualities (which I believe they, like everyone, have). I was wondering why people do this, not only at school but in society in general? Why must so many people spend so much time (and I mean A LOT of time) focusing on such insignificant and often superficial aspects of people?

And here’s another way in which focusing on the negative traits of others serves a self-defensive function. If I notice how virtuous, intelligent, witty, and beautiful X is, then I might be forced to notice how my own traits pale in comparison. In contrast, if I notice the peccadillos of X, then I can take great satisfaction in the fact that I’m superior in at least these trivial respects.

If no one ever loves me during my lifetime - if I don't ever have a relationship - will I have not lived properly? Is love that important to life, or is it something you can choose to engage in if you like? Thank you.

On Aristotle’s view, in order to determine whether Bob is living a goodlife, we first need to determine what kind of creature Bob is– e.g., ishe a human being, a dog, or an oak tree. We then would judge thequality of his life against a species standard of flourishing. Forexample, our view of what it would mean for a dog to live a good lifeis informed by our views about the nature of dogs. We tend to think ofa dog who lives its life in a cage as not living a good life for a dog,even if we imagine that it is given sufficient drugs to feel nodiscontent or frustration. A good life for a dog, we think, would beone thatinvolved companionship, running around, barking at threatening noisesand strangers, and so forth. Because a dog in a cage on drugs is notgiven the opportunity to engage in doggy activities, it is notfunctioning as a dog at a high level, and so, is not living a good lifefor a dog. If Bob is a dog, Aristotle would say, then we would judgehis quality of life as good just in case he had a lot of...

I was just discussing with a friend the concept of a perfect world. We were trying to define what would be a perfect world. I thought the perfect world would be world with a healthy balance of life and death, a healthy balance of war and peace, not enough food and not enough of other resources, and a healthy balance of one's own pain, and a world of distrust on top of that. But my friend seemed to hold a different view of it - a perfect world, to him, seemed to be one where there was always enough food, a world without death, a world with no war, and a world where you could go anywhere and trust every single person. We argued for a couple hours, but it was clear at one point that we had reached a stalemate. What do you guys think? What would be defined as a perfect world?

One way of thinking of a perfect world is as a world that cannot be improved upon in any way. There are no problems to be solved, because everything is as it should be. But paradoxically, perhaps, such a perfect world would not be perfect for us. We’ve evolved to be the ultimate problem solvers, and we take a great deal of satisfaction in our successful problem solving. If there were no longer any problems to be solved, there would no longer be anything left for us to do. And how perfect can life be if there’s no point to doing anything? Having said that, I think that I would opt for a world in which there was always enough food, no war, and eminently trustworthy people. Such improvements seem only to eliminate a lot of pointless suffering, and there would still be plenty of interesting problems remaining to be solved. Whether the elimination of death would be a genuine improvement is unclear to me. Bernard Williams has argued (“The Makropoulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality...

Is it irrational to want power and prestige for their own sake? I think a lot of people today (especially in Christian countries) would answer yes. But people from some ancient societies (like, Homeric Greece) probably would answer no to the question. Who's "right"? And why might there be this difference in opinion?

Aristotle argued that it is irrational to want prestige or honor for its own sake. Why? In the Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, Aristotle asks you to imagine yourself honored by people forwhom you have no respect and who honor you for attributes that you donot believe are particularly worthwhile (perhaps your fingerprintpattern (my example, not Aristotle's)). Would you value their honor? No, he predicts, you would disdain it. It would beworthless, unless perhaps your prestige in their minds gave you powerto do something that you thought was worthwhile. What, then, about poweritself? Is that valuable for its own sake? Well, let’s imagine havingimmense power. In particular, let’s imagine that you can make anybodydo anything you want her to do. But let’s imagine also that you can’tthink of anything worthwhile that you want her to do. Is your power ofany value to you in these circumstances? Again, the answer seems to be,no. Power is valuable only to the extent that it can be used to gainsomething else of...

Can we be right in viewing ourselves -- our lives, our decisions, our contributions to social issues -- as important, if that means important, period, not just important *to* someone? I mean, I'd feel meaningless if what mattered to me mattered only to me, or to any particular people...but is there a sensible way to view ourselves as important, with a capital 'I', to no-one in particular?

Alex is suggesting that unless something is “important, period,” nothing can be important at all in a way that gives meaning to human lives. We might understand Alex’s argument for this conclusion as a kind of reductio of my suggestion that I could be reasonably satisfied with the meaning of my life if I were important to things that I cared about, things that I believed were themselves of value and importance. If, as Alex adds, the value of those to whom I am important depends on their importance to something else of value, then unless something ’s value is a matter of its “importance, period,” my life’s meaning never gets grounded: the value of my life depends on my importance to Xs who are valuable because they are important to Ys who are valuable because they are important to Zs, and so on ad infinitum . However, this regress goes on ad infinitum only if it can never turn back on itself. Certainly, I wouldn’t think that my life had much meaning if I were important only to...

I think that it’s very difficult to make sense of the idea that I amimportant, period. It used to bother me that I couldn’t make sense ofthis idea, but now I’m perfectly content with the idea that I’mimportant to those I care about, or that I make an importantcontribution to projects that I care about. I’d like to think thatthese people and projects are themselves important, and I think thatthey are, but only because they are important to themselves or toothers– that is, genuinely important to themselves or to others, not just thought by me (or others) to be important in these ways.