Philosophers sometimes use the terms "perfect duty" to refer to duties that persons have which they can be compelled to obey, as distinct from imperfect duties which cannot compel obedience (these duties might range from a duty to be nice / not rude to acts of amazing courage which we regard as 'above and beyond the call of duty). Some duties seem obviously perfect duties like the duty not to commit homicide or rape or steal and so on, otherwise one would not have a society. Other duties seem to be imperfect, though highly important for democracy such as the duty to vote. I believe that citizens in a democracy who can vote (they are of age and of sound mind) should vote, but evidently this is not something that the USA and other democracies believe they can force citizens to do. You might check out Joel Feinberg's excellent book Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty.

Oh dear, oh dear, I hope not! You are right that many statements can be interpreted in ways that would make them plausable, but communication rests on agreed upon meanings and nuances. So, it became apparent during the Clinton years that his claim not to have had sex with Monica was outright deception, even though he might have had a definition of "sex" that did not include (what most people would describe as) the types of sexual acts they performed. The key lies in wrongful deception, whether or not you say something that is literally true. Imagine you are late for an appointment because you lingered too long over lunch. The person you were to meet says: "You're late." You respond: "The traffic today is horrible." Let's say it is true the traffic is horrible, so this is not (in some narrow sense a lie, but it is lying insofar as you are engaged in deception by implying that the reason you are late is due to traffic. You might like to read Thomas Carson's Lying and Deception; theory and practice ...

Perhaps Professor Greenberg should reply to this, but here goes: I suggest that there are at least two ways of defining a philosophy. On one meaning, to have a philosophy is to have a worldview or a conception of yourself, the world, values, and so on. From this point of view, most people have a philosophy Secondly, "philosophy" can stand for the disciplined reflection on world views or ways of thinking about reality and values. The latter can certainly involve description, clarification, and criticism. Probably Professor Greenberg put such an emphasis on arguments is that while philosophy can involve a great deal of exploration and exposition, a great deal of philosophy addresses questions of justification or evidence. Using these distinctions, I think it likely that Shakespeare the person had a worldview and thus had a philosophy, but in the work attributed to Shakespeare there are multiple philosophies or worldview (Macbeth's philosophy seems different from Prospero's) and it would be hard (but...

Interesting questions. I suggest that the disanalogies of the two cases are quite significant. In the drunk driving case, the person drunk is (usually) the direct cause of the death. In the case of rape, the person being raped cannot be the direct cause of the harm. In most, if not all cases without a single exception, I assume most or all of us think that rape is so heinous that no behavior, however irresponsible, by the victim can lead us to blame him or her. While I stand by that judgment myself, perhaps one should concede that there can (in principle) be cases when, for example, a person initiates a "rape fantasy" or consents to an extreme sado-masochist event, and perhaps these make it more likely there will be an actual rape, but once a person says "no" I suggest that "no" means "no" and the guilt borne by the rapist is not at all mitigated by the prior consent. Moreover, the prior consent and circumstances are irrelevant in terms of the harm done to the victim, a harm that is also not...

Great set of quetions. I think the concept of a game has shifted. In Ancient Rome, "games" included gladiator fights to the death, but today any intentional killing in the course of a game would be seen as no longer a game. If in the middle of a baseball game the batter beat the short stop to death with his bat we would think the game was at least interrupted. And in a case when two people agree to fight to the death this appears to be a duel and thus (at least in many countries) illegal. My colleague, who also serves on this panel, Gordon Marino, is a great boxer and defender of the virtues of this sport, so at least he would defend the permissibility of hitting other persons under controlled conditions. (Check out some of his answers to questions on this site.) I personally have reservations about games in which intentional harm is a goal (hence I prefer tennis to boxing, personally), but Marino makes a good case for how boxing can be done to build up self-repect and can be done while respecting...

As a theist, I would love to welcome you back, but in all honesty I suggest that atheistic philosophers have worked quite hard to argue that life without God can be deep and satisfying and while pleasurable not hedonistic. In fact, one member of this panel, Louise Antony has edited a book called Philosophers without God which you might find hopeful and uplifting. You might also look for Robert Solomon's Spirituality for the Skeptic or The Really Hard Problem:: Meaning in a Material World by Owen Flanagan. Some atheists do place a premium on caring for other persons, but some also care about other things --for example, caring for nonhuman animals or wildlife areas, artwork, science, and so on. If you want to compare atheistic and theistic views of values, you might check out a recent book I co-authored with the American artist Jil Evans' The Image in Mind; Theism, Naturalism, and the Imagination (Continuum, 2011). Sorry to hear that you're feeling down! I hope things turn around for you asap.

Very interesting! Maybe not. If both cases involved equal malice and hate or the money was extracted with the same amount of violence, we might think both thieves are equally worthy of blame. Obviously the first thief has done more damage because a rich person is less vulnerable to extreme poverty and the second thief has perhaps doomed the poor person to complete destruction, and so we might naturally think that the first thief is less cruel than the second, but I don't think this is necessarily the case. In some cases we might even reverse this judgment. Imagine that thief who steals from the poor person has no other means of getting money that will rescue his or her family who will die unless they use the funds for medicine (imagine there are no rich people around and EVERYONE is poor), whereas the thief going after a rich person is doing it for a thrill or to buy a ticket to a pretentious play.

Great question! I suppose the most common place where philosophers have worked to identify "straw men" or (another term sometimes used to name the same thing "Aunt Sallys") is in logic books that identify ordinary fallacies. My hunch, though, is that in debates, most philosophers would seek to help their interlocutor in expressing their beliefs...So, if someone was working with a deeply flawed understanding of Derrida, Marx, Nietzsche or the Bible, they might begin with trying to elevate or at least clarify the issues. So, if someone (I think mistakenly) thought of Nietzsche as morally bankrupt on the grounds that he was a nihilist, I might begin by making a case for Nietzsche's positive valuation of life or if someone thought the Bible clearly teaches that homosexuality is contrary to divinely revealed precepts, I might begin by drawing attention to how the relevant verses can be re-contextualized and show that such a teaching is not obvious.

What a difficult situation! You may be dealing with a matter that involves different cultural traditions. If, for example, you and your family's background is Confusian there may be a primacy of hnor due to parentss, but if you are in Jewish or Chrisitian context then, while honor is due to parents, your primary loyalty is to the marriage partner (Genesis 2:24 institutes marriage as a matter of of a man and by implication, a woman leaving father and mother and father and "becoming one"). But setting aside cultural or religious expectiations, I think most people would understand the vow that established your marriage as promising always to love and respect each other. Sometimes this vow includes a line about "foresaking all others" which suggests the primacy and exclusively important nature of the marriage bond. In light of that, I find it difficult to believe that respect and love would lead to the kind of reproachful behavior you are describing. It would be interesting (but probably most unwise...

Probably the most recent attempt to engage Shakespeare by an analytic philosopher is Colin McGinn. I believe McGinn gives special attention to Shakespeare's wrestling with skepticism on different levels. I think McGinn is a fine philosopher, but his book has gotten some quite critical attention. Dale Jacquette has argued that McGinn does more to impose a philosophy on Shakespeare, rather than discover one. I suspect it would be very difficult to make a compelling case for a single coherent belief-system or philosophy in Shaekespeare's work as a whole. I suggest his genius lies in his openness to many conflicting currents in philosophy and religion. I am an analytic philosopher who has published an account of redemption in some of Shakespeare's work (this can be found in popular form in a book of "creative non-fiction" called Love. Love. Love, Cowley Press, 2005), but I would only claim to find a view of redemption in SOME of Shakespeare's work, rather than to make such a claim for all his work...