One of the problems raised in the book is Mill’s now famous question about whether it is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. We might equally well ask if an imperfect example of something daringly original is superior to a perfect example of something more mundane. How you answer that will determine whether you prefer the honourably flawed A Good Life or the more routine competence of less ambitious philosophers.
ReadUniversities and other bodies that stand for values worth defending diminish their prestige if they effectively sell off parts of themselves to the highest bidder. Of course you cannot stop philanthropists gaining in stature because of their gifts. But there is a difference between bathing in a reflected glory that shines without cost and being deliberately singled out in a floodlight, which is what the granting of naming rights does.
ReadSomething has changed and that appears to be an increased desire to choose what is best for ourselves with scant regard for what is best for the wider community as a whole. And this seems equally true of too many left-leaning middle class parents who join the chorus decrying selfish individualism and advocating collective solidarity, even while taking off on their mid-term holiday.
ReadMany see the compatibilist version of free will as a “watered-down” version of the real thing, as Robert Kane puts it. Others dismiss compatibilist accounts of free will in less temperate terms. For Sam Harris, it amounts to nothing more than the assertion “A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.” Kant called it a “wretched subterfuge,” James a “quagmire of evasion” and Wallace Matson “the most flabbergasting instance of the fallacy of changing the subject to be encountered anywhere in the complete history of sophistry.” For many, the free will which compatibilism offers is never as attractive as what they set out to look for, and so we are caught between settling for what we can get and holding out for the elusive ideal.
ReadWhen asking whether inequality is unfair, we have perhaps too often made the mistake of asking whether it is unfair in and of itself. A better question is to ask whether the inequality we see is the inevitable result of a fair economic and political system. The answer to that appears to be no. But even if it were, we have more good reasons than ever to see rising inequality as representing a grave threat to our health and to the legitimacy of capitalist democracies.
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